France upholds landmark Rwandan genocide conviction

PARIS: France’s highest court upheld a landmark conviction against a former Rwandan intelligence agent for his role in the country’s 1994 genocide.

Pascal Simbikangwa, 58, was sentenced to 25 years in 2014 in a trial that marked a turning point in France’s approach to genocide suspects living on its soil.

The former presidential guard member had already lost an appeal against his conviction for crimes against humanity in 2016.

The Cour de Cassation, France’s court of final appeal, on Thursday ruled it was “obvious” that Simbikangwa had “willingly participated in abuses against the Tutsis and against the civilian population in general”.

Simbikangwa, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a car crash in the 1980s, was accused of organising roadblocks where Hutu militia carried out murders, mainly targeting the Tutsi minority. He always insisted his innocence.

More than 800,000 people died during the Rwanda genocide, mostly ethnic Tutsis as well as some moderate Hutus.

The three-month slaughter began after the plane of then president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down in April 1994.

In a separate case, prosecutors asked judges to order a Rwandan former doctor accused of being an accomplice in the genocide to stand trial in a criminal court, following an investigation that began 23 years ago.

Prosecutors accuse Sosthenes Munyemana, who fled to France after the end of the massacre, of signing a “motion of support” for government genocide and detaining Tutsi civilians under inhumane conditions. — AFP