The Kigali High Court has rejected a request to grant provisional liberation to the Genocide suspect Jean Uwinkindi.
Prosecution had opposed the request saying that it was likely he would try to escape. Adding that Uwinkindi was arrested in Uganda after more than 10 years in hiding; he was arrested in 2010 and brought to the Arusha tribunal until he was transferred to Rwanda in April this year.
The judge at the High Court said that the fact that Uwinkindi had been detained at the ICTR for two years before his transfer shows that his case is too serious to merit provisional liberation.
The Rwanda Focus reported that “The court rules that the provisional detention remains unchanged; thus the accused is remanded for 30 days in prison,” the judge said.
However Uwinkindi claims that he was brought to justice under a false arrest warrant intended to arrest someone else named Jean Bosco Uwinkindi instead of Jean Uwinkindi, but the court rejected the argument saying that the ICTR had already changed the name on the warrant arrest by dropping ‘Bosco.’
Uwinkindi, 61, a former pastor with the Pentecostal Church in the former Kanzenze commune, currently in Bugesera district, is charged with Genocide and other crimes against humanity.
He was arrested on June 30, 2010 in Uganda and transferred to the ICTR in Arusha two days later.
On April 19, he was transferred to Rwanda as the first Genocide suspect deported from the tribunal to be tried in domestic courts.
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