The former Rwandan minister, Callixte Nzabonimana, was sentenced to life in prison by the International Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda  (ICTR) on Thursday, for his part in the 1994 genocide.

In particular, the case focused on a meeting held on 18th April 1994, in Murambi, where Nzabonimana and other ministers formed an aggreement "to encourage the killing of Tutsis... with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Tutsi population as such in Gitarama prefecture," the AFP reported.

In a statement, the ICTR said,

"The trial chamber found that ... Nzabonimana instigated the killing of Tutsis. It also found Nzabonimana guilty of entering into two separate agreements to kill Tutsis,"

Nzabonimana was arrested in Tanzania in 2008.

Exerting pressure of Moscow and Beijing, the US Secretary of State, Hiliary Clinton warned of the "terrible" danger of civil war.

Condemning reports of a Russian arms shipment as "reprehensible", Clinton said,

"The Russians keep telling us they want to do everything they can to avoid a civil war because they believe that the violence would be catastrophic," Clinton said.

"I think they are in effect propping up the regime at a time when we should be working on a political transition."

"A civil war in a country that would be riven by sectarian divides ... could then morph into a proxy war in the region because, remember, you have Iran deeply embedded in Syria,"

The UK is to set up a rapid action team, aimed at collecting evidence of mass rape in conflict zones when it is used as a weapon of war, reports The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.

See here for full article.

The team, created by the UK Foreign Office, will be launched later this year. Consisting of police, forensic experts, doctors, psychologists and lawyers, it is part of a wider focus on countering sexual war crimes.

The newspaper reports that during the launch, the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, will state that Syria could be one of the team's first deployments.

Extracts of Hague's speech, released by the Foreign Office, include:

"Despite the valiant efforts of many individuals and organisations, the perpetrators of the worst sexual crimes generally go unpunished,"

"We want to use Britain's influence and diplomatic capability to rally effective international action."

"We want to help find practical ways to ensure that survivors feel confident to speak out, and regain the dignity, rights, and restitution that is their due. And we want to see a significant increase in the number of successful prosecutions so that we erode and eventually demolish the culture of impunity."

The spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva, Rupert Colville, said that a "substantial part" of the killings in Houla, Syria, were "summary executions" on Tuesday.

Colville said,

"At this point, it looks like entire families were shot in their houses."

"What is very clear is that this was an absolutely abominable event that took place in Houla, and at least a substantial part of it were summary executions of civilians - women and children,"

According to The Times, Colville asserted that only 20 of the deaths were due to artillery or shell fire.

See here for full story in The Times, including photographs of the victims (warning - graphic content). 

His remarks came as the Kofi Annan described the situation in Syria as "at a tipping point".

Annan said,

"We are at a tipping point. The Syrian people do not want the future to be one of bloodshed and division. Yet the killings continue and the abuses are still with us today."

The U.N. peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, said,

"Part of the victims had been killed by artillery shells, now that points ever so clearly to the responsibility of the government. Only the government has heavy weapons, has tanks, has howitzers," Ladsous told reporters, adding:

"But there are also victims from individual weapons, victims from knife wounds and that of course is less clear but probably points the way to the (pro-Assad) shabbihas, the local militia."

One elderly woman gave her account of the incident to Human Rights Watch:

“I was in the house with my three grandsons, three granddaughters, sister-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law and cousin . . . I was in a room by myself when I heard the sound of a man. He was shouting and yelling at my family. I hid behind the door . . . After three minutes I heard all my family members screaming and yelling. The children, aged between 10 and 14, were crying . . . As I approached the door I heard several gunshots."

“I was so terrified I couldn’t stand on my legs. I heard the soldiers leaving. I looked outside the room and saw all of my family members shot. They were shot in their bodies and their head.”

"I can't see any justification for the man being an 'ambassador'. An ambassador for what? The man has blood on his hands. Do they want tourists to see those bloody hands?

"Robert Mugabe is under international sanctions, so how do you have an international tourism ambassador who can't travel to other countries?”

"The UN is losing credibility in this process. Does it think people should go to a country where the law is not obeyed? An MDC activist was murdered last Saturday. Zimbabwe is doing things which don't encourage the arrival of tourists."

"For a man who has destroyed his country's infrastructure and cynically engineered hunger to be an 'ambassador' for tourism is disgraceful – particularly as he has been personally responsible for the downward spiral of the economy and destroyed the hotel, travel and tourism industry in the process."

"It boggles the mind how the UN could appoint Mugabe as an ambassador of any sort. I don't think he's an appropriate person. It sends the wrong message to Mugabe that he is now acceptable to the international community.”

"It undermines the reputation of the UNWTO as being detached from the reality on the ground in terms of human rights violations and political instability."

For the first time since the Nuremberg trials, a former head of state has been convicted by an international war crimes tribunal, as Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment by judges at The Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague.

Last month Taylor, described as a “warlord-turned-president”, was found guilty of 11 counts of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity, for supporting rebels in return for conflict diamonds, during the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

He was convicted for several offences, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, recruiting child soldiers, enforced amputation and pillaging.

While prosecutors demanded an 80-year-sentence, the judges had concluded that this was excessive as Taylor was not convicted for directly carrying out war crimes but for “aiding and abetting” them.

Judge Richard Lussick described Taylor’s crimes as being of the “utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality” and the court said of Taylor that he was to blame for “some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history”.

Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, from New York-based Human Rights Watch, was one of the activists welcoming the lengthy jail term, which is in effect a life sentence.

