Rwanda plans to build in Kigali a research and documentation centre on the genocide committed against Tutsis in 1994, according to the government newspaper, La Nouvelle Relève (The New Relief).

The centre, which will primarily be "an instrument at the service of memory", will be built by the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), which was established by the Rwandan government, reports the bi-monthly.

The visitors will be able to find testimonies as well as books on the preparation and the execution of genocide, according to the CNLG.

General consultations on the project have already started.

Rwandan linguist, Laurent Nkusi, one of the researchers who took part in the consultations, says the centre would comprise three departments: studies, research and publications, education and teaching in the hope of eradicating genocide ideology and finally, a department in charge of the commemoration and mourning.

It will be built on Nyanza Hill, a highly symbolic place because approximately 5 000 people who had taken refuge there were massacred on 11 April 1994 after the withdrawal of the Belgian contingent of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) which was guarding refugees.

The Belgian government had decided to repatriate its UNAMIR troops after 10 of its soldiers were killed on 7 April 1994 by elements of the Rwandan regular army.

Nyanza also shelters the head office of Ibuka (remember in Kinyarwanda), the main organization of genocide survivors.

Meanwhile, over 20 witnesses are expected to testify in defence of the oldest accused Yusuf Munyakazi, 74, charged for genocide and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), affirmed Wednesday Tanzanian Professor, Jwani Mwaikusa, lead defence counsel for the defendant.

Prof. Mwaikusa said his defence case would ‘'definitely'' began on August 31, as previously scheduled and would last three weeks, the time allocated by Trial Chamber I, presided by Cameroonian Judge Florence Rita Array.

He was speaking to Hirondelle News Agency over the phone from Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian commercial city.

The prosecution rested its case on June 4, after fielding 12 witnesses to support accusations against the defendant.

According to testimonies heard during prosecution case, the former businessman has been accused to have toured the churches of the prefecture of Cyangugu (south-western Rwanda) in 1994, inciting killings of Tutsis.

Prosecuted for genocide, complicity in the genocide and extermination, Munyakazi, has pleaded his innocence.

Munyakazi was arrested in May 2004 in east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where he pretended to be an Imam, under the name of Mzee Mandevu (literally, the bearded old man in Kiswahili).

The trial began on 22 April, 2009.