Ex-official to be tried in Rwanda court

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UNITED NATIONS, June 8 (UPI) -- An ex-Rwandan government official charged with crimes against humanity in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda will be tried in Rwandan High Court, a U.N. tribunal said.

Bernard Munyagishari is accused of recruiting, training and leading Interahamwe militiamen in mass killings and rapes of Tutsi women in the Gisenyi prefecture and beyond from April through July 1994, the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said in a news release.

A three-judge panel of the U.N. tribunal has transferred Munyagishari's case to Rwandan authorities, who will turn him over to the Rwandan High Court.

Munyagishari was arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo May 25, 2011, and transferred June 14 to a U.N. detention facility in the Tanzanian city of Arusha where the tribunal is based.

In an initial appearance June 20, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, the release said.

The ICTR was established after the Rwandan genocide, in which at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed in three months after the death of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose plane was shot down over the Rwandan capital of Kigali.