Kampala, 9 January 2005 1. Wide of Uganda High Court 2. Security officer checking people entering court with metal detector 3. Jean Paul Bizimana (suspect) entering court accompanied by policeman 4. Wide of gallery in court 5. Court official 6. Bizimana sitting in court with policeman next to him 7. Bizimana talking to policeman 8. Bizimana 9. Wide of judge John Bosco Katutsi sitting in court 10. Close-up judge 11. SOUNDBITE: (English) Norris Maranga, suspect's defence lawyer: "We'll only go for an appeal because we are not satisfied. That is when we can raise our grounds. If we go through then we will say, okay it is good enough, and if we do not go through still we will have another chance, and that is when we can say whether we are satisfied or not." 12. Bizimana with police leaning on desk 13. Wide of gallery 14. British diplomat in gallery File Kampala, 3 March 1999 15. Exterior of mortuary 16. Bodies of tourists lying in mortuary Bwindi National Park 17. Sign in front of lodge: "Buhoma African Pearl Safaris Homestead" 18. Porters carrying supplies to lodge 19. Lodge grounds 20. Various of tourists in lodge 21. View from lodge of forest STORYLINE: A judge convicted on Monday, a Rwandan rebel of killing eight tourists from the United States, Britain and New Zealand and a Ugandan tour guide who were on a gorilla-watching trip in 1999. Jean Paul Bizimana, alias Xavier van Dame, was to be sentenced at a hearing scheduled for Friday. Three other men were arrested in March 2003 in connection with the killings, and have been sent to the United States to stand trial in the deaths of the two American victims. Rwanda rebels hacked and bludgeoned the travellers to death in a remote rain forest near Uganda's borders with Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda where the party had gone to see the rare animals. The rebels specifically targeted English speaking people in a bid to weaken US and British support for the new Rwandan government which had rejected France's significant influence in the former Francophone colony. Defence lawyer Norris Maranga said he would appeal against the verdict. Bizimana, a member of the former Rwandan army which played a key role in the 1994 genocide of more than a half-million people in his country, was arrested in 2004 near the border with Rwanda and taken to Uganda's capital, Kampala, to face nine counts of murder. The victims were Americans Rob Haubner and his wife, Susan Miller, of Portland, Oregon; Rhonda Avis, 27, and Michelle Strathern, 26, from New Zealand; Britons Martin Friend, 24, Steven Robert, 27 and Mark Lindgren, 23, and Joanne Cotton, a driver for the London-based outfitter that organised trips to Africa, and Ugandan guide Ross Wagaba. They had been in a group of about 30 tourists visiting Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The rebels invaded the tourist campground on 1 March 1999, and forced 17 tourists, who spoke English, to remove shoes and begin marching, according to the indictment. During the march, eight people were killed with machetes and axes. Miller also was allegedly raped by one of the suspects, the indictment says. Nine people survived, including one who was given a note by the rebels warning the United States and Britain not to interfere in Rwanda. Similar notes were found on the bodies of two of those killed. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/b3f249179aabed994d3673b778ded8f2 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

• published: 21 Jul 2015
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