Doctor Eugène Rwamucyo and his lawyers, at the Paris Assize Court, October 1, 2024. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
Eugène Rwamucyo, 65, was sentenced on Wednesday October 30 by the Paris Assize Court to twenty-seven years of criminal imprisonment, notably for complicity in genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity. He appeared under universal jurisdiction, a principle which since 2010 has allowed France to judge 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 Mr. Philippe Meilhac, counsel for M. Rwamucyo. We hope that the conditions will be better than those of the trial which has 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 for Rwanda (CPCR), an association at the origin of the complaint filed against the accused in 2007. We are satisfied with it. »
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During the five weeks of the trial, the question of the role of this medical officer during the burial of tens of thousands of corpses in the mass graves of Butare, in the south of Rwanda, arose. Eugène Rwamucyo admitted to having organized the burial of the bodies “in order to avoid adding a health crisis to the disaster”pleaded his lawyer Me Philippe Meilhac. “The situation was such that it was necessary to act, supported Françoise Mathe, his second counsel. Due to his functions and his skills, he was responsible for this. »
The accused, however, contested the fact that among the corpses of the major seminary of Nyakibanda or the parish of Nyumba, 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 completion of the survivors,” declared Eugène Rwamucyo, 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, on the other hand recounted that “the Caterpillar”the construction machine requisitioned to dump the corpses into the pits, mixed the dead and the living in its bin.
“Crushing double responsibility”
In front of the cavities dug by the vehicle, Eugène Rwamucyo was armed with a rifle given 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 imprisonment against him. The simple presence of Eugène Rwamucyo at the scene of the massacres was perceived by the killers as an authorization to kill, a moral guarantee. »
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The court ruled that Eugène Rwamucyo was not an actor in the genocide in the sense that he did not order the killing of survivors. But by heavily condemning him, the Assize 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 alongside the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism or the International Federation for Human Rights. Here, the body is treated like waste thrown into a pit. It’s no wonder we’ve heard of dump trucks. Additionally, burying victims allows the crime to be concealed. »
The question was also whether Eugène Rwamucyo had blood on his hands. “There is nothing to confirm this, but in our eyes it bears an overwhelming double responsibility because we can kill with words”said Nicolas Peron, another attorney general, at the end of a seven-hour indictment.
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The trial demonstrated that Mr. Rwamucyo, who arrived in France in December 1999 after an African exile, was part of the genocidal matrix as proven by his entourage. On October 11, his defense called Jean Kambanda to testify. As former prime minister of the interim government, he was at the heart of genocidal policy. Heard 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 to be “a courageous man” having “does its job”. During the hearings, Eugène Rwamucyo also spoke of his ” big brother “, Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), a hate media which incited populations to massacres. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison by the ICTR.
Evasive
Among those close to Mr. Rwamucyo was also Sosthène Munyemana, sentenced to twenty-four years of criminal imprisonment in December 2023 by the Paris Assize Court for his involvement in the genocide of the Tutsi.
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Every day at the hearing, the accused was finally 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 Congo (DRC). After being investigated by the ICTR and the International Criminal Court in the 2010s, the proceedings launched against him by the CPCR were abandoned in September.
Eugène Rwamucyo’s attitude has often exasperated Jean-Marc Lavergne, the president of the court. Friday October 26, the latter questioned 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 RTLM executive committee, including 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. It was in this context that, on May 14, 1994, before Jean Kambanda, he gave a speech intended to encourage 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…”, justified the accused.
Eugène Ramucyo, who practiced his profession as a doctor in Belgium and then at the Maubeuge hospital center (North), was the eighth Rwandan tried in France for his participation in the Tutsi genocide which left between 800,000 and a million dead in the spring of 1994. His trial ends before the opening of that of Philippe Hategekimana, Monday November 4 in Paris. In June 2023, the latter was sentenced at first instance to life imprisonment for having encouraged the murder of dozens of Tutsi. He was then chief warrant officer of the Nyanza gendarmerie in Butare prefecture.
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