The verdict has fallen for Claude Muhayimana.
The Paris Assize Court on Thursday (December 16th) sentenced the former driver to 14 years' imprisonment for complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity during the extermination of the Tutsi in Rwanda.
The general prosecutor's office requested 15 years in prison against this Franco-Rwandan on Wednesday, during the third trial in France linked to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Claude Muhayimana "contributed to the genocide as driver and transporter of the killers over a very long period of three months," said the prosecution, citing the testimonies of Rwandans heard by the court in recent weeks, whether they were survivors of the genocide or ex-killers.
An "actor of the genocide"
The accused was an "actor of the genocide" and an "essential cog in the device of this hunt for Tutsi", ruled the prosecution.
Of Hutu origin, Claude Muhayimana was tried since November 22 in Paris for "complicity" in genocide and crimes against humanity during the genocide that targeted the Tutsi minority, orchestrated by the extremist Hutu regime.
One of the worst tragedies of the 20th century which left more than 800,000 dead in appalling conditions, from April to July 1994.
"Around 72,000 people were killed in the prefecture of Kibuye, from the fetus to the old man, in open mass graves, a whole chain of life has been eradicated," recalled the prosecution.
"Do not forget the look, the depth, the humility of these survivors and the emotion which took hold of us while listening to them, they are the symbols of survival, they are the eternal constraint of the genocide", he said. it belongs.
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The accused, described by the defense as an "ordinary man", has lived in France for years and is a roadmender in Rouen (north-west).
The prosecution found the "words of the accused unreliable".
While he was the driver of a guesthouse in Kibuye (western Rwanda) in 1994, Claude Muhayimana is accused of having transported gendarmes and militiamen to places of massacres between April and July, in particular in the regions of Kibuye and Bisesero, where at least 50,000 people were massacred.
At the end of nearly four weeks of long hearings of fifty witnesses, the prosecution asked the jurors of the Assize Court to "not allow" Claude Muyahimana "to escape his responsibilities" in crimes with which he is accused "and to sentence him to 15 years of criminal imprisonment".
The accused could not "ignore" the destinations and disastrous objective of transport with the van he is accused of having driven in particular charged with "Interahamwe" militiamen (armed arms of the genocide) singing the song "Let's exterminate them", noted the accusation.
"He never dissociated himself from the acts to which he contributed".
He brought "a very concrete added value because it takes experience to transport killers on rough roads in the confines of this region", estimated the public prosecutor.
The defense, which pleaded coercion, described the accused as a "simple citizen", fallen into "the chaos of genocide".
"In the service of the genocidaires"
"What definitively destroys the argument of coercion is the duration and the frequency in the service of the genocide; it is a man who answers present", replied the public prosecutor.
"We ask you to find him guilty" of being an accomplice in genocide and an accomplice in crimes against humanity for the massacres of the hills of Kibuye, Gitwa, Bisesero and the school of Nyamishaba, declared the public prosecutor, who asked the jurors to partially acquit him for the massacres in the Kizenga hills.
>> To see: Reporters from France 24: Rwanda, chronicle of an announced genocide
Claude Muhayimana is an "opportunist man who adapts to chaotic circumstances, he has adapted to the genocide by putting himself at the service of the genocidaires", the accusation asserted.
This is the third trial in France linked to the genocide of the Tutsi but it is the first time that an "ordinary" citizen has been tried.
The other two concerned a former army captain and two Rwandan burgomasters.
"The testimonies given in front of this Assize Court are indelible proof of what happened in Kibuye, that cannot be forgotten," Dafroza Gauthier told the court on Tuesday - who lost a hundred members of his family in the genocide - co-founder of the Collectif des parties civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR), an association which fights against the impunity of alleged genocidal refugees in France.
"These innocent people who had known no other crimes than being Tutsi, whose bodies have never been found, justice is taking them out of this nameless grave," she whispered.
With AFP
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