Four former Rwandan ministers have gone on trial charged with playing key roles in a 1994 genocide, including buying weapons and inciting the slaughter of about 800,000 people.
The UN tribunal in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha is keen to show progress in trying former top officials to counter Rwandan government criticism that it has been slow to bring the masterminds of the massacres to justice.
"The prosecutor will show that from April 9th, 1994 wherever the ministers went on their campaigns, they were soon followed by blood-letting and displacement of Tutsi population," said prosecution lawyer Mr Paul Ng'Arua."They blazed throughout Rwanda a path which the prosecutor describes as the path of hell.
"They took affirmative actions to encourage the killings, as well as to conceal, mischaracterise or rationalise the killings of Tutsis."
The four accused were dressed in dark suits and sat listening to the proceedings through translator's headphones.
Video footage was shown of the accused being sworn in as interim ministers in 1994, interspersed with grisly images of mass slaughter, piles of corpses and machete-wielding militias.