/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Former senior defense official Theoneste Bagosora has been convicted of instigating Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and sentenced to life in prison. Bagosora and two co-defendants were found by a UN tribunal to have led a committee that plotted the massacre of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It is the first time the Rwanda tribunal has convicted anyone of organizing the killings.

More than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda's genocide.

Along with Bagosora, former military commanders Anatole Nsegiyumva and Alloys Ntabakuze were also found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and given life sentences.

Bagosora, 67, and the two senior military officers were found to have organized, trained and armed the Interahamwe militia, which was responsible for most of the killing.

They were also responsible for drawing up a list of Tutsis and moderate Hutus who opposed their vision of an ethnically pure Rwanda. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania, rejected the defense’s argument that the killing was not organized, and therefore not genocide.

Bagosora’s lawyer, Raphael Constant, said his client would appeal against the verdict.

Brigadier Gratien Kabiligi, the former chief of military operations, who was on trial with Bagosora and the two other men, was cleared of all charges and ordered to be released from custody immediately.

In another verdict on Thursday, the tribunal sentenced Protais Zigiranyirazo, 57, to 20 years in jail for his part in the genocide.

Mr Zigiranyirazo, a brother-in-law of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, was accused of ordering Hutus to kill 48 people in two incidents.

The sentences will be welcomed by the government in Rwanda, which has come to regard the tribunal as a key part of the process of justice and reconciliation.

Bagosora has been in custody since 1996, when he was arrested in Cameroon.

Prosecutors said Bagosora assumed control of military and political affairs in Rwanda when President Habyarimana's plane was shot down in 1994 - the catalyst for the genocide.

However, the indictment alleges that he set out to "prepare the apocalypse" as far back as 1990, BBC reports.