Trial of former Rwandan prefect Laurent Bucyibaruta: the accused claims his innocence
The Paris court in the 17th arrondissement (illustration image).
AFP - PHILIPPE LOPEZ
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
The trial for genocide of the former Rwandan prefect Laurent Bucyibaruta ends this Tuesday, July 12 before the assizes of Paris.
This Tuesday morning, the hearing lasted three minutes and the accused spoke one last time.
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With our special correspondent at the Paris court
,
Amélie Tulet
Beige jacket a little too wide on the shoulders,
Laurent Bucyibaruta, 78
, remained seated facing the court.
“
I would like to address the survivors of the genocide.
I would like to tell them that it never occurred to me to abandon them to the killers.
Is it for lack of courage?
Could I save them?
These are questions, even remorse, that have haunted me for more than 28 years.
I have never been on the side of the killers, I have never accepted these atrocities
.
In two months of trial, this is the first time that the former prefect of Gikongoro has expressed himself in this way, and that he has used the word "
remorse
".
Words that echo the pleadings of his lawyers
.
According to them, during these weeks from April to July 1994, Laurent Bucyibaruta was a moderate Hutu prefect who did not support the genocidal project.
An isolated prefect, overwhelmed by events and without real power to prevent the massacres.
“
You don't stop a genocide with a few gendarmes.
We are not complicit if we do not have the means to act
”.
The defense therefore requests an acquittal.
The prosecution, on the contrary, invites the court to see behind the 78-year-old man, weakened by illness, the one he was in 1994: a 50-year-old prefect experienced in the exercise of power, ambitious and who, according to the lawyers general, took part at his level in the organization of the killings which caused several tens of thousands of deaths in his prefecture.
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