US don jailed over genocide jets in

An American lawyer arrested in Rwanda for his controversial views on the 1994 genocide arrived in Nairobi at the weekend.

Prof Peter Erlinder has accused President Paul Kagame’s government of shielding officials involved in the killings.

Prof Erlinder has been in a Rwanda prison since May 28 over accusations that he denies the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were part of an orchestrated genocide by radical Hutus controlling the Rwandan military.

A Rwandan court on Thursday granted him unconditional bail on “humanitarian and health-related reasons”.

Prof Erlinder was arrested after entering Rwanda to defend opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, accused of denying the genocide and inciting ethnic hatred.

The law professor has accused the Rwandan government of violating his rights. “I slept on a cold concrete floor without access to food and medicine,” he told journalists.

He also accused the American embassy in Kigali of doing little to ensure his release. Early this month, the 62-year-old failed in an attempt to commit suicide.

Prison authorities found the lawyer, who had refused to take medicine, unconscious on his bed.

Atrocities

For years, Prof Erlinder, a counsel at the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, has put up a spirited fight to implicate President Kagame in the atrocities and to expose what he considers a cover-up by the United Nations and the US Pentagon.

He believes that the two conspired with the Kagame administration to suppress evidence which implicated top officials of the Rwandese Patriotic Front, the ruling party.