French court sentences former doctor to 24 years over involvement in Rwandan genocide

By Nur Asena Erturk

ANKARA (AA) — A former doctor implicated in the Rwandan genocide was given a 24-year jail sentence in France, local media reported.

Launched on Nov. 14, the trial of Sosthene Munyemana, 68, ended Tuesday, resulting in the Paris criminal court convicting him for genocide, crimes against humanity, and conspiring to commit a crime, broadcaster France 24 said.

Throughout the court proceedings, Munyemana denied accusations that he used an office in southern Rwanda to hold a group of ethnic Tutsis who were later taken to other places and executed.

Munyemana held that he intended to save the Tutsis and that he was keeping them in the office as a refuge.

He claimed that he was not aware that the Tutsis would be killed at the place they were taken and admitted that he may have been deceived.

A married father of three, Munyemana settled in 1994 in southeastern France, where he started practicing as a medical doctor before recently retiring, according to France 24.

This was the same year as the Rwandan genocide, which led to the demise of more than 1 million people in targeted killings of the minority Tutsi ethnic group by Hutu extremists. It erupted after the death of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira in a plane crash on April 6, 1994.

An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during a bloodshed that lasted 100 days.