Jean-Paul Akayesu

Jean-Paul Akayesu (born 1953, Taba, Rwanda) is a former teacher, school inspector, and Republican Democratic Movement (MDR) politician from Rwanda. He was the mayor of Taba commune in Gitarama prefecture from April 1993 until June 1994.

As mayor, Akayesu was responsible for performing executive functions and maintaining order in Taba, meaning he had command of the communal police and any gendarmes assigned to the commune. He was subject only to the prefect. He was considered well-liked and intelligent.

During the Rwandan Genocide of mid-1994, many Tutsis were killed in Akayesu's commune, and many others were subject to violence and other forms of hatred. Akayesu not only refrained from stopping the killings, but personally supervised the murder of various Tutsis. He also gave a death list to other Hutus, and ordered house-to-house searches to locate Tutsis.

Akayesu was arrested in Zambia in October 1995, making Zambia the first African nation to extradite criminals to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

In 1996 Godeliève Mukasarasi was contacted by the United Nations to assist in putting together a case against him. Mukasarasi was intimidated and her husband and daughter were killed but she found four people who were willing to testify. She was given an International Women of Courage Award in 2018 for this and other work.

He stood trial for 15 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, including rape during the Rwandan genocide and violations of the Geneva Convention. Pierre-Richard Prosper was the lead prosecutor. Akayesu's defence team argued that Akayesu had no part in the killings, and that he had been powerless to stop them. In short, the defence argued, Akayesu was being made a scapegoat for the crimes of the people of Taba.

Despite this defence, the ICTR found him guilty of 9 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, but Not Guilty of Grave Breaches of the Geneva Conventions. This was notable in that it was the first time that the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was enforced and in doing so clearly differentiated the mental element of the crime Genocide from the mental element in the breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The court clarified that Genocide is a specific crime that takes the accused outside of the scope of armed conflict. On October 2, 1998, Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment. Akayesu is serving his sentence in a prison in Mali.