This news from Kigali: Rwanda set the first executions today in its trials in the nation’s 1994 genocide, saying it will send 33 people before firing squads. The 33 defendants were convicted of involvement in the Hutu government-orchestrated slaughter of more than a half-million people, most of them minority Tutsis, between April and July 1994. The 90-day bloodbath tore apart Rwandan society and left hundreds of thousands of survivors seeking justice. The condemned are scheduled to be executed on Friday. The government denied their request for amnesty yesterday after courts turned down their appeals.