A former Rwandan army colonel who was imprisoned in Mali for his role in the slaughter of 800,000 people during the 1994 genocide has died.
At the time of the killings, Théoneste Bagosora, 80, was a senior official in Rwanda’s ministry of defense.
He was condemned to life in jail by an UN-backed criminal tribunal, although it was eventually reduced to 35 years.
His son Achille informed the BBC that he died in a Bamako hospital while being treated for cardiac problems.
During the genocide, about 800,000 people, largely from the Tutsi ethnic group, were killed in under 100 days.
The genocide began on April 6, 1994, when a plane transporting Rwanda’s then-President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down, killing everyone on board.
Bagosora was apprehended in Cameroon two years later, where he had fled after Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front seized control in Rwanda.
He was convicted guilty of crimes against humanity and organizing the death of various political officials, including Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2008.
