Kigali, January 11th, 2005 (FH)- The commencement of genocide trials in Rwanda’s semi-traditional courts originally set for January 15th this year has been postponed by two weeks, the president of the national Gacaca department told Hirondelle News Agency on Tuesday.

“We are looking at the beginning of February”, Domitila Mukantaganzwa said.

She however said that the start of pre-trial hearings in over 6,000 Gacaca courts would go ahead this weekend as scheduled.

“All materials have been delivered to the courts and mobilisation of communities is going on”, she said.

Gacaca courts were set up over two years ago to speed up genocide trials stalled in regular courts.

Up until now, only 700 out of over 10,000 courts have been operational. These courts completed their pre-trial hearings and therefore should be the ones beginning trials next month. Pre-trial hearings are divided into seven stages that typically take several months to complete for each court.

Most previous schedules for the start of various Gacaca processes have been postponed several times.

An estimated One million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Some 80,000 suspects are currently in custody in connection with the killings. The number is expected to raise to half a million in the course of Gacaca hearings.

GG/GF/FH(GA’0111e)