Rwanda Jails Former Unity President

A Rwandan court sentenced the former president Pasteur Bizimungu, the moderate Hutu installed after the genocide, to 15 years in jail yesterday for threatening national security, embezzling public funds and fomenting ethnic divisions

Bizimungu, 53, said nothing as a magistrate in the capital Kigali found him guilty. He was cleared of the illegal possession of weapons and escaped the life term sought by the prosecution.

His supporters said the prosecution was intended by the Tutsi-dominated government to undermine a legitimate rival in a state still traumatised by the 1994 murder of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Bizimungu was appointed the nominal head of the government of national unity after the genocide and resigned in 2000 after falling out with his then deputy, the current president, Paul Kagame, the Tutsi leader of the rebel force which ousted the extremist Hutu regime which orchestrated the genocide.

He was accused of trying to set up a political party, Democratic Renewal, aimed at overthrowing the government by appealing to the Hutu majority.

Bizimungu pleaded not guilty in a trial cast as a test of the judiciary's independence.

Charles Ntakirutinka, a former transport minister, was given 10 years on similar charges.