A French court has sentenced a former Rwandan doctor to 27 years in prison for crimes related to the 1994 genocide in his country.
Eugene Rwamucyo was found guilty of involvement in the killing of people, complicity in crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to prepare for those crimes.
Rwamucyo – who was acquitted of murder and torturing people – denied that he did anything wrong. Local media reported that his lawyers said they intend to appeal the case.
His trial was the eighth in France related to the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people – mostly Tutsi – were killed by the majority Hutu.
Prosecutor Nicolas Peron said there was no evidence to show that Rwamucyo was the one who killed or tortured.
But he said the 65-year-old student should not “run away from his responsibilities” because a person “can kill with words”.
Prosecutors accused Rwamucyo, who was born into a Hutu family, of spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda.
They also cited the statements of witnesses, who accused him of helping to bury the victims in a mass grave “in a last ditch effort to destroy the evidence of the massacre”.
The prosecutor asked that he be imprisoned for 30 years, while the representatives of the survivors said that he should be imprisoned for life.
Angélique Uwamahoro, who was 13 years old at the time of the massacre, said she saw Rwamucyo at a roadblock in the city of Butare and heard him encouraging soldiers to kill Tutsi people, according to the Associated Press.
“He wanted to encourage them to kill us so that we don't get out alive,” he said.
But Rwamucyo told the court: “I assure you that I did not decide to kill the survivors and I did not allow them to be killed.”
His lawyers say that his involvement in mass burials is because he wanted to avoid a “health problem” that would have occurred if they had not been buried.
They said he was being persecuted for disagreeing with the current government in Rwanda.
Rwamucyo he was arrested in Sannois, north of Paris, in 2010 after attending the funeral of a former Rwandan official who was convicted of war crimes during the genocide.
In December, former doctor Sosthene Munyemana he was imprisoned for 24 years by a French court for crimes including genocide and crimes against humanity. He was accused of planning torture and murder in this massacre.
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