A RWANDAN court yesterday sentenced a nurse and a former local government official to death in the first verdicts handed down for the 1994 ethnic massacres, state-run radio said.
The two were the first to go on trial as Rwanda's overloaded justice system tries to come to grips with the killings of at least 500,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by Hutu extremists in four terrifying months of civil war.
Deogratias Bizimana, a nurse, and Egide Gatanazi, a former local official have two weeks to appeal against the sentences handed down by the court in Kibungo, in south-east Rwanda.
Despite numerous prosecution witnesses' statements, they pleaded not guilty in their trial on December 27th, which lasted just a few hours and during which they had no legal representation.
Bizimana faced 11 counts of taking part in massacres and leading death squads, as well as possessing arms, pillaging and refusing to help those in danger. He confessed after being arrested, but during the trial said the confession was extracted under torture.
The father of two, he told Radio Rwanda that he was "sure of getting out of" his sentence.
Gatanazi (43) was charged with murder, rape and theft. He said the case was a plot against him and insisted he was innocent, even though his own sister testified against him.
The death sentence has never been abolished in Rwanda but no one has faced the firing squad since the end of the 1970s.
Some 90,000 people are crammed into Rwandan jails and living in horrific conditions as they await trial for the 1994 bloodshed. Opposition parties in exile and representatives of Hutu refugee groups have denounced the conditions in the jails and accused the courts of not being independent.
A United Nations court also due to hold war crime trials, has been set up in Arusha, Tanzania, but it will deal only with the suspected ringleaders, leaving lesser officials to the domestic Rwandan judiciary.
About 20 people have been indicted, many of them now living in exile abroad, but so far none of the trials has opened. Unlike the Rwandan courts, it will also not hand down death sentences.
The civil war ended when Tutsi rebels seized power in Kigali, ousting the Hutu-led government and sending several millions of Hutu refugees fleeing into neighbouring countries like Zaire and Tanzania.
Judicial sources said yesterday that a suspected ringleader of the killing will go on trial on January 14th in Kigali. He is Froduald Karamira, who was arrested in June at Addis Ababa airport in Ethiopia.
A businessman before all the killing started, Mr Karamira led a Hutu group called Power, which opposed any accommodation with the minority Tutsis. He tried to flee the country, but was arrested in June in Add is Ababa.
The current Tutsi-led government in Rwanda says Mr Karamira organised massacres and went on radio and television to incite Hutus to kill Tutsis.
Three other trials have also been started and adjourned, one indefinitely, the other two until January and February.
Radio Rwanda has said two other trials will open on January 14th in Nyamata, south of Kigali.