Atlas
01-18-2006, 05:14 AM
Just 15 years for slaughter of 8 people
A Rwandan rebel who killed four British tourists has been jailed for 15 years.
Jean-Paul Bizimana, 31, was convicted last week of the killings at Uganda’s Bwindi National Park in March 1999.
The four Britons, as well as two Americans, two New Zealanders and a tour guide, were bludgeoned to death with axes and machetes by Hutu rebels.
Judge John Bosco Katutsi sentenced Bizimana after his defence lawyer failed to show up to plead for lenient punishment at the High Court hearing in the Ugandan capital of Kampala
The judge rejected calls from prosecutors for the death penalty and permitted the prosecution to appeal against the sentence at the Constitutional Court.
Three other men were arrested in March 2003 in connection with the killings, and have been sent to the US to stand trial over the deaths of the two Americans.
The tourists were abducted while on a trip to track rare mountain gorillas at the remote rainforest sanctuary made famous in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, near Uganda’s borders with Congo and Rwanda.
Mark Lindgren, 23, from St Albans, Hertfordshire; Martin Friend, 24, from Orpington, Kent; Steven Roberts, 27, of Edinburgh; and Joanne Cotton, 28, from Nazeing, Essex, were among the victims.
Americans Rob Haubner and his wife, Susan Miller, and New Zealanders Michelle Strathern, 26, and Rhonda Avis, 27, who lived with her husband Mark in London, also died.
Nine people survived, including a French diplomat who was given a note by the rebels warning Britain and the United States not to interfere with Rwanda.
http://uk.altermedia.info/general/just-15-years-for-slaughter-of-8-people_550.html
A Rwandan rebel who killed four British tourists has been jailed for 15 years.
Jean-Paul Bizimana, 31, was convicted last week of the killings at Uganda’s Bwindi National Park in March 1999.
The four Britons, as well as two Americans, two New Zealanders and a tour guide, were bludgeoned to death with axes and machetes by Hutu rebels.
Judge John Bosco Katutsi sentenced Bizimana after his defence lawyer failed to show up to plead for lenient punishment at the High Court hearing in the Ugandan capital of Kampala
The judge rejected calls from prosecutors for the death penalty and permitted the prosecution to appeal against the sentence at the Constitutional Court.
Three other men were arrested in March 2003 in connection with the killings, and have been sent to the US to stand trial over the deaths of the two Americans.
The tourists were abducted while on a trip to track rare mountain gorillas at the remote rainforest sanctuary made famous in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, near Uganda’s borders with Congo and Rwanda.
Mark Lindgren, 23, from St Albans, Hertfordshire; Martin Friend, 24, from Orpington, Kent; Steven Roberts, 27, of Edinburgh; and Joanne Cotton, 28, from Nazeing, Essex, were among the victims.
Americans Rob Haubner and his wife, Susan Miller, and New Zealanders Michelle Strathern, 26, and Rhonda Avis, 27, who lived with her husband Mark in London, also died.
Nine people survived, including a French diplomat who was given a note by the rebels warning Britain and the United States not to interfere with Rwanda.
http://uk.altermedia.info/general/just-15-years-for-slaughter-of-8-people_550.html