Genocide: Rwanda gives ex-leaders immunity

The Rwandan parliament has voted to change the country‘s constitution to give former presidents immunity from prosecution, for life.

The amendment said that a former president could not be prosecuted on charges for which he was not put on trial while in office.

The justice minister said the change would remove ambiguity in the old law, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Judges in France and Spain have accused President Paul Kagame of involvement in killings linked to the 1994 genocide.

In April, a Spanish judge said he had evidence that Kagame was linked to the killing of Hutus after the genocide, sparking fury in Rwanda.

In 2006, a French judge accused Kagame of ordering the attack on the plane carrying former President, Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death sparked the genocide.

Kagame has always denied the charges and has said Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed by Hutu extremists and blamed on his Tutsi rebels to provide the pretext for carrying out the genocide.

The BBC reporting from the capital, Kigali, said the constitutional amendment implied that serving heads of state could be prosecuted.

It said the immunity section was the most significant of more than 50 constitutional amendments which MPs had approved.

Another amendment said the constitution would now refer to the 1994 genocide as a “genocide committed on Tutsis.”

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.