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Thursday, December 25, 1997

Accused war criminal leaves jail in Laredo

DALLAS (AP) -- An accused Rwanda war criminal was freed from a Laredo jail cell after a judge decided the U.S. government had no constitutional right to return him to the African country to stand trial.

Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, 73, a retired Seventh-day Adventist pastor, was released last week after 14 months in the Webb County Jail.

U.S. Magistrate Marcel C. Notzon ordered his release on Dec. 17, calling unconstitutional a 1995 law that allowed for the return of alleged war criminals to war tribunals in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Ntakirutimana would have faced a United Nation's tribunal investigating the 1994 genocidal slaughter of ethnic Tutsis at a church he ran.

Ntakirutimana's family was happy to hear of his release.

"Oh, this is good news. It is the best Christmas gift the U.S. government could give -- my father free," said his son, Dr. Eliel Ntakirutimana, a Laredo physician. "The charges against him are pure fabrication. My father is no killer."

Monday, the elder Ntakirutimana helped his granddaughter celebrate her sixth birthday.

"He was so happy to be there, to hold her," said Ntakirutimana's son. "It was a very emotional time for him. We are all so grateful to have back what we feared we had lost."

While in jail, Ntakirutimana was confined without bail in an eight-man cell. Aside from weekly visits from his family, he passed time by holding Bible study classes for other inmates.

Federal authorities have not announced whether they will appeal Notzon's ruling. Federal prosecutors and U.N. officials could not be reached for comment.

Ntakirutimana was arrested in September 1996 by FBI agents outside Laredo on charges by the U.N. International Crimes Tribunal on Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania.

The killings he is accused of were part of the explosion of violence that erupted in the central African country in 1994. Extremists within the Hutu majority systematically killed more than 500,000 Tutsi civilians and members of the Hutu opposition, according to the U.S. State Department.

The U.N. tribunal has indicted 21 suspects, 13 of whom are in custody. Ntakirutimana was the only one held in custody in the United States.