Former Rwandan president pardoned

"It's a good gesture, it's done in good faith, it's done for the good," Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told The Associated Press by telephone from the Rwandan capital, Kigali. About 9,000 people were released last year, he said.

Karugarama said Bizimungu's release was the first full presidential pardon Kagame has given. He said he did not know Kagame's reasons for the pardon.

"I should imagine that the president, in exercising his discretion, is part of the forgiving process," he said. "It's all part of a large, wide reconstruction and reconciliation."

He added that he believed Bizimungu returned to his home in Kigali after his release. Bizimungu could not be reached for comment.

Bizimungu was convicted in 2004 for treason, threatening national security, engaging in corruption and encouraging ethnic divisions in the divided country.

A member of Rwanda's Hutu majority, Bizimungu became president in 1994 after Tutsi-led rebels ended the genocide and set up a government of national unity. More than half a million people, most of them minority Tutsis, were killed by Hutu militia groups during the 100-day slaughter.

He resigned in March 2000 after disagreements with Kagame over the prosecution of ministers accused of corruption and mismanagement. He was arrested in 2002, and in 2004 sentenced by Rwanda's High Court to 10 years' imprisonment.

In 2006, the nation's Supreme Court overturned a lower court's acquittal on a treason charge and sentenced Bizimungu to an additional five years in prison for embezzling US$60,000 intended for victims of the genocide.