[JURIST] An appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) [official website] on Friday increased the sentence for former Rwandan mayor Sylvestre Gacumbitsi [case materials] to life in prison [press release], revising his 30-year prison sentence [JURIST report], handed down in 2004. The ICTR convicted [judgment] Gacumbitsi of genocide and crimes against humanity [indictment, PDF] in 2004, in connection to inciting rape and abuse of ethnic Tutsi women in the town of Rusamo in 1994.

The appeals chamber ruled [judgment summary] that public statements by Gacumbitsi during the genocide encouraged the rape and killing of Tutsis, and that Gacumbitsi personally supervised massacres in Rwanda's Kinbungo province. The events in 1994 led by the Hutu government resulted in an estimated one million deaths, mostly of Tutsis. IRIN has more.