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UGANDA: RWANDAN REBEL SURVIVES DEATH PENALTY, SENTENCED TO 15 YEARS IN JAIL January 17, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) A Ugandan High Court Judge John Bosco Katutsi, Monday 16th sentenced a Rwandan rebel to 15 years in jail. This comes a week after convicting Jean-Paul Bizimana for nine murders where he killed eight tourists from the U.S., Britain and New Zealand and a Ugandan tour guide who were on a gorilla-watching trip in 1999-AP
Katutsi passed the sentence after Jean-Paul Bizimana, alias Xavier Van Dame appealed for lenient punishment. He faced a possible death penalty.
"My Lord, I pray for lenience because I have a family to look after," Bizimana said in court.
"Those you killed also had families," Katutsi responded sharply. "These people were killed in cold blood and you were part of the gang ... The deceased came to Uganda for pleasure, and they went back in coffins."
Katutsi however, rejected calls from prosecutors for the maximum death sentence. He permitted the prosecution to appeal the sentence at the Constitutional Court.
In March 2003 three other men were arrested in connection with the killings, and have been sent to the United States to stand trial in the deaths of the two Americans.
The rebels specifically targeted English-speaking people in a bid to weaken U.S. and British support for the new Rwandan government.They hacked and bludgeoned the travelers to death in a remote rain forest near Uganda's borders with Congo and Rwanda where the party had gone to see the rare animals.
Bizimana, a member of the former Rwandan army -- which played a key role in the 1994 genocide of more than a half-million people in his country -- was arrested in 2004 near the border with Rwanda and taken to Uganda's capital, Kampala, to face nine counts of murder.
The victims were Americans Rob Haubner and his wife, Susan Miller, of Portland, Oregon; Rhonda Avis, 27, and Michelle Strathern, 26, from New Zealand; Britons Martin Friend, 24, Steven Robert, 27 and Mark Lindgren, 23, and Joanne Cotton, a driver for the London-based outfitter that organized trips to Africa, and Ugandan guide Ross Wagaba.
Nine people survived, including one who was given a note by the rebels warning the United States and Britain not to interfere in Rwanda. Similar notes were found on the bodies of two of those killed.
The United States and Britain were the largest donors to Rwanda, which was rebuilding after the 100-day genocide.