The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on Monday started the trial of a businessman suspected involved in a church massacre in Rwanda 15 years ago, sources told Xinhua.

Gaspard Kanyarukiga, who was charged of killing around 2,000 Tutsis after the demolishment by the bulldozer of a church where 2,000 Tutsis had sought shelter, was arrested in South Africa in July 2004.

It may take months or years for judges to decide on Kanyarukiga's trial and what happened at the church, Xinhua learned.

Since its establishment in 1994 in Arusha in northeastern Tanzania, the Tribunal has delivered judgments on 39 people, including six acquittals.

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.

Source: Xinhua