KIGALI, January 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Organizations representing survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are angry with a plan to free up to 40,000 people who have pleaded guilty to participating in the genocide but have not yet been tried.

A spokesman for one of the groups, Ibuka, said that witnesses could be intimidated, the BBC online news service reported.

Some people were alarmed at the measure, believing it to be an amnesty but the justice ministry has confirmed that those set free will still be tried, the BBC said.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 Rwandan prisoners, mostly suspects in the 1994 genocide, are to be freed on remand this month, in line with instructions from President Paul Kagame, the Justice Minister said Monday, January 6.

“The measure affects between 30,000 and 40,000 people, almost all of whom confessed to taking part in the genocide and who were aged between 14 and 18 at the time, as well as those who are very old or seriously ill,” Jean de Dieu Mucyo told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“This is not an amnesty because these people will be tried while they are free,” the minister added.

Rwandan prisons currently house some 115,000 people, 90 percent of whom are accused of having taken part in the 1994 orchestrated slaughter of up to a million Tutsis and Hutus opposed to the genocide.

The release order will also benefit some minors and people accused of attempting to destabilize the country.

Since they were defeated in 1994, elements of the army that served Rwanda’s then Hutu government tried to attack the country from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo on several occasions.

Once the presidential order is carried out, there should be no minors left in Rwandan jails by the end of the month

Rwanda’s prisons are currently massively overcrowded with some 120,000 people awaiting trial for genocide, the BBC reported.

Fifteen Rwandans were sentenced to death earlier in the last three months of 2002 for their role in the 1994 genocide, a local human rights organization reported Tuesday, December 31.

Some 251 suspects in the orchestrated and rapid slaughter of up to a million people in the space of 100 days in 1994 were tried in the months October, November and December, the Rwandan League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights said in a statement, AFP reported.

Of these, 64 were convicted to life jail terms, 98 to shorter jail sentences, 16 were ordered to pay compensation and 58 were acquitted, the statement said.

Rwandan prisons currently house more than 100,000 genocide suspects.

Since trials began, more than 100 people have been sentenced to death but only 22 have been put to death.

These executions were carried out at the same time in public in May 1998.