Hutu pastor on trial for genocide

Ntakirutimana is facing gencide charges

ARUSHA, Tanzania -- A Rwandan pastor and his son are due to stand trial on genocide charges on Tuesday in one of the highest profile cases for the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda.

Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, who is represented by former U.S. attorney-general Ramsey Clark, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

He is accused of acts of genocide carried out in 1994 when Hutu extremists massacred 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

U.N. prosecutors say Ntakirutimana encouraged a large group of Tutsi men, women and children to seek refuge in a church and hospital in the Kibuye region of western Rwanda and then called Hutus to come and kill them.

Prosecutors say he and his son Gerard, a former doctor, actively participated in the massacres, and later hunted down and killed Tutsi survivors.

The U.N. tribunal investigating the Rwandan genocide said: "The attack resulted in hundreds of deaths and a large number of wounded among the men, women and children who had sought refuge at the complex."

The pair are also accused of participating in the massacre of around 50,000 Tutsis who had taken refuge on the mountain of Bisesero in western Rwanda between April and June 1994.

The genocide erupted in April 1994, after Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated. Hutu extremists turned on the country's Tutsi minority, leaving an estimated 800,000 dead over three months.

Ntakirutimana's family says the minority Tutsis who sought shelter in his church had done so before in times of trouble and that the killers would have known shelter was being offered there, without being told.

Ntakirutimana, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, is the first church leader to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The tribunal has so far convicted eight people for leading the genocide since it was established in November, 1994.

Human rights groups say some church leaders from various denominations played a leading role in the genocide, using their authority to encourage the massacres and join in the killing.

Four Rwandans, including two Catholic nuns, were sentenced to between 12 and 20 years in prison by a Belgian court in June for helping Hutu extremists kill more than 5,000 Tutsis who had sought refuge from the bloodletting.

An Anglican bishop is also in detention at the ICTR awaiting trial on genocide charges after being arrested in Kenya earlier this year.

Ntakirutimana, 76, fled to Texas after the genocide, but was arrested by U.S. authorities in 1996.

When the genocide ended and a Tutsi-led government took power, Ntakirutimana, 76, fled the country for the U.S. where he settled in Laredo, Texas, with his family.

He worked in a health food store and preached occasionally in local Seventh-day Adventist churches.

He was arrested in September 1996 and has spent most of the time since then fighting extradition.

After losing several appeals against his extradition, he was finally transferred to the ICTR in the Tanzanian town of Arusha on March 24.