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French court jails Rwandan ex-doctor over 1994 genocide role

A French court has sentenced former Rwandan doctor Sosthene Munyemana to 24 years in prison for his involvement in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in his native East African country.

Published: 20 December 2023 09:31 CET

French court jails Rwandan ex-doctor over 1994 genocide role

Sosthene Munyemana. (Photo by PATRICK BERNARD / AFP)

After a deliberation lasting nearly 15 hours, the 68-year-old former gynaecologist was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and
participation in a conspiracy to prepare those crimes.

He is the sixth suspect to have faced trial in France over the 1994 massacres in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in 100 days of mass killings.

The six-week trial at the Assize Court in Paris came nearly three decades after a complaint was filed against Munyemana in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux in 1995.

Munyemana, who was impassive as the verdict was handed down, was immediately incarcerated.

His lawyers said they planned to appeal the verdict, insisting the court’s decision was “unacceptable”. They argued that major contradictions in witness testimonies left “room for doubt”.

The public prosecutor had sought a sentence of 30 years, arguing the “sum total” of his choices showed “the traits of a genocidaire”.

Munyemana was accused of helping draft a letter of support for the then-interim government, which encouraged the massacre of the Tutsis.

He was also accused of helping set up roadblocks to round people up and keeping them in inhumane conditions in local government offices before they were killed in the southern Rwandan prefecture of Butare, where he lived at the time.

During the trial, Munyemana repeatedly disputed the accusations, claiming he had been a moderate Hutu who had tried to “save” Tutsis by offering them “refuge” in local government offices.

Reading the verdict, the judge said Munyemana was part of a group that “prepared, organised and steered the genocide of the Tutsis… on a daily basis”.

After arriving in France in September 1994, where his wife was already living, the father of three rebuilt his life in the country’s southwest, first
as an emergency doctor and then as a geriatrician. He recently retired.

Munyemana was close to Jean Kambanda, prime minister of the interim government established after the plane carrying then-president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down by a missile in 1994.

Kambanda is currently serving a life sentence imposed by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his role in the genocide.

Munyemana’s case is the latest trial in France of alleged participants in the massacres, in which around 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered over 100 days by Hutu soldiers and extremist militias, according to UN figures.

France has been one of the top destinations for those implicated in the Rwandan slaughter fleeing justice at home.

It has long been under pressure from activists to act against suspected Rwandan perpetrators who took refuge on French soil.

The French government at the time of the genocide had been a long-standing backer of the Hutu regime in power, a fact that has caused decades of tensions between the countries since.

Under President Paul Kagame, Rwanda has accused Paris of being unwilling to extradite genocide suspects or bring them to justice.

Among those tried and convicted in France are a former spy chief, two ex-mayors and a former hotel chauffeur.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.