Enlarge image

Convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity: Sosthene Munyemana in October 2010

Photo: Patrick Bernard / AFP

The genocide in Rwanda was one of the worst crimes against humanity since the Holocaust. Almost 30 years after the genocide, a former doctor from the East African country has been sentenced to 24 years in prison. A jury in France found 68-year-old Sosthene Munyemana guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and involvement in a conspiracy to prepare these crimes.

His lawyers immediately announced their intention to appeal. The former gynecologist, who has lived in southwestern France since 1994, had denied all allegations. The prosecution had demanded 30 years in prison.

Munyemana is said to have been close to the Rwandan interim government, which had called for the mass murder of the Tutsi ethnic group in 1994. According to the prosecution, he had taken part in a meeting at which roadblocks were decided, at which Tutsis were arrested in order to later kill them.

Munyemana also had the key to an office where several members of the Tutsi ethnic group were imprisoned in undignified conditions for days before they were killed. The defendant, on the other hand, had stated that he had been a moderate Hutu and did not want to imprison the threatened people, but to hide and rescue them.

Between April and July 1994, about 800,000 people were killed in the genocide in Rwanda, most of them from the Tutsi ethnic group, but also moderate Hutu. The trial of Munyemana was the sixth trial in France against alleged accomplices of the genocide. Before the former doctor, six men in France – three high-ranking officials, a military officer, a gendarme and a driver – were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 years to life imprisonment for involvement in the genocide.

Judgments also in Belgium

Also in the Belgian capital Brussels, two men from Rwanda were found guilty in a trial on the genocide. The 76-year-old Pierre Basabose is said to have been one of the financiers of the Hutu militia Interahamwe in Rwanda, which played a central role in the genocide.

66-year-old Séraphin Twahirwa is said to have commanded an Interahamwe unit in Kigali that is said to have committed dozens of murders. He is also accused of raping Tutsi women.

The two men have now been found guilty of war crimes and genocide. Sentencing is expected to be announced soon. The men face life imprisonment.

col/AFP