The last judgement to be delivered was on Francois Karera, former Governor of Kigali, on 7 December, 2007, who was sentenced to remainder of his life. Five more judgements are expected before end of the year.
The prosecution and defence concluded their closing arguments in the Nshamihigo case in mid-January. The prosecution has requested life imprisonment for defendant while the defence has sought for outright acquittal.
Nshamihigo, 48, who has been on trial since 25 September 2006, is accused of having organized massacres of Tutsis in Cyangugu, in south-western Rwanda, his native region. He has pleaded not guilty.
At the close of the proceedings, the defendant showed remorse over the 1994 tragic killings and considered the event as unfortunate and intolerable.
Nshamihigo is defended by two Canadian lawyers, Denis Turcotte and Henry Benoit. The prosecution team is headed by Ivorian Alphonse Van.
The accused was arrested in 2001 at the ICTR premises after he was discovered working at the United Nations court under a false name. Nshamihigo was detained after a witness at one of the trials recognised him and revealed his true identity as one of the alleged organisers of the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis.
Nshamihigo, who was deputy prosecutor during the genocide, was working at the international tribunal as an investigator for the defence team of a former military commander who was a close ally during the slaughter and is now convicted, Samuel Imanishimwe.
Nshamihigo was detained by tribunal security staff and then handed over to immigration officials in Tanzania, where the international court is sitting, after it was discovered he was using an assumed name and a false passport. He was going by the name of Sammy Bahati Weza and claiming to be a Congolese citizen instead of a Rwandan.
Although Mr Nshamihigo was not employed directly by the UN, all of those on trial at the tribunal are declared indigent and the salaries of the defence staff are paid by the court. As a result, the tribunal was supposed to have checked the former prosecutor's credentials and background.
The Rwandan government has in the past complained that several men implicated in the genocide were employed by the court's defence teams.
The arrest of Mr Nshamihigo had raised fresh questions about security at the tribunal. In February, 2001, Hassan Ngeze, a Rwandan newspaper editor already convicted for genocide, was discovered to be running a website from his cell and using it to denounce the judges hearing his case.
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© Hirondelle News Agency