Former Rwandan doctor Sosthène Munyemana, who was tried before the Paris assize court for his possible involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, was called for a 30-year prison sentence in an irreconcilable indictment on Monday.
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“The sum total of Sosthène Munyemana's decisions” between April and June 1994, when he fled Rwanda, “bear the features of a genocidal man,” alleged the accusation in this two-part indictment, which began on Friday and lasted a total of more than 30 seven hours .
During their demonstration, the two Attorneys General Sophie Havard and Nicolas Peron called on the court to find the now 68-year-old defendant, who has been living in southwest France since September 1994, guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and involvement in an agreement in with regard to the preparation of these crimes and complicity.
“Central role”
Because they were far from being the character he described in the audience, “he knew that he had chosen to support the genocide plan and that he had chosen to play a central and essential role in that system to take”.
Sosthène Munyemana is suspected of having played a role in the massacres by signing a request of support for the interim government set up after the attack on Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane and abetting the murders committed between April and July 1994 which involved more than 800,000 people dying.
He is also accused of setting up cordons and patrols in Tumba, Butare Prefecture (southern Rwanda), during which people were arrested and then killed, and of holding the key to a sector office where Tutsi were detained before their execution.
During the five weeks of debates before the Assize Court, Sosthène Munyemana never stopped denying these allegations, claiming that he was a moderate Hutu who, on the contrary, tried to “save” Tutsis by offering them “shelter” in the sector office .
“It is the most exposed place in Tumba, there is no hope of surviving there by hiding there,” said Sophie Havard on the contrary, describing this place as a “death row”.
The former doctor also claimed he was slow to become aware of the radicalization of some of his friends, including interim government Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, who was finally sentenced to prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2000. life sentence for involvement in genocide.
“Completely enlightened intellectual”
“Can we seriously believe the defendant, a fully enlightened intellectual, when he claims that he has not noticed the genocidal tendency of the government since Butare?” the judge asked on Friday. “He could not ignore that the Rwandan state had become the murderer of its people.”
Sosthène Munyemana, however, “spared no effort to convince (…) that he was a moderate with a simple or even simplistic equation,” she noted. He claimed to have been part of the Democratic-Republican movement, but denied having adhered to its extremist tendency, “Hutu power”, and pointed out that he had taken a “third way” that was consistent with the agreements of Arusha-inclined.
The judge dismissed this third option as “a chimera.”
For his part, Nicolas Peron ruled that the defendant had not been subjected to “any form of coercion”. He “held no official position” and “could not have taken part in the massacres.”
On the contrary, Sosthène Munyemana chose to “participate in the country's transition to extremism, help the interim government expand the massacres in Butare prefecture” and “directly and actively participate in the genocide in the Tumba sector,” it says the prosecution.
And this because of his “fascination with political power”: “By putting himself at the service of the genocide project, he hoped to derive personal benefit from it.”
The defense attorneys are scheduled to present their case in the afternoon. The verdict is expected on Tuesday.