Athanase Seromba surrenders to the ICTR after being accused of participating in the slaughter of the Tutsis

Athanase Seromba, a priest accused of partaking in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw over 800 000 tutsis die at the hands of Hutu militia, handed himself over to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on 6 February 2002. Some 2 000 Tutsis hiding from Hutu rebels sought refuge in Seromba’s church, only for him to order the Hutu militia to bulldoze the church and shoot any survivors. Seromba then fled to Italy disguised as Anastasio Sumba Bura and continued to work as a priest. He handed himself over to the ICTR following pressure from the UN’S Chief War Crimes Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. Seromba was prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence was increased to life in 2008 after the ICTR decided that he had played a bigger role in the crime than it had initially found.