French court sentences Rwandan former doctor to 27 years for role in 1994 genocide

By James Tasamba

KIGALI, Rwanda (AA) – A French court sentenced a Rwandan former doctor to 27 years in prison Wednesday for his role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.

The Cour d'Assises de Paris found Eugene Rwamucyo guilty of “complicity in genocide,” “complicity in crimes against humanity” and “conspiracy” to prepare the crimes.

The court acquitted Rwamucyo of the charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Rwamucyo, who denied the charges during the trial, which began on Oct.1, was accused of spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda and supervising operations to bury victims in mass graves in former Butare Prefecture in southern Rwanda.

French prosecutors had asked the court to hand Rwamucyo a 30-year prison sentence.

Jean Pierre Gakwerere, a genocide survivor, told Anadolu he had followed the case closely and his sentencing is a good gesture from France in terms of delivering justice to survivors.

The 65-year-old Rwamucyo was arrested in Sannois, a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, in May 2010.

He worked as a doctor in a hospital in northern France then.

The latest Rwandan to be tried in France for genocide-related crimes, Rwamucyo was in 2009 handed a life jail term in absentia by a local court in Rwanda.

The verdict comes days after a group of Rwanda genocide survivors sued France at the Paris Administrative Court on accusations of complicity in the 1994 genocide.

Survivors grouped in several associations are seeking $540 million in reparations, with the ruling expected on Nov. 14.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that France and its allies "could have stopped" the genocide but “lacked the will to do so,” a significant shift in France's previous stance on its role in the genocide.

During his visit to Rwanda in 2021, Macron recognized France's "responsibility" in the genocide.

About 1 million people, most of them members of the Tutsi community and moderate Hutus, were killed in the genocide by Hutu extremists during a massacre within a span of 100 days.