Rwanda has officially closed its village courts set up to deal with up to a million suspects accused of being involved in the country’s 1994 genocide.

Many people who were due to testify in the local community courts known as “Gacaca” were attacked or disappeared. However, President Paul Kagame hailed the justice system a success: “The Gacaca courts were an important end in itself for justice and reconciliation. In fact they served a purpose far greater than reconciliation.”

At a closing ceremony in a district of the capital Kigali, both survivors and perpetrators of the crimes came together.

Radical ethnic Hutu militias and soldiers slaughtered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the central African nation over 100 days after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down.

SOURCE: euronews