ARUSHA, Tanzania, July 2 (UPI) -- A 75-year-old Rwandan man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for leading Hutu fighters in massacres of Tutsis at two Catholic churches in 1994.
The International Criminal Tribunal, sitting in Tanzania, sentenced Yussuf Munyakazi Wednesday after convicting him of genocide and extermination, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The court accepted the testimony of witnesses who said Muyakazi led a group that killed about 5,000 people at one church on April 29, 1994, and that he was also responsible for the deaths of 60 to 70 people at another church the next day.
Many of the witnesses described Munyakazi as a Muslim elder.
An estimated 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and Hutus who did not support the massacre, were killed in three months in Rwanda in 1994. Smaller numbers were killed in neighboring Burundi.
Jwani Mwaikusa, Munyakazi's Tanzanian lawyer, told the Hirondelle news agency he plans an appeal.
