Dec 20, 2012 at 11:30am

A UN war crimes court has sentenced a key organiser of the 1994 Rwandan genocide to 35 years in prison.

The sentence was imposed on Augustin Ngirabatware, a former government minister and academic in Rwanda.

He is the last person to be tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which will now only hear appeals.

About 800,000 people - ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus - were killed in 100 days in Rwanda in 1994.

Mr Ngirabatware was planning minister in the militant Hutu-led government at the time of the genocide.

He was arrested in Germany in September 2007 and was transferred more than a year later to the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania.

The ICTR has convicted more than 50 people and acquitted at least eight since it was set up under a UN Security Council resolution in November 1994 to try the ringleaders of the genocide.

It is due to close in 2014 after hearing the appeals.


Source: BBC