A Paris court sentenced a doctor from Rwanda to 24 years in prison on Wednesday for his involvement in the 1994 genocide in his own country.
The 68-year-old Sosthene Munyemana was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and aiding in the planning of genocide. His attorneys stated he would file an appeal of the ruling. Munyemana has not been placed under arrest and has been at large during the trial. While the appeal is pending, he will not be sent to prison.
Munyemana, who relocated to France several months following the genocide and immediately aroused suspicions among the resident Rwandans, has refuted any wrongdoing.
The ruling was rendered almost thirty years after the genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who attempted to defend them.
Munyemana, a gynaecologist in Tumba, the southern university district of Butare, was 38 years old at the time. He has been charged with taking part in a local committee and meetings that planned the roundups of Tutsi civilians, as well as co-signing “a motion of support” for the interim government that oversaw the genocide in April 1994.
He said that he took part in night patrols to safeguard the local populace, even though he was aware that they were set up to track Tutsis. Prosecutors claim that witnesses saw him at checkpoints erected throughout the town, overseeing operations.
Munyemana was also charged with, among other things, transmitting “instructions from the authorities to the local militia and residents leading to the roundup of the Tutsis” and holding up to twelve Tutsi civilians in the local administration office that was “under his authority at the time.”
The prosecution claimed that Munyemana “couldn’t ignore” the fact that they would be put to death and that there was proof of an “intentional gathering meant to exterminate people.”
