Rwanda massacre suspect in court

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- One of Rwanda's most wanted men in connection with the country's 1994 genocide is to be sent to the international war crimes tribunal.

Protais Zigiranyirazo was arrested last week under the orders of Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, while he waited to hear about an asylum application.

A closed court in Brussels decided on Monday that the arrest was valid and that Zigiranyirazo will be tried by the U.N.'s International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity.

Lawyers now have three months to send the 63-year-old to Arusha, Jos Colpin, spokesman for the Brussels prosecutors' office said.

The case is being handled under a special law that allows for direct transfers to the U.N. tribunal without extradition proceedings or a review of charges by Belgian courts.

Zigiranyirazo's lawyer, Sandrine Ghilan, said before the hearing attended by Zigiranyirazo that her client would fight the transfer on "technical reasons."

The brother-in-law of Rwanda's former Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, Zigiranyirazo is alleged to have been a member of the elite Akazu or "small hut" clan which is alleged to have plotted to exterminate the Tutsis.

He is also accused of being a leader of the Zero Network of death squads that killed hundreds of Tutsis in the years leading up to the genocide.

The death of Habyarimana in a plane crash in 1994 sparked the genocide.