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| |  | | Joseph Nzabirinda | | | context : | Rwanda  | | judgement place : | ICTR (Rwanda) | | status : | Sentenced | | particulars : | Pleaded guilty before the ICTR on 14 December 2006; sentenced to seven years' imprisonment on 23 February 2007 | | position : | Youth organizer in Ngoma province |
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| | | | Joseph Nzabirinda, nicknamed Biroto, was born in 1957 in the Sahera sector of Ngoma commune in Butare province, southern Rwanda.
In 1994, he was a youth organizer in Ngoma commune.
Joseph Nzabirinda was accused of having agreed to and participated in the execution of a plan to exterminate the Tutsi population in the Sahera sector, the region in which he was born.
He reportedly returned to the Sahera sector on 6 April 1994, coming from Kigali, where he was living at the time, and from that date onwards is said to have participated in meetings at which were organised and planned the massacres of the Tutsi population of Sahera. During these meetings, Joseph Nzabirinda is said to have stated that all Tutsi, and most especially the intellectuals, had to be killed.
On many other occasions, he is reported to have verbally encouraged the killing of Tutsis and in cases where searches had been carried out and Tutsis discovered, to have ordered the Interahamwe (extremist Hutu militia) to kill them.
On or about 20 April 1994, numerous Tutsi refugees and Hutu who were unaware that the Tutsi were the target of attacks, were gathered in a place named Kabuye. Nzabirinda is said to have gone to this location to convince the Hutu present there to participate in the killings.
During the month of April 1994, he reportedly travelled throughout the sector encouraging Tutsi refugees to go to Kabakobwa hill, where their security would be assured. In particular, he requested the Tutsis who had taken refuge in the Sahera primary school to go to this hill. The Tutsi refugees who refused were taken there by force. On or about the 22 April 1994, the army and the Interahamwe militia launched a massive attack on the Tutsi refugees on this hillside with firearms and traditional weapons, an act which resulted in thousands of deaths.
During all of this period Nzabirinda, together with other persons, went out searching for Tutsi in their hiding places throughout the region and ordered the Interahamwe to kill those that were subsequently found.
Joseph Nzabirinda was also accused of having personally raped three Tutsi women. Following the killings on the hillside, he is said to have picked out a Tutsi girl and forced her to come to a house where he was staying. Here, the young girl was reported to have been raped on several occasions by Joseph Nzabirinda and his Interahamwe colleagues, then subsequently killed by Nzabirinda. Towards the end of April, accompanied by another man, he is again said to have raped two girls- after threatening to kill them - in a ruined house in Sahera.
Joseph Nzabirinda was previously employed by the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) as an investigator for the defence of the former prefet of Butare, Sylvain Nsabimana (see "related cases") In November 2001, the court’s registry office cancelled his employment contract on the grounds that he had provided forged documents.
Joseph Nzabirinda was arrested on 21 December 2001 in Belgium and transferred to the ICTR in Arusha (Tanzania) on 20 March 2002. | |     click for more... | | Trial Watch would like to remind its users that any person charged by national or international authorities is presumed innocent until proven guilty. | |  |  | | also known as : | | | Biroto | | | last time seen : | | | Arusha (Tanzania) | | | period of charges : | | | 04.1994 - 04.1994 | | | charges : | | | Crimes against humanity
Genocide | | | profile last modified : | | | 08.01.2008 |
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