KIGALI, June 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The Rwandan government has challenged a ruling by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) against a genocide perpetrator, the country's General Jean De Dieu Mucyo said Friday at a press conference.

    Rusumo Sylvestre Gacumbitsi, a former mayor, who led the massacre of thousands of people sheltering in Nyarubuye Church, inone of the worst events in the genocide, was sentenced to stay in prison for 30 years.

    "Though we have never been contented with the first court rulings, this time, it's too much and I am sure every Rwandan is against the ruling," Mucyo said.

    "As the high penal code of ICTR, he really deserved a life sentence," Mucyo said, adding that they should send him here and serve the sentence in the country where he committed crimes.

    He noted that Gacumbitsi was supposed to come here since his family is even based in the central African country regardless of other prisoners who claim that their family members are out of the country.

    Gacumbitsi was found guilty of genocide, extermination and rapeby the ICTR, but was cleared of conspiracy to commit genocide and murder, though Mucyo alleged that he was the chief instigator of the massacres at Nyarubuye church.

    The ICTR, established by the United Nations Security Council in November 1994, is authorized to try those plotters of the genocide during which some one million people, mostly Tutsis, were killed by Hutu extremists.

    The tribunal is currently holding 66 suspects. So far, some 18 accused have been sentenced, three acquitted, while 31 others are in custody. Gacumbitsi was arrested in June 2001 in Tanzania. Enditem¡¡