Life for Inciting Rwanda Killings

Two Rwandan journalists were jailed for life and a third sentenced to 35 years yesterday for inciting the 1994 genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed.

A UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania delivered the sentences to end a three-year trial that heard how the journalists encouraged the Hutu majority to carry out the 100-day slaughter of ethnic Tutsis and political moderates from their own ethnic group.

Life sentences were given to Ferdinand Nahimana, 53, a founder of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines (RTLM), and Hassan Ngeze, 42, owner and editor of the Hutu extremist newspaper Kangura. Life is the severest penalty the tribunal can impose.

The presiding judge, Navanethem Pillay, said: "You chose a path of genocide and betrayed the trust placed in you. Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians."

The third defendant, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, 53, also a founder of RTLM and the public affairs director in Rwanda's foreign affairs ministry, was sentenced to 35 years.

The station, established in April 1993, became known as "hate radio". Many of its journalists were accused of encouraging Hutus, who make up about 85% of the population, to massacre Tutsis. This is the first time journalists have been convicted for promoting crimes against humanity since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi propagandists after the second world war.

The Rwandan prosecutor general, Gerard Gahima, said: "Those who spread the message through the media and told the ordinary people to kill are far worse than people who followed their orders."