A UN-backed tribunal said on Thursday that a Rwandan Roman Catholic priest currently living in France has been formally charged with acts of genocide, killing and rape.A former priest of the Holy Family parish in the Rwandan capital Kigali, Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, has been charged with genocide, rape, assassination and extermination, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Tanzania said on its website.
News sources confirm that the charges were filed against Munyeshyaka, 49, on July 20, 2005, but had remained sealed until they were published on the ICTR site on Wednesday.
The tribunal gave no explanation for why the information had been made public.
The former Hutu priest, apart from ordering killings, is also accused of murdering three young Tutsis in the parish during the 1994 Hutu-led mass murder in which about 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus across Rwanda are estimated by the United Nations to have died.
In addition, he stands accused of raping four young Tutsi women between April and June, 1994 and of inciting the extremist Hutu Interhamwe militia to rape.
"On several dates between April 8 and June 20, 1994 at the Holy Family parish, Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka drew up a plan to rape Tutsi women," and "designated several Tutsi civilians who were kidnapped and murdered," the prosecution said in the indictment.
The priest is the fourth Roman Catholic clergymen to be charged by the tribunal. Meanwhile, the court also confirmed that the lawyer of Emmanuel Rukundo, another priest on trial for genocide, had been arrested this month for trying to badger a witness.
Leonidas Nshogoza was arrested on June 16 for putting pressure on a witness testifying against his client, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges of genocide, killing and extermination.
The ICTR, which was set up by the UN in late 1994 to try key suspects in the mass-killings and which began trials in 1997, has often been accused of sluggishness in its investigations.
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