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| |  | | Sylvestre Gacumbitsi | | | context : | Rwanda  | | judgement place : | ICTR (Rwanda) | | status : | Sentenced | | particulars : | Sentenced to 30 years imprisonment by the Trial Chamber; sentence commuted to life imprisonment by Court of Appeal | | position : | Mayor of Rusumo |
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| | | | Sylvestre Gacumbitsi was born in 1943, in Kigina sector of the Rusumo commune in the prefecture of Kibungo, Rwanda. Gacumbitsi was a schoolmaster in Kibungo prefecture, before becoming President of the “Banque Populaire” of Rusumo. Between 1983 and 1994, Gacumbitsi was mayor of the commune of Rusumo. In this capacity, he represented executive power at the communal level. He exercised authority over his subordinates and had the authority to requisition the communal police and the national gendarmerie. Furthermore, he held specific responsibility with respect to the maintenance of law and order in the Rusumo commune.
Between 7 and 14 April 1994, Gacumbitsi attended several meetings both at the level of the prefecture in Kibungo as well as at the level of his own commune and its subdivisions and sectors. On 9 April 1994, Gacumbitsi issued an order to the sector councillors for Rusumo to organise meetings, without the Tutsis being aware, aimed at inciting the Hutus to massacre accomplices of the Inkotanyi (a derogatory term in the Kinyarwanda language used by Hutu extremists to describe the Tutsis). On 10 April 1994, in the Kibungo military camp, Gacumbitsi took delivery of crates of weapons from Colonel Rwagafirita of the Rwandan Armed Forces. He subsequently distributed them, or had them distributed to the various sectors of Resumo commune.
On 13 April 1994, at the marketplace in Nyakarambi, Gacumbitsi publicly incited the population to lay the blame on the Tutsi, then also at the shopping centres in Rwanteru, Kanyinya and Gasenyi on 14 April. Moreover, he encouraged an official from Gasenyi to refuse to allow people to cross the Kagara river to seek refuge in Tanzania..
On 13 April 1994, in Nyakarambi, Gacumbitsi evicted his tenants, Marie et Béatrice - both Tutsi women - knowing full well that he was exposing them to outside dangers and the immediate risk of being targeted by the attackers.
In the days leading up to the attack in Nyarubuye, Gacumbitsi took part in meetings to prepare a general onslaught against the Tutsis, with the help of officers from the gendarmerie and the Interahamwe. During this period, he also incited local councillors and political authorities to kill Tutsi, incited civilians to isolate and kill them, ensured that boxes of weapons were stored in various locations, and travelled throughout the commune to verify that his instructions were effectively being carried out.
On 15 April 1994, Gacumbitsi led and participated in an attack against the parish of Nyarubuye, in Rusumo, where numerous Tutsi refugees and Hutus were assembled. Gucumbitsi drove towards the parish in a convoy of several vehicles transporting communal police and Interahamwe militiamen armed with machetes and other traditional or home made weapons, as well as with rifles and grenades, which weapons had also been used during the attack against the refugees in the parish of Nyarubuye. Shortly after his arrival at the parish around 3 pm, on seeing Murefu, a Tutsi refugee coming towards him in a trusting manner, Gacumbitsi killed him, thereby giving the opening signal for the massacres to begin. He then addressed the crowd by means of a megaphone, giving instructions to the Hutus to separate themselves from the Tutsis. As soon as most had complied, the communal policemen and the Interahamwe launched an attack against the refugees within the church grounds.
These communal policemen who had attacked the parish had acted on orders from Gacumbitsi. It was he who led the attack and who had given out orders which were perceived by the attackers to be both incitement and encouragement to take action.
On 16 April 1994, Gacumbitsi went to the precincts of the church in Nyarubuye, accompanied by a certain Rubanguka, a judge from the Rusumo Court, and a group of attackers. Some of the attackers were armed with spears, machetes and also with bows and arrows. In the presence of Gacumbitsi, Rubanguka drove a spear into the body of a refugee without it being determined whether this person was already dead or had survived the attack. Gacumbitsi led the attack on 16 April, just as he had done on the previous day. During the course of the attack on 16 April, the attackers, including judge Rubanguka, finished off the survivors before indulging in whole scale pillaging within the church enclosure.
Several thousand Tutsi who had taken refuge in the Nyarubuye parish were killed between the 15 and 17 April 1994.
On 17 April 1994, Gacumbitsi publicly encouraged the rape of Tutsi girls with the order, in cases of resistance, to drive rods into their private parts.
Faced with the advance of the troops of the FPR (Front Patriotique Rwandais, an opposition group consisting mainly of Tutsi refugees and led by Paul Kigame), Gacumbitsi fled Rwanda. On 21 June 2001, he was arrested at the Mukugwa refugee camp in Kigoma in Tanzania. | |     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. | |  |  | | period of charges : | | | 04.1994 - 04.1994 | | | judgement period : | | | 28.07.2003 - 07.07.2006 | | | charges : | | | Crimes against humanity
Genocide | | | profile last modified : | | | 20.01.2007 |
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