Justice delayed...

...is justice denied, the saying goes. But maybe sometimes it's not actually denied, just, well, dented. Today's BBC reports that

[a] former Rwandan mayor has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for organising the slaughter of 20,000 people during the 1994 genocide.

Sylvestre Gacumbitsi led the massacre of thousands of people sheltering in Nyarubuye Church, which was one of the worst events in the genocide

that resulted in the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a period of 100 days in 1994 - an average of 8,000 murders a day.

Gacumbitsi was accused of distributing weapons and urging the murder and rape of Tutsis by Hutus as well as

announcing by megaphone that Tutsi women should be raped and sexually degraded.

He also told a large number of Tutsis that they would be safe in Nyarubuye church - and then led militias inside to kill them. He was convicted of genocide, extermination and rape.

Eight years after being set up, the ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda]has convicted 21 people of genocide - six of whom are serving their sentences in Mali.

Twenty suspects are on trial, while another 22 are in detention, waiting for their trials to start.

The echoes continue down through the years, well beyond the courtroom, as some of the strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo is drawn from spillover from Rwanda and the continuing bitterness and hatred.