Rwanda frees 36,000 inmates, most genocide suspects

KIGALI - Thousands of Rwandan prisoners began streaming out of jail on Friday, following a government decision to free 36,000 inmates, the majority of whom have confessed to taking part in the country's 1994 genocide.

The cabinet approved the provisional mass release on Wednesday in a bid to unclog the tiny central African country's jails which are overflowing with more than 80,000 inmates.

The prisoners being released - many of whom will now face traditional courts in their home communities - include the sick, elderly and people who were minors when first jailed.

Officials said nine out of 10 prisoners to be freed have confessed to, but did not plan, the massacre of 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in 1994.

"To me this is a miracle from God," Mariana Kakuze said, leaving a prison in the capital Kigali.

Born in 1927, she had served 10 years in jail accused of killing two Tutsi neighbors during the genocide.

"I had lost hope of leaving this prison," she told Reuters outside the high-walled jail surrounded by barbed wire.

The mass release is likely to enrage genocide survivors who witnessed the release of up to 24,000 inmates in 2003 and another 4,000 last year. About 29,000 were due to be released on Friday and the remaining 7,000 next week.

Several trucks lined up to take freed inmates to education camps across the mountainous country where they are expected to undergo instruction on justice and reconciliation for a month before returning to their villages.

Stripped of their pink prison uniform, some inmates were carried out on stretchers, while the very old gripped on to wooden sticks to help them walk free.

Rwanda's chief prosecutor Jean de Dieu Mucyo told Reuters earlier this week that the release was provisional since the former inmates would still have to face justice in the traditional "gacaca" courts.

The courts were launched in 2002 to deal with the backlog of suspects awaiting trial in conventional courts.

Focusing on confession and apology, the gacaca (meaning grass) courts are designed to ease the way to national reconciliation.

They usually result in shorter sentences, while some who have confessed and asked for forgiveness have been set free.

Eleven years after the genocide, Rwanda is still struggling to emerge from the 100-day spasm of killings by extremists from the Hutu majority who typically targeted their Tutsi neighbors and in some cases relatives.

- REUTERS