GITARAMA, Rwanda -- Augustin Mbwabahatse is an illiterate Hutu peasant farmer. The father of eight is also about to become a judge, deciding the fate of some of the thousands of genocide suspects languishing in Rwandan jails.

Mbwabahatse, 64, is one of 250,000 Rwandans chosen to be community judges, trying those among their peers who are accused of taking part in the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus from April to June 1994.

He says he has been chosen as a judge because of a "spotless character", adding he was in hospital throughout the genocide so played no part in the 100-day slaughter by extremists from the Hutu majority in the Central African country.

"Everyone knows about my character, there's no doubt about it," he said. "I wasn't in any place where genocide happened." Eight years after the massacres, the backlog of suspects still awaiting trial is enormous. There are 115,000 people behind bars and many would be likely to die before their cases would be heard under the existing justice system.

But on Tuesday, Rwanda will inaugurate a new court system.

"Gacaca" courts, a revamped version of a traditional form of community justice, will allow normal Rwandans to try each other, with the aim of clearing the long list of unheard cases.

Focusing on confession and apology, the Gacaca courts are also intended to ease the way to national reconciliation.

Sentences will range from an acquittal to life in prison.

But under Gacaca, those who confess and plead guilty before a set date will have their sentences reduced.

The "Truth Heals", reads the poster which advertises the new courts. Beside the caption, a bright yellow sun rises over Rwanda's hills and villagers take their neighbors by the hand.

"Grass" Courts Gacaca -- meaning grass -- courts were traditionally used by village communities who would gather on a patch of grass to resolve conflicts between two families, employing the heads of each household as judges.

Under the new system, judges will sit in panels of 19.

Prisoners will be tried in the villages where they are accused of committing their crimes, and it is the villagers themselves who will testify for or against them.

The judges were elected last October and come from all sections of society.

Liberata Musabyimana is a 38-year-old Hutu mother of three, the headmistress of a primary school in Ruhango village in Gitarama Province in central Rwanda. Her husband is also one of the prisoners awaiting trial.

"When we came back from the camps in (Democratic Republic of) Congo in 1996 he was accused and put in prison," she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

In the nearby village of Gatagara, Venant Bitereye is also preparing to judge his peers. The middle-aged Tutsi, a headmaster at a school for the handicapped, was uncomfortable talking about the genocide.

"In 1994, there were massacres within the population, that is to say one part of the population tried to massacre the other," was all he would say, adding only that he was a "widower of the genocide".

All those testifying have their own dark stories, and many analysts say Gacaca will be only a small step in the healing process.

"It's too soon to talk about reconciliation in Rwanda," Jean-Jacques Badibanga, a Congolese legal expert working for Avocats Sans Frontieres (Lawyers Without Borders).

"The hope is that Gacaca will give Rwandans a forum in which to talk about what actually happened during the genocide and that later, much later, they will be able to move toward reconciliation." The mass murder of Tutsis and Hutu moderates, often with primitive weapons like machetes or hoes, has left both ethnic groups with long-lasting trauma.

While Tutsi survivors are the most obviously affected, the Hutu population -- whether innocent bystanders or killers -- also suffered in the aftermath of the killings.

Many families were separated when Hutus fled to refugee camps in Congo after the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) defeated the Hutu-led government and the genocide stopped.

Many mothers still have no idea whether their sons are alive or dead. Everyone has a story to tell.

"They killed all my brothers and sisters except one, they killed my little half-brother who was handicapped," said one young man, who did not want to be named.

"I took my elder brother's oldest surviving son and brought him to Kigali to raise him as mine, but the child died of cholera the following year. Now I'm alone." Some human rights groups have said they are skeptical about reviving the system, saying it will put justice into the hands of a public already implicated in the genocide, but most acknowledge Rwanda has little choice.

The first Gacaca courts will start operating on June 19 in one sector of each of the country's 12 provinces.

Authorities hope that courts will be up and running throughout the country within two months.

Those charged with the most serious crimes of leading the genocide or killing large numbers of people will continue to be tried by the country's conventional justice system, or through a special UN tribunal in neighboring Tanzania, Reuters said.