(18 Dec 2008)
1. Tilt down exterior of Human Rights Watch offices
2. Close up of "Human Rights Watch" sign
3. Set up of Reed Brody, European Press Director of Human Rights Watch
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Reed Brody, European Press Director of Human Rights Watch:
"This verdict sends a very strong signal to tyrants around the world that if they commit the worst crimes, they could spend the rest of their lives in jail. You know, it took a long time to get here. It's been seven years since he was arrested but that's what it takes."
5. Brody pointing at HRW map with photos of dictators
6. Close up photo of Theoneste Bagosora on map
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Reed Brody, European Press Director of Human Rights Watch:
"Genocide is very hard to prove because you have to prove not only the killings but you have to prove that these people actually intended to wipe out an ethnic group. But the evidence in this case was very strong. The things that these men wrote, and the things that these men said about going after the Tutsis is what helped to convict them of genocide."
8. Cutaway of Brody's hands
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Reed Brody, European Press Director of Human Rights Watch:
"Of course the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking genocide charges against the sitting president of Sudan for the crimes that were committed in Darfur. And so this could be a very important precedent in seeing that President al-Bashir is also brought to justice and does not escape for the crimes that he is alleged to have committed in Darfur."
10. Brody looking at map
STORYLINE:
Human Rights Watch has welcomed a United Nations verdict convicting the main organiser behind the 1994 slaughter of more than 500,000 people in Rwanda of genocide.
Colonel Theoneste Bagosora was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday, in the most significant verdict of a specially set up UN tribunal.
European press director of Human Rights Watch, Reed Brody, said in Brussels that the sentence sent a clear message to other world leaders accused of crimes against humanity and genocide.
The court said that Bagosora used his position as the former director of Rwanda's Ministry of Defence - the second-highest ranking official in the defence department - to direct Hutu soldiers to kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up by the U.N. in 1994 to try those responsible for the killings and had its first conviction in 1997.
There have been 42 judgments, of which six have been acquittals.
More than 500,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in the 100-day slaughter organised by the extremist Hutu government then in power.
The killings began on April 7, 1994, the day after the plane carrying ethnic Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down by unidentified attackers on its approach to Kigali airport.
Bagosora was commander of the Kanombe air base in Kigali when the president's plane went down.
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