Name Maria Kisito | ||
Sister Maria Kisito, born Julienne Mukabutera, is a Rwandan Benedictine nun who was convicted and sentenced to 12 years for her active role in the deaths an estimated five to seven thousand people who sought refuge at their convent in southern Rwanda during the Rwandan Genocide.
Her Mother Superior, Sister Gertrude, received a 15-year prison sentence. Witnesses had observed that the two nuns actively directed Rwandan death squadrons to their refuge and even supplied gasoline to burn down the building with the civilians inside. After serving half of her 12-year sentence in a Belgian prison, Kisito was released in June 2007.
Testimony from the trial
On April 22, 1994, Séraphine Mukamana had hidden herself in a garage when militias attacked a convent in Sovu in southern Rwanda. "We sought refugee in the garage and closed and barricaded the doors. Outside a bloodbath is going on. Suddenly an orphan begins to weep as it gets too hot in the garage. At once, the killers approach the garage." As the refugees refuse to come out, the militia leader, Emmanuel Rekeraho, decides to burn them alive in the garage. "'The nuns are coming to help us. They are bringing gasoline,' I heard [Rekeraho] say. Looking through a hole that the militiamen meanwhile had made in the wall, I indeed saw Sister Gertrude and Sister Kisito. The latter was carrying a petrol can. Shortly upon that, the garage is set on fire."