A smartly dressed, middle-aged man stands before a crowd, describing the last moments of a neighbour's life.
"Things were confused in 1994. When I heard him screaming I was afraid for myself. I could not help anyone," he says.
The man's name is Silas, and he admits to having joined Interahamwe gangs in setting up roadblocks and imposing "security" during the genocide. But he denies taking part in the murder of the neighbour, whose wife stands accusingly in the crowd.
"Your work was to keep security," she says. "But when you saw a group of killers calling to my husband and you heard screaming, what did you do to help?"
"I did nothing," Silas replies.
This is a gacaca (grass) court, modelled on an ancient system of reconciling victim and perpetrator, and the main mechanism being used by the Rwandan government to administer justice following the genocide. With up to 120,000 men and women in prison accused of atrocities, and thousands at large, an alternative solution to ordinary courts was called for.
Under the gacaca model, piloted in the Butare district last year and now being used nationwide, suspects are tried by a panel of locally elected peers who must agree unanimously on a judgment. Seven stages of hearing take place, defining the seriousness of the crime and accumulating witness statements before a case is concluded.
Category-one crimes, such as inciting others to kill, are referred to state courts, where the death penalty can apply. For all other categories, the maximum sentence is 15 years, half of which can be spent in community service (usually labouring), as long as the offenders have confessed.
Only a fraction of the estimated €60 million needed to run the courts has been raised, something which causes resentment locally, given the amounts spent on the International Tribunal for Rwanda. The UN inquiry, set up in neighbouring Tanzania to try the most senior offenders in the genocide, has heard just 20 cases in 10 years.
The government has set March 15th as a deadline for prisoners to confess crimes during the genocide. Some 40,000 have already confessed and half of these have been set free, already having served the bulk of their sentences. Doubts linger over the quality of confessions, however. At the state prison in Gikongoro, detainees speak of "associating" themselves with the Interahamwe, or of people being killed in their presence. But few admit to murder itself.
"Most people don't accept my confession," admits Jean, who has served five years in prison already. "But I hope they will, and I will be released soon."
A television drama showing gacaca in action is being promoted by the government to try to increase confidence in the scheme. The drama ends with the wife of the victim and that of the offender resuming the friendship they had before 1994, reflecting gacaca's emphasis on reconciliation.
The process promises to be arduous. Back at the hearing near Kigali, Silas claims to have forgotten the names of the people with whom he manned "security" checkpoints. When warned he could face between one and three years in prison for lying to the court, he remembers three names.
"I want to ask for forgiveness," he says. "Because I did not know the rules."