Rwandan suspects freed in France

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Two Rwandan men arrested in France over their alleged role in the 1994 genocide have been released by an appeals court.

Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, 49, a Catholic priest, and Laurent Bucyibaruta, 62, an ex-civil servant, were held on warrants issued by a UN-backed tribunal.

But the court ruled the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) warrants were invalid and ordered the men to be freed immediately.

More than 800,000 people died in 1994 massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

A lawyer for Mr Bucyibaruta said the decision was "a victory for human rights" and said the arrest warrant for his client was "badly founded in law and impossible procedurally".

However, Aloys Mutabingwa, a representative at the ICTR, said the decision was politically motivated, according to the AFP news agency.

He said the men had resided in France for more than 10 years without being questioned, despite it being widely known they were wanted for crimes relating to genocide.

'Murder and rape'

The two men were arrested in France on Friday - Father Munyeshyaka in Gisors, to the west of Paris, and Mr Bucyibaruta near Troyes, east of the capital.

Father Munyeshyaka is accused by the ICTR of murdering three young Tutsis in his Holy Family parish in the capital Kigali.

He is also accused of raping four young Tutsi women between April and June 1994 and calling for the extremist Hutu Interahamwe militia to commit rape.

Mr Bucyibaruta has been accused of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" by the ICTR.

The Rwandan government had welcomed their arrests as a sign that France was willing to co-operate more actively with the tribunal.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with Paris last year in a row over a French inquiry related to the 1994 genocide.

The investigating judge said Rwandan President Paul Kagame was complicit in the assassination of former President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994, which sparked off the killings.

Mr Kagame accuses Hutu extremists of killing Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in order to provide a pretext for the genocide.

The killings ended 100 days later when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front took power.