Rwandan genocide suspect fears death if extradited

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (Reuters) -- A former Rwandan army major, accused of murdering his prime minister and 10 Belgian U.N. peacekeepers, begged a Tanzanian court on Thursday not to extradite him to Rwanda, saying he feared execution.

Bernard Ntuyahaga, 48, is wanted in Rwanda for the 1994 murder of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and the U.N. troops sent to protect her at the start of a period of genocide in which Hutu extremists killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

The bespectacled Ntuyahaga said he was not responsible for the killings.

"Other former army officers who were either forcibly repatriated or went back voluntarily (to Rwanda) have all been killed," he told the court. "I fear I will meet the same fate."

Ntuyahaga fled to Tanzania and in June 1998 turned himself in to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a U.N. court appointed to try genocide-related cases.

He was charged before the court, but the prosecution dropped the case against him in a botched attempt to have him extradited to Belgium.

Belgium and Rwanda both pressed the Tanzanian government to have Ntuyahaga re-arrested and tried on their own soil. Tanzania agreed to hear Rwanda's extradition case first because it had applied before Belgium.

Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu, was killed by members of the presidential guard outside the presidential palace in Kigali, hours after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down.

Habyarimana's death sparked the 100-day killing orgy as Hutu extremists took revenge for the president's assassination.

The Belgian peacekeepers laid down their weapons only to be tortured and beaten to death at a military camp in Kigali.

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