ARUSHA, Tanzania, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Thursday sentenced a former Rwanda top military officer Tharcisse Muvunyi for inciting the killings of ethnic Tutsis through his speech.

The presiding judge of the three-bench chamber Justice Dennis Byron said that the former soldier was guilty of the Tutsi killings at the Gikore Centre, Butare Prefecture in Southern Rwanda, where he gave an inflammatory speech in May 1994.

"In giving such a speech, the Chamber finds that there is no doubt that Muvunyi intended to incite the audience to commit acts of genocide," Byron stated in his eight-page summary of judgement.

"The Chamber unanimously finds Muvunyi guilty beyond reasonable doubt of committing direct and public incitement to commit genocide at the Gikore Centre in mid to late May 1994," said Judge Byron before a fully-packed court room, which also include the accused himself.

Muvunyi is the first retrial in the history of the 15-year old ICTR. In the first trial, the ex-officer of the Rwandan Armed Forces had been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

However, the ICTR Appeals Chamber overturned the lower court's judgment towards end of 2008, and ordered a new trial on one count only -- the speech at Gikore, which prosecution claims contained proverbs in Kinyarwanda inciting majority Hutus to kill ethnic Tutsis.

William Taylor, the lead counsel of the accused, said that he will appeal against the sentence as he was completely unsatisfied by the chamber's ruling. The Prosecution said it was contended with the ruling.

Since the establishment of the U.N Court in November 1994, eight persons have been acquitted and 41 convicted. Trials are underway for at least 16 accused.

The U.N Security Council has directed the Tribunal to complete all first instance trials by end of 2010 and Appeals by 2012.

The 100-day Rwandan genocide in 1994 was sparked off shortly after the late president Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was secretively shot down on April 6, 1994, which killed some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.