In June 1994, in Butare prefecture, southern Rwanda, did Eugène Rwamucyo lead operations to bury the bodies of Tutsis and participate in the finishing off of the wounded to eliminate evidence? Or did he act as medical officer of health, as part “hygiene and sanitation measures”, as he always maintained in front of the investigators? It is these questions and many others that the Paris Criminal Court will have to answer starting Tuesday 1Ahem October and the beginning of the trial against this Rwandan, who is now 65 years old.
The accused appeared in particular for acts of “genocide”, “complicity in genocide” AND “crimes against humanity” committed in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. Eugène Rwamucyo, tried in France under universal jurisdiction, a principle that allows a State to try the perpetrators of serious crimes regardless of where they were committed, faces a life sentence in prison.
The case arises after a complaint filed in April 2007 by the Collective of Civil Parties of Rwanda (CPCR), an association that seeks those allegedly responsible for the Tutsi genocide that left between 800,000 and one million dead. He already has six trials in France to his credit. Eugène Rwamucyo is accused, according to the indictment, of the world was able to consult, have, particularly at the University of Butare where he taught, “They organized meetings and round tables whose objective was to incite the Hutu population to hate and kill Tutsis.” In particular, a public meeting on May 14, 1994 with Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, where he allegedly “transmitted the message of the authorities through extremist anti-Tutsi propaganda information”.
“A prominent Hutu extremist”
The genocide had begun five weeks earlier, on April 7. Thousands of corpses covered the streets of Butare. Before Jean Kambanda, sentenced in 1998 to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for having carried out the extermination plan, Mr. Rwamucyo later declared, according to the accusation, “In a particularly bellicose tone, intellectuals had their role to play in civil defense and the desire to help the government.”.
These statements, included in the file, prove, according to Alain Gauthier, president of the CPCR, that the accused “ “He is an ideologue, a prominent Hutu extremist.”
Born in 1959 in northwestern Rwanda, Eugène Rwamucyo considered becoming a priest before pursuing medical studies at the University of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. Involved in the political life of his country, he was then president of the cell of the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND), the all-powerful ruling party of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana.
Graduated in 1989, Eugène Rwamucyo returned to Rwanda three years later, where he was hired at the National University of Butare and assigned to the health service of the university center. He joined the Circle of Progressive Republicans, a group of extremist intellectuals formed by Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of Radio-Télévision libre des mille collines (RTLM), who was sentenced on appeal in 2007 to thirty years in prison by the ICTR especially for. “your responsibility [dans] “Crimes of direct and public incitement to commit genocide.”.
About 750 civil parts
Eugène Rwamucyo is also accused, based on various testimonies, of having participated in the burial of the bodies. An act that this former head of the sanitation service of the Ministry of Health admitted to investigators but that he allegedly carried out, according to him, in a “hygiene perspective (…) wherever there were bodies in Butare prefecture,” specifying that they “They were civilians and there were no survivors.”
The doctor left Rwanda in June 1994 due to the approach of the troops of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political-military movement composed mainly of Tutsis exiled from Uganda, which took power a month later and put an end to the genocide. Like thousands of people, Eugène Rwamucyo passed through Goma, in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). His flight then took him to several metropolises in West Africa: Dakar, Abidjan, Lomé…
He arrived in France in December 1999 on a flight from Nairobi, Kenya. His asylum application to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) was rejected, considering the organization that Eugène Rwamucyo “He had strongly incited and encouraged his compatriots to participate in the application of the genocidal process.” However, he obtained a residence permit and settled in Essonne. Graduated in occupational physiology and ergonomics from the University of Paris IV, he joined the toxicology center in Paris and then in Lille. From 2008 to 2010 he worked as an occupational doctor at the Maubeuge hospital (North), but was fired when his provisional residence permit was not renewed. On May 26, 2010, he was arrested in Val-d’Oise during the funeral of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, co-founder of RTLM, and then imprisoned in Bois-d’Arcy prison. But in September, the Versailles Court of Appeal denied his extradition to Rwanda, which three years earlier had issued an international arrest warrant. Mr. Rwamucyo is released and settles in Belgium. Finally, ten years later he was sent back to a criminal court in France.
After the rejection of his appeals and cassation, his trial should include 750 civil parties, including the CPCR, the Human Rights League and Licra. “If there are so many, maybe it’s because we went looking for them, advance nmy Philippe Meilhac, lawyer for Eugène Rwamucyo and other Rwandans prosecuted in France. I fear that this trial will take place in poor conditions after an investigation that lasted fifteen years. But we will prove that the charges against my client are solely related to the duties he performed as a doctor. » The sentence is expected on October 29.
