ARUSHA, 23 February (IRIN) - A United Nations tribunal on Monday sentenced a former Rwandan youth leader and businessman, Joseph Nzabirinda, to seven years in prison on charges of aiding and abetting murder during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Presiding judge Arlette Ramaroson said the three-member bench of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda had found Nzabirinda, 50, guilty of murder as a crime against humanity.

The Rwandan government's special representative to the tribunal, based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, Aloyce Mutabingwa, said he considered the sentence too lenient, given the accused's standing in society at the time of the genocide.

"Nzabirinda deserved a much harsher penalty because of his admission of his [part] in the genocide," said Mutabingwa.

The judges ruled that the accused was personally responsible for two murders at a roadblock in Kabuga in southern Rwanda although he had not carried out the killing. Nzabirinda regularly attended meetings by hardline ethnic Hutus where killings were planned, the judges said.

They said Nzabirinda admitted that as a former youth leader, a political personality, intellectual and a relatively affluent businessman, he should have exerted his moral authority to discourage the killings but instead approved of them. The court took into consideration that Nzabirinda had been in custody since 2001.

Nzabirinda, who was arrested in Brussels in 2001, told the court he would like to serve his term in France.

The tribunal, which was established in 1994 to try ringleaders of the genocide, has so far rendered 31 judgments. Trials are under way for another 27 accused.

According to Rwandan government figures, 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed during the 100 days of bloodletting that followed the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana when his plane was brought down over the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on 6 April 1994.

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