Nairobi — AS RWANDA prepares to commemorate the anniversary of the 1994 genocide, more than a quarter of the 90,000 prisoners held in detention camps have confessed to playing key roles in the massacres of 1994.

Due to the success of the confession campaign, the government has extended the confession deadline to enable more prisoners to come out openly and say what role they played, officials of the Ministry of Justice said.

According to Hannington Tayebwa, Head of Judicial Services in the Ministry of Justice, up to 32,385 prisoners have so far confessed since the last wave of releases in January last year.

Rwandan authorities had given detainees a deadline of March 15 for confessions but the date has been pushed forward by another year according to a Cabinet decision announced last week.

"The confessions have been massive because of the lenient sentences accorded to those who confess," said Mr Tayebwa. "This will be a positive step in the effort of finding out the truth about the genocide and particularly reconciling those who participated and those who lost relatives."

Those who have confessed and have been in prison longer than the sentences they face will be provisionally freed in the coming months, along with elderly and those with severe ailments. In addition to reducing overcrowding in prisons, the confessions will also help in easing the workload of prosecutors both in Rwanda's national courts and at the United Nations Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), sitting in Arusha, Tanzania.

However, critics say that the prisoners are at times obliged to confess in order to receive lesser punishments.

In February last year, close to 25,000 prisoners who had pleaded guilty of genocide were provisionally released from detention centres following a presidential decree.

Since September 1996, a total of 60,238 prisoners have voluntarily confessed to playing a role in the 1994 killings, whose impact was far reaching, destabilising neighbouring countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Burundi.

The Rwanda government puts the number of detainees related to genocide at 90,000. It was announced in early March that more than 4,500 common law prisoners would be freed, probably this week.

The release plan comes as Rwanda prepares to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1994 genocide on April 7. Up to 10 heads of state and government are expected to attend the ceremony.

A committee set up to co-ordinate the event said it was looking for remains of people who were not buried so that they were given decent burials.

After their release, the prisoners are to be sent to "solidarity camps" for one or two months. The camps are aimed at "re-educating" former fighters and genocide suspects and informing them of the changes in Rwanda since 1994.