Dr. Eugène Rwamucyo sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison for complicity in the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda

Eugène Rwamucyo, 65, was sentenced on Wednesday, October 30, by the Paris Criminal Court to twenty-seven years of criminal imprisonment, in particular for complicity in genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity. It was presented under universal jurisdiction, a principle that since 2010 has allowed France to try the perpetrators of serious crimes regardless of the place where they were committed; The Rwandan doctor was acquitted of charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

“We will appeal tomorrow morning, said m.^my Philippe Meilhac, Mr. Rwamucyo’s lawyer. We hope that the conditions are better than those of the trial that just ended because they are not worthy of a historic trial. »

“A judicial truth has been pronounced, For his part, declared Alain Gauthier, president of the Collective of Civil Parties of Rwanda (CPCR), the association that originated the complaint filed against the accused in 2007. We are satisfied with it. »

During the five weeks of the trial, the question arose of this doctor’s role during the burial of tens of thousands of bodies in the mass graves of Butare, southern Rwanda. Eugène Rwamucyo admitted having organized the burial of the bodies “To avoid adding a health crisis to the disaster”pleaded his lawyer M.^my Philippe Meilhac. “The situation was such that it was necessary to act, he supported Françoise Mathe, his second lawyer. Because of his duties and his abilities, he was responsible for this. »

The accused, however, questioned the fact that among the corpses at Nyakibanda major seminary or Nyumba parish, the injured were buried with the dead. “I have not always been up to the task, but I assure you that I have never ordered the termination of the survivors.” declared Eugène Rwamucyo, on Wednesday, October 30, during his last speech before the jury’s deliberations. On the stand, several witnesses, survivors of the massacres or participants in the operations, said instead that “the caterpillar”The construction machine required to throw the corpses into the pits mixed the dead and the living in its container.

“Crushing double responsibility”

In front of the cavities excavated by the vehicle, Eugène Rwamucyo was armed with a rifle provided by the authorities. But he assured that he had never used it. “It was to establish his authority, assured Julie Pétré, general counsel, before requesting thirty years of criminal prison against him. The simple presence of Eugène Rwamucyo at the site of the massacres was perceived by the murderers as authorization to kill, a moral guarantee. »

The court ruled that Eugène Rwamucyo did not participate in the genocide in the sense that he did not order the murder of the survivors. But by harshly condemning him, the Criminal Court considered his participation in the burial of corpses as a genocidal act. “The treatment of bodies is part of the logical continuity of genocide because the nature of mass crimes is to dehumanize others, to remove them from the community of men, argued Sarah Scialom, lawyer for thirteen of the 750 civil parties present in the case along with the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism or the International Federation for Human Rights. Here, the body is treated like garbage thrown into a well. It’s no wonder we’ve heard of dump trucks. Furthermore, burying the victims allows the crime to be hidden. »

The question was also whether Eugène Rwamucyo had blood on his hands. “There is nothing to confirm it, but in our eyes it carries an overwhelming double responsibility because we can kill with words”said Nicolás Perón, another attorney general, at the end of a seven-hour indictment.

The trial showed that Mr. Rwamucyo, who arrived in France in December 1999 after an African exile, was part of the genocidal matrix, as demonstrated by his environment. On October 11, his defense called Jean Kambanda to testify. As former prime minister of the interim government, he was at the center of genocidal politics. Speaking by videoconference from a prison in Senegal where he is serving a life sentence handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Jean Kambanda gave his support to the accused, considering him “a brave man” having “does its job”. During the hearing, Eugène Rwamucyo also spoke about his “older brother”, Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), a hate medium that incited populations to massacres. The ICTR sentenced him to thirty years in prison.

Evasive

Among those close to Rwamucyo was also Sosthène Munyemana, sentenced to twenty-four years of criminal prison in December 2023 by the Paris Criminal Court for his participation in the genocide of the Tutsi.

Each day at the hearing, the accused was ultimately supported by Callixte Mbarushimana, former executive secretary of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group of Hutu rebels based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After being investigated by the ICTR and the International Criminal Court in the 2010s, the case initiated against him by the CPCR was abandoned in September.

Eugène Rwamucyo’s attitude has often exasperated Jean-Marc Lavergne, president of the court. On Friday, October 26, the latter asked him about the nature of his links with Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, founder of the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic, a party of Hutu extremists, and secretary of the executive committee of the RTLM, among them the accused was a shareholder “for commercial purposes”. Mr. Rwamucyo remained evasive, suggesting that he was the victim of a “political trial”. However, he was part of the Circle of Progressive Republicans, a group of intellectuals close to power. In this context, on May 14, 1994, before Jean Kambanda, he gave a speech aimed at encouraging the population to arm themselves. “as part of civil defense” and thus continue the genocide. Words similar to the words of The Marseillaise : “To arms, citizens!” Form your battalions…”, He justified the accused.

Eugène Ramucyo, who worked as a doctor in Belgium and then at the Maubeuge hospital (north), was the eighth Rwandan tried in France for his participation in the Tutsi genocide that left between 800,000 and a million dead in the spring of 1994. The trial ends before the opening of Philippe Hategekimana’s trial, on Monday, November 4, in Paris. In June 2023, the latter was sentenced in the first instance to life imprisonment for having encouraged the murder of dozens of Tutsis. At that time he was chief non-commissioned officer of the Nyanza gendarmerie in Butare prefecture.