4,500 prisoners released

At least 4,500 common law prisoners were pardoned and released in Rwanda on Monday in a bid to decongest the nation's prisons, Prosecutor General Jean de Dieu Mucyo told IRIN. "This group of the released exclude those who have confessed to genocide crimes," he said on Monday. Those released included the elderly and the sick, as well as those who had been in prison longer than the sentences they could face. Mucyo said those who confessed to participating in the 1994 genocide, in which some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed, would probably be released next week. The released prisoners are to be sent to "solidarity camps" for two months where they will undergo re-education in the government's new programmes on reconciliation and on the workings of the Gacaca traditional courts that are to try alleged genocide perpetrators. Mucyo said 200 minors aged 14 to 18 years, among those released, would be sent to separate camps where they would receive special programmes. In early March, the government announced that it would free the common law criminals and that at least half of the country's prisoners had confessed to their role in the genocide. The government also extended by one year a 15 March deadline for detainees to confess their role in the genocide, thereby enabling more of them to be granted clemency. In February 2003, close to 25,000 prisoners who had pleaded guilty to participating in the genocide were provisionally released from detention centres. The release plan comes as Rwanda prepares to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in April.