ARUSHA, Tanzania — A U.N. tribunal sentenced Jean Kambanda, Rwanda's former prime minister, to life in prison Friday for his role in the 1994 massacre of more than 800,000 Rwandans, most of them ethnic Tutsis.
A panel of three judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, headquartered in this northern Tanzanian town, concluded that the shocking and abominable nature of Kambanda's crimes warranted the maximum sentence the court could impose.
"The chamber is of the opinion that genocide represents the crime of crimes, which must be taken into account when delivering the sentence," presiding Judge Laity Kama told Kambanda.
The chief judge said that although Kambanda had cooperated with the prosecution--and voluntarily confessed last May to six genocide-related crimes and crimes against humanity--the gravity of his actions "negated widely the mitigating circumstances."
The sentence given to Kambanda, the highest-ranking former political leader in the tribunal's custody, is significant because it will probably influence the pleas of the other 31 high-profile, though lower-ranking, defendants in custody, observers said.
"The people it will affect are those who are sitting on the fence and contemplating what to plead," said one tribunal source, noting that some defendants might continue to declare their innocence for fear of getting a life sentence while others might follow Kambanda's lead and acknowledge their guilt.
In Washington, a Clinton administration official reacted to the sentencing with approval.
"We welcome the whole adjudication," the official said. "The court was limited to life as a maximum sentence, so the sentence indicates the court was doing its job. We welcome the fact that the process is working and the court was able to proceed and administer justice. This is a message to the perpetrators of genocide that they will receive justice."
Kambanda, 42, was the first person to accept responsibility for genocide before an international court. He also acknowledged that extermination of Tutsis was a policy of his government--an admission that observers said helped quash the defense of Hutu extremists that the slaughter resulted from war and was not premeditated. Kama said Kambanda's sentence will "serve as a message to the entire international community, and particularly to those who will be tempted to commit such crimes in the future."
