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| Rwanda genocide: ICTR overturns ex-ministers' convictions | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A UN-backed court has overturned the genocide convictions of two Rwandan former ministers and ordered their immediate release. | |
| Justin Mugenzi and Prosper Mugiraneza had been sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2011 for complicity, and incitement, to commit genocide. | |
| Analysts say Rwanda's government is likely to be angry at their acquittal. | |
| About 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. | |
| Mr Mugenzi was the trade minister during the genocide and Mr Mugiraneza the minister in charge of civil servants. | |
| The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted them on the grounds that they attended a meeting where a decision was taken to dismiss the prefect of the Butare region in southern Rwanda for preventing massacres from taking place and for attending a meeting where interim President Theodore Sindikubwabo urged people to kill Tutsis. | |
| The appeal judges, however, found that Mr Mugenzi and Mr Mugiraneza did not know that Mr Sindikubwabo was going to make the speech, AFP news agency reports. | |
| The judges also said the dismissal of the prefect, Jean-Baptiste Habyarimana, could have been decided "for political and administrative reasons" and not necessarily in order to speed up the massacres. |