Rwanda

Kathy Carbone remembers the twinge of trepidation she felt when she was asked to help create a library in the tiny, east-central African nation of Rwanda. "Oh my God, what have I just signed up for?" she recently said, recalling her initial reaction. "I felt overwhelmed. I had never created a library." Carbone, the performing arts librarian at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, realized she faced an enormous task.

A Spanish judge Wednesday indicted 40 Rwandan army officers on charges of mass murder and crimes against humanity in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, asserting a concept of justice championed by his nation known as "universal jurisdiction." Judge Fernando Andreu of Spain's National Court said he also had sufficient evidence to implicate current Rwandan President Paul Kagame in a long string of reprisal massacres after he and his forces seized power, ending the genocide.

President Bush, expressing frustration that the United Nations has had a difficult time raising and deploying a sufficient peacekeeping force in Darfur, said Tuesday that the 1994 Rwandan genocide should have taught the world not to ignore signs of budding brutality. Bush said Rwanda would receive $12 million of the $100-million contribution the U.S. is making this year to U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.

The ringleader of the 1994 Rwanda genocide was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for his role in the early days of an ethnic slaughter that eventually killed an estimated 800,000 people. Theoneste Bagosora, 67, is the highest-ranking military officer convicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The former colonel's prosecution is viewed as a significant step in efforts to punish war crimes.

More than a decade after the genocide, a mystery still lies at the heart of Rwanda's darkness. But France's most celebrated anti-terrorism magistrate believes he knows who assassinated two African presidents on April 6, 1994. The shooting down of the Rwandan presidential jet that night was followed by the killings of an estimated 800,000 people, most of them members of the Tutsi minority.

Eight thousand prisoners accused of involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide were released Monday, prompting anger from survivors who fear new ethnic killings. Rwanda's prisons have been overflowing with thousands of inmates, some convicted and others awaiting trial in the slayings of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by Hutu extremists. "The group that has been released excludes key masterminds of the genocide," said Rwanda's chief prosecutor, Martin Ngoga.

"Beyond the Gates," which opens Friday, chronicles the first five days of the horrific 1994 Rwandan genocide in which extremists from the Hutus, the country's majority tribe, went on an ethnic-cleansing rampage, turning machetes and machine guns on the minority Tutsis. When the violence broke out, some Tutsis and moderate Hutus took refuge at the Ecole Technique Officielle in Kigali. The secondary school was also the base camp for U.N. peacekeepers from Belgium.

This love story -- and to its central characters it is indeed a love story -- began when experts and victims from around the world gathered in Rwanda to discuss genocide.

Rwandan rebels attacked villagers in neighboring eastern Congo with machetes, spears and hammers, killing 17, wounding 28 and seizing up to a dozen people, a local human rights worker said. The attackers, who are based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, struck the village of Kanyola, rights worker Constantin Charondagwa said by telephone from Bukavu, about 30 miles from the village. Charondagwa said he had visited Kanyola and interviewed people who escaped the attack.

A former Rwandan army major was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his involvement in the 1994 killings of 10 Belgian peacekeepers at the start of the Rwandan genocide. Bernard Ntuyahaga was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury. Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence the 55-year-old to life in prison for his role in ensuring the 10 peacekeepers were disarmed and killed by a mob of local soldiers in Kigali.