afrol News, 18 November - The United Nations court has acquitted Former Catholic priest, Father Hormisdas Nsengimana, who was facing charges of the infamous Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Father Nsengimana, had been imprisoned for seven years since his 2002 arrest in Cameroon.

In the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Judge Erik Mose ordered for the clergy’s immediate release from the UN detention facility in Arusha, saying the prosecution had failed to prove its case.

Father Nsengimana was alleged to have been at the center of a group of Hutu extremists that planned and carried out targeted attacks in the southern Rwandan town of Nyanza, where he was head of a Catholic school.

He also was also accused of supervising at least three roadblocks that were used to stop and kill Tutsis, according to a statement by The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Judge Mose said the chamber had assessed all the evidence supporting the three counts against Nsengimana and did not find any credible evidence to implicate him on the alleged charges.

About 800, 000 people were killed n the 100-day slaughter by Hutu militias and government officials. The massacre followed the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, when his plane was shot down.

It was the second acquittal by the court since Monday, when the appeals court overturned a conviction and 20-year sentence faced by Protais Zigiranyirazo, the former Rwandan president's brother-in-law. Mr Zigiranyirazo was sentenced to 20 years in December 2008.

Mr Nsengimana is one of the four Catholic priests indicted by the ICTR.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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