"It is really significant that Taylor's status as a former head of state was taken as an aggravating factor as far as his sentence was concerned.

"That is a very important precedent and I hope that Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Sudan's Omar Hassan al-Bashir take note."

Korto Williams, director of ActionAid Liberia, said:

"Not only is this verdict an opportunity for Sierra Leone and Liberia to move forward, it also signals the international community's clear intent that any leader who misuses their power and carries out state-sanctioned violence will be held responsible for their crimes and will be punished."

The former president was arrested and sent to the Netherlands in 2006 having fled into exile in Nigeria after being indicted by the court in 2003.

Taylor denied the charges of encouraging human rights abuses in Sierra Leone, insisting he "pushed the peace process hard" and had been trying to stabilise the region.

Over 50,000 people died during the protracted civil war in Sierra Leone.

The UN Human Rights Council will hold a special session on the situation in Syria this Friday announced UN officials.

Fifty-one nations have signed in support of the session, which will address last week’s killing of more than a 100 civilians in Houla.

Speaking on the massacre, the US ambassador to the U.N, Susan Rice, said,

“in the absence of the Assad regime adhering to its commitments suddenly and definitively, the security council and others in the international community will come together and in a unified way to increase the pressure on the Assad regime, including through the use of sanctions..”

Detailing the 'worst case scenario', Rice said,

"none of this happens and the violence intensifies and spills over the region. It heightens sectarian fissures and we in effect have a proxy war which outsiders are supporting the opposition or the government through arms and other means.”

"And members of this council and members of the international community are left with the option only of considering whether they are prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this council,"

The Houla massacre prompted several nations including the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia, to expel Syrian diplomats on Tuesday.

Just last week a UN panel of independent human rights experts concluded that the government forces were largely responsible for most of the violence unfolding, including the extra-judicial killing and torturing of members of the opposition.

“Bashar al-Assad is the murderer of his people. He must relinquish power. The sooner the better."

“This is not a unilateral decision but in consultation with our partners.”

"The Syrian charge has again been advised to convey a clear message to Damascus that Australians are appalled by this massacre and we will pursue a unified international response to hold those responsible to account"

"In doing this we are more or less moving with our friends around the world. I expect other countries will be doing this overnight Australian time,"

"To carry out this kind of murder...while the United Nations observer mission is carrying out its mission in Syria is torture, it is wretched,"

"There is also a limit to patience, and I believe that, God willing, there is also a limit to the patience in the U.N. Security Council,"

“We’re now seeing self-immolations that seem to be political expressions that are in sympathy with the core incidents that happened earlier.”

"For the Chinese authorities, it has very serious implications and suggests that the movement is spreading among Tibetans. It could lead to an increased severity of restrictions and controls."

Photograph: From Chinese writer Tsering Woeser, claiming to show the immolations at Lhasa. See here

"a continuation of the self-immolations in other Tibetan areas and these acts were all aimed at separating Tibet from China"

Russia has warned the US of ‘severe repercussions’ on ties between the two countries if the recently tightened sanctions on Iran affect Russian businesses in the country.

"We assume that (Russian) companies which do violate the restrictions imposed by the UN Security Council (on Iran) will not be affected by the anti-Iranian American laws," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The US imposed fresh sanctions on Teheran last week, including making it mandatory for US firms to declare any business with Iran.

"The authority of any host country is limited to organising and offering all necessary facilities to all participating athletes."

"If the British government has decided to ban anyone connected to the regime and to President Bashar-al Assad, I am telling you in advance they should ban all Syrian citizens, because we all support President Assad and support Syria."

"If there is evidence that you have abused human rights and that is independently shown to be the case, you will not be able to come into this country."

"What I cannot do... sitting here is [provide] a list of the individuals to come, and are they coming as per the arrangements with the IOC."

"We do have the power to prevent them entering the UK, even when the Olympics is on."

A Rwandan man accused of genocide is due to start trial today in Ottawa.

39 year old Jacques Mungwarere was arrested in the town of Windsor in 2009.

The former school teacher is accused of leading and participating in mass killings, including massacres in churches and a hospital.

Mungwarere is the second Rwandan prosecuted under Canada’s Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which allows prosecution, irrespective of where and when the crimes were committed.

He was caught after a childhood friend recognised him on a bus in Windsor and alerted the authorities.

Over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died during 3 months of violence in the 1994 genocide.

Two Serb policemen have been handed lengthy jail terms by a court in Sarajevo on Friday, for ‘aiding genocide’.

Dusko Jevic and Mendeljev Djuric ordered their men to take part in the separating of Muslim men and boys from other villagers and then killing over a thousand of the detainees.

Jevic, who was deputy commander of a Bosnian Serb police brigade was sentenced to 35 years, while Djuric, the commander of the brigade’s first company, was jailed for 30 years.

The men “aided in the partial destruction of an ethnic group and are guilty of aiding genocide,” Sarajevo court judge Mira Smajlovic ruled.

“With their participation in the massacre the members of this unit were a link in the chain that was carrying out a genocide,” added the judge.

Over 8,000 Bosniaks were killed during the Srebrenica massacre, making it the worst single atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.

"He's wanted on genocide charges."

“For the families who lost loved ones at Srebrenica, justice has been a long time coming. But they can take consolation in the fact that those responsible for this tragedy are now being held accountable."

"does not serve as a haven for human rights violators and others who have committed heinous acts."