Elizaphan Ntakirutimana

Infobox Person
name = Elizaphan Ntakirutimana
birth_date = 1924
birth_place =
death_date = January 22, 2007 (age 82)
death_place =

Elizaphan Ntakirutimana (1924, Kibuye, Rwanda – January 22 2007, Arusha, Tanzania) was a pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Rwanda.

In February 2003, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found both Ntakirutimana and his son Dr. Gérard, a physician who had completed graduate work in the US prior to returning to Rwanda, guilty of genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994. The Tribunal found it proven beyond reasonable doubt that Ntakirutimana had transported armed attackers to the Mugonero complex, where they killed hundreds of Tutsi refugees, although there was no direct evidence that this had occurred. He was convicted on the basis of eyewitness accounts, most of them contradictory. A number of the convictions were overturned on appeal but the sentence was unchanged. Ntakirutimana was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. On the 6th December 2006, after serving 10 years in arrest or prison, he was released and he died within a month of release.

Ramsey Clark, Defence Counsel for Ntakirutimana, described the clergyman as a pacifist who couldn't even "wring the neck of a chicken". Fact|date=February 2007

A letter addressed to Ntakirutimana by Tutsi Seventh-day Adventist pastors, which he showed to author Philip Gourevitch, provided the title for Gourevitch's 1998 book "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families". The book accuses Ntakirutimana of complicity in the deaths of the refugees. However, although Gourevitch had written a book which was key to the prosecution and was listed as a Prosecution witness at the trial, he did not show up to testify.

Elizaphan Ntakirutimana died on January 22 2007, aged 82. [http://69.94.11.53/ENGLISH/PRESSREL/2007/512.htm ICTR Press Release]