Tanzania ? A former Rwandan mayor accused of participating in the killing of several thousand people who had sought refuge in a church pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of murder and extermination related to the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans.

Paul Bisengimana changed his previous plea of not guilty after striking a deal with prosecutors under which they dropped 10 other charges. Those charges included genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct incitement to commit genocide, crimes against humanity including murder, rape, torture and other inhumane acts and violations of the Geneva Conventions.

The former mayor of Gikoro was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with having organized and participated in the killing of several thousand people who sought refuge in a church in his town near Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

Bisengimana was a member of the extremist government from Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic majority. That administration orchestrated the slaughter of more than 500,000 people, most of them minority Tutsis.