The New York Times

Tuesday, September 14, 1999

Rwandan Bishop Goes on Trial

By The Associated Press

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) -- Facing charges of genocide, A Roman Catholic bishop went on trial today for allegedly participating in the 1994 attempt to exterminate Rwandan Tutsis.

More than half a million Tutsis died in the slaughter led by an extremist Hutu government between April and July 1994. Many were hacked to death by Hutus with machetes or clubs in churches where they sought refuge.

Augustin Misago, the first bishop ever charged with genocide, told a three-judge panel he did not help plot the 100-day slaughter. He also denied sending three priests to their deaths.

In an opening statement, Misago likened himself to Jesus, who he said was also unjustly accused. The bishop has insisted he is a scapegoat for the church's alleged failure to stop the slaughter.

His attorney, Alfred Pognon, said the trial is ``political'' and has nothing to do with Misago's actions.

The 56-year-old Rwandan bishop is the most prominent of the more than 20 nuns and priests accused of participating in the genocide. If convicted, he faces a mandatory death sentence.

Misago's arrest April 14 reflected the government's frustration. For five years, it has waited for an apology for what it perceives as the church's complicity in the killings.

Pognon said prosecutors only began gathering evidence after the bishop's arrest, an allegation prosecutors deny. The government is expected to call priests and nuns to testify against Misago.

Misago was in the capital, Kigali, when a plane carrying Rwanda's Hutu president was shot down on April 6, 1994, triggering a killing frenzy that was planned months in advance. Aided by the army, Hutu militias took guns, grenades, studded clubs and machetes to Tutsis. They rallied ordinary Hutus, in some cases with threat of death, to join them in the slaughter.

When Misago returned to his diocese in the southwestern Gigonkoro province a week later, the bloodbath was in full swing.

From there, the stories of Misago and his accusers differ.

Thousands of Tutsis sought shelter in his parish, but he turned them away, claiming in a recent interview that he had no space.

According to Pognon, the bishop believed at first that authorities would stop the killing and urged them to protect his parish. It wasn't until the killing was well under way that Misago says he realized the same authorities were in fact overseeing the violence.

Misago also is charged with involvement in the deaths of three priests who hid in his parish and were later seized by Hutu soldiers and killed.

But Pognon said Misago tried to protect them, buying off the soldiers with $1,600. But he said the bishop was forced to surrender the priests when the soldiers presented him with an arrest warrant saying the priests were wanted on criminal charges.

Tutsi rebels seized power in July 1994, ending the bloodbath.