ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) - The landmark genocide trial of a Rwandan Catholic priest charged with directing the massacre of 2,000 of his Tutsi parishioners in 1994 got off to a difficult start as the accused joined dozens of fellow detainees in boycotting the UN tribunal's proceedings.
Athanase Seromba was among 44 prisoners involved in the the three-day protest at the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) against proposals to move detainees and case files to Rwanda itself.
So were four top military commanders, including a former army chief of staff, whose genocide trial also began in their absence Monday.
Seromba's case is the first of a Roman Catholic priest at the ICTR, although two others are awaiting trial there.
Courts in Rwanda have convicted several priests -- although two were later acquitted on appeal -- and, in 2001, a Belgian court found two Catholic nuns guilty of playing a role in the genocide.
Seromba, 41, who turned himself in two years ago, has pleaded not guilty to the charges levelled against him: genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
He is alleged to have prepared and supervised, together with local authorities, the April 1994 massacre of more than 2,000 Tutsis who had sought refuge in his church in the western parish of Nyange from extremist Hutu killers.
Prosecutors also claim Seromba refused to hear the confessions of those in the church before they died or to feed them, saying there was no point giving them food since they were about to be killed.
The priest is alleged to have ordered the church, packed with more than 2,000 terrified Tutsis, to be bulldozed. The few who managed to survive were quickly killed by the Hutu extremists.
Seromba played "a direct role in the preparation, planning and execution of the massacres," according to the prosecution.
His lawyers will argue that although he was present at the time of the killings, he was powerless to intervene.
Over the course of 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 people, mostly from Rwanda's Tutsi minority, were slaughtered in a campaign carefully orchestrated at the highest levels of the then Hutu regime, with which the Vatican enjoyed close relations.
The Pope visited Rwanda in 1990.
Seromba left Rwanda after Tutsi rebels seized power in July 1994, putting an end to the genocide, and hid out out in neigbouring Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Kenya before settling in Italy, where the Diocese of Florence gave him shelter and allowed him to practise in a Tuscan village.
After pressure mounted from international human rights organisations and the ICTR issued a warrant for his arrest, which Italy initially refused to honour, the priest finally surrendered to the court in February 2002.
Seromba continues to enjoy the support of the Vatican, which insists there is no evidence to prove the priest's guilt and which has a reputation for dragging its feet when it comes to cooperating with various jurisdictions trying to prosecute its officials.
In a letter to ICTR President Eric Mose, the protesting detainees -- suspects on trial, awaiting verdicts or appeal rulings -- threatened to start a hunger strike if the tribunal failed clarify its "real position" about what will happen to outstanding cases when the tribunal's mandate expires.
Under deadlines set by the UN Security Countil, ongoing ICTR investigations must be wrapped by the end of this year, trials in progress by 2008 and appeals by 2010.
The detainees and their lawyers believe conditions in Rwanda would not allow fair trials to be held there.