OTTAWA, July 5 (UPI) -- A Canadian judge Friday freed a Rwandan refugee accused of war crimes, saying the prosecution did not adequately prove its case.
Jacques Mungwarere, 39, was accused of leading or participating in massacres in two churches and a hospital in the region of Kibuye during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
He was living in Windsor, Ontario, in 2003 when he was recognized by someone who knew him from his childhood and notified police. A Special Royal Canadian Mounted Police unit spent six years investigating the case, making three trips to Rwanda to interview witnesses, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said.
Ontario Superior Court Judge Jacques Charbonneau ruled the evidence in the trial did not meet the threshold of reasonable doubt.
Mungwarere, the second person to be tried in Canada under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, would have faced an automatic life imprisonment if convicted, the CBC noted.
