Woman Who Testified About Massacres Killed

A woman who had given evidence to an international tribunal investigating Rwanda’s 1994 genocide was killed along with her husband and seven children, a U.N. official said Thursday. Suspicion fell on Hutu extremists.

The woman, whose name was not released, was murdered Jan. 5, according to deputy prosecutor Honore Rakotomanana. She was the mother of four of the seven children also killed in the house, he said.

She had testified to the tribunal about massacres in the village of Taba, 30 miles southwest of Kigali. The former mayor of Taba, JeanPaul Akayesu, is on trial before the tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, for the killings of 2,000 villagers.

Rakotomanana said he was reviewing the tribunal’s witness-protection program because of the slaying.