Eugène Rwamucyo in 2009 in Lille.

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PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP

French examining magistrates ordered the referral to the Paris Assize Court of Rwandan doctor Eugène Rwamucyo for “genocide” and “crime against humanity”.

This 61-year-old man, who now resides in Belgium, is also sent back for "complicity" and "criminal association with a view to the preparation of these crimes" committed between April and July 1994 in Rwanda, a period during which the killings took approximately 800,000 dead, mainly among the Tutsi minority.

A judicial investigation opened in 2007

"My client formally disputes the accusations," responded to AFP his lawyer, Me Philippe Meilhac, who announced that he wanted to appeal the order.

"If, however, a trial should be held, Eugène Rwamucyo will face it with serenity", he added.

It was following a complaint against Eugène Rwamucyo lodged in particular by the Collectif des parties civililes pour le Rwanda (CPCR) that an investigation was opened in 2007 in Lille (north), then moved to Paris the following year .

He is notably accused by Kigali of having participated in meetings of genocidal officials in Butare (southern Rwanda) in 1994, including one under the aegis of the Prime Minister at the time, Jean Kambanda, sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

He is also suspected of having directed the mass burial operations of the bodies of Tutsi civilians during the massacres committed between April and July 1994, and ordered the completion and burial of survivors, according to elements of the order of the judges known to AFP.

Arrested at a funeral in 2010, then released

"My client was a medical officer in the Butare region and as such, he was responsible for the burial of the bodies," Meilhac explained.

"Now he is accused of having taken advantage of this essential mission to attack survivors", he regretted.

Eugène Rwamucyo was sentenced in absentia in 2007 in Rwanda to life imprisonment.

A doctor at Maubeuge hospital (North), he was suspended in October 2009 when the management of the establishment learned that he was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Kigali.

He was then fired.

Pursuant to this mandate, Rwamucyo was finally arrested in May 2010 in Sannois (Paris region) when he had just attended the funeral of another Rwandan, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, co-founder of the Radio and television free of the Thousand Collines, the extremist anti-Tutsi radio station.

The Versailles Court of Appeal, however, opposed his extradition in September 2010, ordering his release.

He was first indicted in 2013 for "participation in an agreement to commit the crime of genocide", then in 2018 for "genocide" and "crimes against humanity", and placed under judicial control, with ban on leaving the Schengen area.

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