A crowd of tens of thousands had assembled at the football field by the time the four condemned prisoners appeared.
To the spectators' cheers, three men and one woman were taken out of a van and led to four wooden stakes driven into the ground half way down the side of the pitch. They were wearing official Rwandan prison uniforms, pink tops and shorts for the men, a pink tunic for the woman. All were barefoot.
The four betrayed no emotion as they were bound by ropes to the posts. First their legs were tied, then their waists, finally their chests. A murmur ran through the crowd and spectators strained to see as black hoods were placed over their heads.
Gendarmes, supervised by an official wearing a jacket and tie, placed rectangles of white cloth over the prisoners' chests. At the centre of each piece of cloth was a black square marking the spot where shots would be fired into their hearts.
It was 10.30 a.m. The spectators were gathered 30 or 40 deep around three sides of the hillside pitch in Nyamirambo, a poor suburb of the capital, Kigali.
"This is an historic event," said one well-dressed man. "This is justice being done."
"This will serve as an example to people who might try to organise genocide in future," said another, a young man in jeans. Then they were quiet, reluctant to say any more. The mood was tense and the attitude of the local spectators towards the only white people - foreign journalists - clearly hostile. Further questions were greeted with monosyllabic answers or silence.
Soldiers with sticks frequently beat back the surging crowd. At 10.50 a.m. two white Land Rovers, one with "Traffic Police" written on its side, pulled up at the corner of the pitch. Out jumped five gendarmes in blue uniform. Over their faces they wore small black drapes with eyeholes. With no ceremony, they dashed up to the four prisoners and, at a distance of no more than 12 feet, pumped volley after volley of automatic gunfire into their chests.
The crowd cheered and clapped as a sixth gendarme raised his pistol and in turn shot each drooping head at point-blank range.
"That's the way my family was killed," said one man. "They have to understand life is precious. They killed nearly a million and now four of them have been shot. But it's the lesson that counts, not the numbers."
The bodies were untied, placed on stretchers and loaded into the backs of the vehicles. Spectators who tried to advance on to the pitch were beaten back by security men.
Most of the crowd filed away quickly. Some journalists were pushed and stoned by angry mobs. By midday yesterday firing squads had publicly executed 22 people convicted for their role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
The executions were the first such punishments for genocide since the time of the Nuremberg trials after the second World War. Those shot had been found guilty by Rwandan courts, not of having themselves wielded machetes or fired shots, but of having led the killings during the genocide.
A Genocide Law adopted the year before last made provision for execution of those deemed to have planned, instigated or supervised genocide or crimes against humanity. The law was recently amended to enable executions to take place in public.
Foremost among those executed in Kigali yesterday was Froduald Karamira, the first major suspect accused of playing a leading part to appear in court.
Formerly vice-president of a hardline Hutu group called MDR Power, Karamira appeared daily on Hutu radio stations exhorting the Hutu majority to "cleanse" their communities of Tutsi "cockroaches".
The others who died beside him yesterday were Elie Nshimiyimana, once director of a school of agriculture, Silas Munyagishari, a public prosecutor, and Virginie Mukankusi, a schools inspector in Kigali.
Human rights groups have voiced concern about the conduct of the genocide trials, particularly about the early ones. Amnesty International says that defendants have often been denied adequate time and facilities to prepare their cases. Some have been given notice of their trial dates and access to their files only days before the start of judicial proceedings. Few judicial officials have adequate legal training.
At least 330 people have been tried in Rwanda on charges relating to the genocide. A third of those have been convicted and sentenced to death. Another third have been convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Some 125,000 languish in poor conditions in overcrowded prisons awaiting trial. Most survivors of the genocide seem happy that executions are taking place and that they are being held in public.
Diplomats and aid workers in Rwanda, however, fear that the executions will provoke more concerted attacks from Hutu extremists who continue to destabilise the country.
More public executions are due to be held in coming months. It is unlikely that many Rwandans will shed tears as the guilty are tied to stakes and shot through the heart.