His lawyers immediately announced that they would appeal. The former gynecologist, who has lived in southwest France since 1994, has denied all allegations. The public prosecutor’s office had demanded 30 years in prison.
Munyemana is said to have been close to the Rwandan interim government, which called for mass murder of the Tutsi ethnic group in 1994. According to the prosecution, he took part in a meeting at which roadblocks were decided at which Tutsi were arrested in order to later kill them.
Munyemana also had the key to an office in which several members of the Tutsi ethnic group were locked up for days under indecent conditions before they were killed. The defendant, on the other hand, explained that he was a moderate Hutu and did not want to lock up the threatened people, but rather hide and save them.
In the genocide in Rwanda between April and July 1994, around 800,000 people were killed, most of them from the Tutsi ethnic group, but also moderate Hutu. Munyemana’s trial was the sixth trial in France against suspected accomplices in the genocide. Before the former doctor, six men – three high-ranking officials, a military man, a gendarme and a driver – were sentenced in France to prison terms ranging from 14 years to life for their involvement in the genocide.
Also on Tuesday, two Rwandan men were found guilty in a genocide trial in the Belgian capital Brussels. In Rwanda, 76-year-old Pierre Basabosé is said to have been one of the financiers of the Hutu militia Interahamwe, which played a central role in the genocide.
The 66-year-old Séraphin Twahirwa is said to have commanded an Interahamwe unit in Kigali that is said to have carried out dozens of murders. He is also accused of raping Tutsi women.
The two men have now been found guilty of war crimes and genocide. The sentence will be announced soon. The men face life imprisonment.
