Four former Rwandan ministers went on trial Thursday charged with playing key roles in a 1994 genocide, including buying weapons and inciting the slaughter of about 800,000 people, a court spokesman said.

The U.N. tribunal in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha is keen to show progress in trying former top officials to counter Rwandan government criticism that it has been slow to bring the masterminds of the massacres to justice.

"The prosecutor (Paul Ng'Arua) is making his opening statement and explaining to the court exactly who these four people were in Rwanda in 1994," spokesman Roland Amoussouga told Reuters by telephone.

"The prosecutor told the court the ministers had 'blazed a path throughout Rwanda that can only be described allegorically as the path of hell'," the spokesman said.

"He said he would show that wherever these ministers went, acts of genocide and the displacement of Tutsi populations followed them," Amoussouga said.

The ministers belonged to an interim government that took power in April 1994 after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down just before the massacres began.

Three months later they were ousted by Tutsi-led rebels, but by then government-sponsored Hutu militants had killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Among the defendants is former Health Minister Casimir Bizimungu, a 52-year-old former doctor who studied medicine in the United States.

He is accused of traveling overseas to buy weapons for the militias with government funds, and of doing nothing to stop massacres of Tutsi patients and staff at hospitals and a nursing school under his control.

He was arrested in Kenya in February 1999 and denies charges of genocide, incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Due to appear with him are former Trade and Industries Minister Justin Mugenzi, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Jerome Bicamumpaka and former Minister for Civil Service Prosper Mugiraneza. They also deny the charges.

Prosecutors have said that as early as April 9, two days after the massacres began, Mugenzi, a 54-year-old former businessman, openly expressed his satisfaction that many Tutsis had already been killed.

"At no point did these ministers take any action to stop those massacres or punish the perpetrators," the indictment says.

Close

Today's Top News		Top International News
+Oil industry: Pricing, entry to be loosened ( 2003-11-06) +Falling grain output raises concern ( 2003-11-06) +India, China to hold naval drill on Nov 14 ( 2003-11-06) +Sunnier city life for rural children ( 2003-11-06) +Oil industry: Pricing, entry to be loosened ( 2003-11-06)		+Palestinian woman killed in Israeli security sweep ( 2003-11-06) +Four Rwandan ministers go on trial for genocide ( 2003-11-06) +That awful Vietnam comparison ( 2003-11-06) +One killed, four others shot at Boston bus station ( 2003-11-06) +Gadafy's son fails soccer drug test ( 2003-11-06)