KIGALI - Rwanda on Friday plans to release up to 30,000 prisoners, the majority of whom have confessed to taking part in the country's 1994 genocide, Rwanda's chief prosecutor said on Tuesday.
Jean de Dieu Mucyo told Reuters the prisoners to be released included the sick, elderly and children imprisoned when they were younger than 18.
He said 90 percent of those to be freed are genocide suspects who have confessed to playing a role in the killings but do not fall in the top category of planners of the genocide.
"We have people who are mentally sick, there are those with over 70 years and even those with petty crimes," Mucyo told Reuters. "These are the sort of people we want to offload from prisons."
The act is likely to enrage survivors of the massacres in 1994, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed when extremists of the Hutu majority incited a hate campaign against the minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
Previous releases have drawn criticism from some genocide survivors who claim some of the accused have made false confessions to secure their release.
But Mucyo said their release was provisional since they would still have to face justice in the ongoing traditional "gacaca" courts, and their testimony could help because so many admitted to participating in the genocide.
The inmates will undergo a month in a sensitisation programme in their home provinces before they are released, Mucyo said.
In 2003, up to 24,000 inmates were freed after a presidential decree to release minors, the elderly, the sick and those who ran the risk of being in prison for periods longer than the prescribed penalties.
Another 4,000 were released in 2004.
Mucyo said up to 87,000 people are still held in Rwandan prisons, 70,000 of which are accused of genocide-related crimes.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Tuesday handed over 10 investigative files for 1994 genocide fugitives still at-large.
That means that if the fugitives are apprehended, they will have to be sent to Rwanda for prosecution, and the cases can be pursued even after the ICTR shuts down.
Hassan Bubacar Jallow, chief prosecutor of the Arusha, Tanzania-based court, said the transfer was in line with meeting the tribunal's targeted wrap-up date of 2008. It handed over 15 similar files earlier this year.
Trials for 25 suspects are ongoing, while 16 suspects await trial and 14 fugitives remain at large.
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