The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to adjudicate people charged for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994. The court eventually convicted 61 individuals and acquitted 14.
Roméo Antonius Dallaire is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire is a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.
Mutara III Rudahigwa was King (umwami) of Rwanda between 1931 and 1959. He was the first Rwandan king to be baptised, and Roman Catholicism took hold in Rwanda during his reign. His Christian names were Charles Léon Pierre, and he is sometimes referred to as Charles Mutara III Rudahigwa.
Théoneste Bagosora was a Rwandan military officer. He was chiefly known for his key role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 2011, the sentence was reduced to 35 years' imprisonment on appeal. He was due to be imprisoned until he was 89. According to René Lemarchand, Bagosora was "the chief organizer of the killings". On 25 September 2021, he died in a prison hospital in Mali, where he was being treated for heart issues.
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is a Rwandan politician who was the Minister for Family Welfare and the Advancement of Women. She was convicted of having incited troops and militia to carry out rape during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. She was tried for genocide and incitement to rape as part of the "Butare Group" at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. In June 2011, she was convicted of seven charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. Nyiramasuhuko is the first woman to be convicted of genocide by the ICTR, and the first woman to be convicted of genocidal rape.
Protais Zigiranyirazo commonly known as Monsieur Zed, is a Rwandan businessman and politician and was governor of the Ruhengeri prefecture in northwestern Rwanda from 1974 to 1989. Zigiranyirazo was a member of the Akazu, an elite circle of relatives and friends of former President Juvénal Habyarimana who pushed the Hutu Power ideology.
Simon Bikindi was a Rwandan singer-songwriter who was formerly very popular in Rwanda. His patriotic songs were playlist staples on the national radio station Radio Rwanda during the war from October 1990 to July 1994 before the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power. For actions during the april 1994's genocide against Tutsi, he was tried and convicted for incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2008. He died of diabetes at a Beninese hospital in late 2018.
Georges Henri Yvon Joseph Ruggiu is a Belgian radio presenter who worked for Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which played a significant role in promoting the genocide against the Tutsi. Like the station's other broadcasters, Ruggiu incited violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu over the air. He had become involved in Rwandan politics just two years before the genocide.
Hassan Ngeze is a Rwandan journalist and convicted war criminal best known for spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda and Hutu superiority through his newspaper, Kangura, which he founded in 1990. Ngeze was a founding member and leadership figure in the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), a Rwandan Hutu Power political party that is known for helping to incite the genocide.
Étienne Nzabonimana, formerly a small businessman in Kirwa, Rwanda, was convicted in Belgium on June 29, 2005 for his role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Specifically, eyewitnesses argued that he was a leader of the Kibungo Club, which was allegedly planning the genocide in advance, and that he had overseen certain massacres in the Kibungo region. Prosecutors argued that he and his half-brother, Samuel Ndashyikirwa, provided vehicles to Rwandan soldiers along with weapons and beer. Found guilty of aiding Hutu militias in killing 50,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, he will serve 12 years in prison, while his half-brother will serve ten.
Ildéphonse Nizeyimana is a Rwandan soldier, who was convicted of having participated in the Rwandan genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was a convicted génocidaire and politician associated with the Hutu Power movement. A high-ranking civil servant, Barayagwiza served as policy director within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time of the Rwandan genocide. He has been described as one of the "masterminds" of the genocide.
The Coalition for the Defence of the Republic was a Rwandan far-right Hutu Power political party that took a major role in inciting the Rwandan genocide.
Ferdinand Nahimana is a Rwandan historian, who was convicted of incitement to genocide for his role in the Rwandan genocide.
Hutu Power is a racial and ethnosupremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutu, often in the context of being superior to Tutsi and Twa, and that therefore they are entitled to dominate and murder these two groups and other minorities. Espoused by Hutu extremists, widespread support for the ideology led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide against Tutsi and their family members, the moderate Hutu who opposed the killings, and Twa who were deemed traitors. Hutu Power political parties and movements included the Akazu, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic and its Impuzamugambi paramilitary militia, and the governing National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and its Interahamwe paramilitary militia. The theory of Hutu people being superior is most common in Rwanda and Burundi, where they make up the majority of the population. Due to its sheer destructiveness, the ideology has been compared to historical Nazism in the Western world.
Froduald Karamira was a Rwandan politician who was found guilty of crimes in organising the implementation of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was sentenced to death by a Rwandan court and was one of the last 22 individuals executed by Rwanda.
Jerry Robert Kajuga was national president of the Interahamwe, the group largely responsible for perpetrating the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi people in 1994. Born to a Tutsi father and a Hutu mother, Kajuga concealed his background and presented himself as being of pure Hutu descent. This is notable as Hutu Power extremist groups considered Hutus who married Tutsis to be race traitors, and Kajuga went to great lengths to conceal his identity.
During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women and children were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) handed down the first conviction for the use of rape as a weapon of war during the civil conflict, and, because the intent of the mass violence against Rwandan women and children was to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular ethnic group, it was the first time that mass rape during wartime was found to be an act of genocidal rape.
Jonathan Ruhumuliza is a Rwandan retired Anglican bishop, who served as Bishop of Kigali and Bishop of Cameroon. He is currently a parish priest in the Church of England.
