Showpiece jail that imprisons child killers of the genocide

"MAY I go outside?" the children gaily sang in their English class.

"Yes, please," they chorused in answer to their own question, blindly ignoring the high prison walls which have hemmed them in for the past three years.

When President Robinson arrived, they launched enthusiastically into a new verse. "Welcome, our sisters. We are happy to see you today."

But this is Gikondo prison, a showpiece jail for the child murderers of the genocide. Some of the inmates here were as young as II when they joined in the butchery of 1994.

"Like the adults, they used machetes, even grenades. They killed their neighbours. They specialised in killing children of their own age," says the prison director, Mr Sylvestre Biraje.

However, the children dancing for the President yesterday looked no different from any normal group of excitable boys. In the centre of the dusty yard, a volleyball game was being fiercely contested.

An acrobatics show was mounted for the President's entertainment, using a tractor tyre as a vaulting pad.

Another group were playing at being scouts hoisting flags, singing campfire songs and making salutes. In this somewhat stage managed show, only the great outdoors was lacking.

Mrs Robinson asked the boys how they thought Rwanda would do in an international soccer match being played yesterday, but none of them knew it was on.

One small boy asked what she was President of, but the answer produced only puzzlement.

Gikondo was built only last year in response to the explosion in prisoner numbers.

As Patrick, a 19 year old from Butare who is accused of killing the family next door, explains, conditions are much better than in his previous jail.

"We play games here and in Muhina we didn't. Here we have good places to sleep, and French and other lessons," he says.

Whereas thousands of prisoners in rural jails sleep on concrete floors and rely on infrequent family visits for food, these boys sleep in bunk beds and are fed by the Red Cross. Their parents can visit once a week, if they are not also in jail, as many are.

Just when these boys, and the 100,000 other prisoners be ing held without trial in Rwanda, may go out once again is a moot point.

"More needs to be done to process these cases quickly. Otherwise, these boys face a bleak future. They don't even know when they will be tried," Mrs Robinson said at the end of her 20 minute visit.