A former army colonel was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for his role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that wiped out more than 500,000 lives.
Theoneste Bagosora was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity by United Nations judge Erik Moses.
Moses said Bagosora, the former director of Rwanda's ministry of defence, organized and armed the Interahamwe militia and directed Hutu soldiers to kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The court also found Bagosora responsible for the deaths of former Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers.
According to the British Broadcasting Corp., Bagosora's co-defendants -- former military commanders Anatole Nsegiyumva and Alloys Ntabakuze -- were also found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Nsegiyumva and Ntabakuze were both given life sentences.
"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 prison," Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
The UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania, in 1997 to try those believed responsible for the genocide.
Earlier Thursday, the ICTR sentenced Protais Zigiranyirazo to 20 years in prison for organizing a massacre of hundreds of Tutsis.
Zigiranyirazo, who has already served seven years in prison, is the brother-in-law of former president Juvenal Habyarimana, reports the BBC.
The massacres took place in 1994 after Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali.
Shortly after the plane incident, the Interahamwe militia set up roadblocks throughout Kigali and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Dallaire on Bagosora
In 2004, Retired Canadian Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire testified against Bagosora at the ICTR.
Dallaire was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda between October 1993 and August 1994.
In his testimony for the prosecution, Dallaire described Bagosora as the architect of a campaign to exterminate the Tutsis and as someone who was apparently comfortable with the violence swirling around him.
"What I found incredible to witness was I had never found someone so calm and so at ease with what was going on," Dallaire told the tribunal.
"He shuffled some papers and signed some documents," he continued, describing an encounter he had with Bagosora. "It was like they were totally on another planet, or something was going as to plan."
During his time in Rwanda, the former Canadian general made several appeals to the UN for help, saying he had heard from an informant that preparations were being made for massacres. He was repeatedly told not to get involved.
Even as the killing raged, the UN passed a resolution April 16, 2004 reducing the UN force to a staff of 270 troops. It wasn't until May 16 that it approved the deployment of 5,000 troops.
The genocide was horrific in not only size but in its speed.
"People forget that in just three months, nearly twenty percent of the Rwandan population was exterminated," Payam Akhavan of McGill University told Â鶹´«Ã½.
With files from The Associated Press
