Decision expected at the trial of the former Rwandan doctor accused of genocide in Paris

PARIS — A Paris court is expected to announce its verdict on Wednesday in the trial of a former Rwandan doctor accused of playing a role in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Prosecuting Attorneys General requested a 30-year prison sentence for 65-year-old former doctor Eugène Rwamucyo, who is accused of genocide, complicity, crimes against humanity and conspiracy to prepare for these crimes. He denied any wrongdoing.

Thirty years after the genocide, several witnesses traveled to Paris for the four-week trial and gave vivid descriptions of the killings in Butare district, where Rwamucyo was located at the time.

This is the seventh trial in Paris in the last decade related to the genocide that took place in April 1994. During the massacres, more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect themselves in Rwanda were killed by extremist Hutu gangs supported by the army and police.

Angélique Uwamahoro, who was 13 at the time, told the court she came to “seek justice for my people who died for them.”

He said he saw Rwamucyo, his mother’s doctor, at the scene of the massacre at a monastery where he and his family had taken refuge. Some of his family members were among the dead.

After he managed to escape, Uwamahoro said he saw Rwamucyo again at a road block in Butare town and heard him encouraging the militia to kill Tutsi people. “He wanted to provoke them to kill us so we wouldn’t get out of here alive,” he said.

Other witnesses described mass graves and people burying bodies, including groups of prisoners who were asked to do the work. Some said the wounded were buried alive.

The prosecution said the defendant, Rwamucyo, was accused of spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda and overseeing operations to bury victims in mass graves.

The former doctor said his role in the mass burials was motivated solely by “hygiene” concerns and denied that survivors were buried alive.

Rwamucyo was arrested in a northern Paris suburb in 2010. At the time he was working as a doctor in a hospital in northern France.

French police arrested him while he was attending the funeral of Jean Bosco Baravagwiza, who is considered one of the masterminds of the genocide. Baravagwiza was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2003.

In December last year, another doctor, Sosthene Munyemana, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and aiding the preparation of genocide and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He objected.