ARUSHA, Tanzania, June 24 (UPI) -- A woman who was a Rwandan government minister during the 1994 genocide of more than 800,000 people in Rwanda was sentenced to life in prison by a U.N. court.
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 65, was sentenced Friday by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, sitting in Arusha, Tanzania, for genocide and incitement to rape, CNN reported.
Nyiramasuhuko's actions were "part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population on political, ethnic and racial grounds," the court said.
The BBC said Nyiramasuhuko had been Rwanda's minister for family and women's development.
The former minister, arrested in 1997 in Kenya, denied the charges.
Prosecutors accused Nyiramasuhuko of ordering and assisting in the massacres and organizing the kidnapping and rape of women and girls in her home district of Butare in southern Rwanda, the BBC said. Among other things, prosecutors said, she and her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, forced people to strip before herding them onto trucks to be executed.
Nyiramasuhuko was on trial with other officials from the area, home to a mix of Hutu and Tutsi people, the British broadcaster said. Although she was the only woman on trial for genocide before the tribunal, other women have been convicted of genocide in Rwandan courts.
