A former Rwandan women's minister has been sentenced to life in prison for her role in the genocide and the rape of Tutsi women and girls. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 65, is the first woman to be convicted of genocide by an international court.
She was found guilty, along with her son and four other former officials, after a 10-year trial.
Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during the 1994 massacres.
Nyiramasuhuko, who was family affairs and women's development minister, was accused of ordering and assisting in the massacres in her home district of Butare in southern Rwanda.
The prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) accused her of taking part in the government decision to create militias throughout the country. Their mission was to wipe out the Tutsi population as fast as possible.
'Depravity and sadism'
"The chamber convicts Pauline Nyiramasuhuko of conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, extermination, rape, persecution and... violence to life and outrages upon personal dignity," read the ruling by the trial's three judges.
During the genocide she ordered women and girls to be raped and forced people onto trucks - they were driven away to be killed. Her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, who was in his early 20s at the time, headed a militia that carried out the massacres. He also raped women.
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