A Parisian court is anticipated to deliver its ruling on Wednesday concerning the trial of a former Rwandan doctor implicated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
The prosecution has requested a 30-year prison sentence for Eugène Rwamucyo, a 65-year-old ex-doctor facing charges including genocide, complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit these acts. Rwamucyo has persistently claimed he is innocent of all accusations.
Decades after the catastrophic events, several witnesses have come forward to Paris to recount harrowing tales during the month-long trial from the Butare region, the area where Rwamucyo was located during the genocide.
This trial marks the seventh legal proceeding in Paris linked to the 1994 genocide to take place in the past ten years. The atrocities resulted in over 800,000 deaths, primarily targeting Rwanda’s Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus who sought to protect them, executed by Hutu extremist groups with military and police support.
Among the witnesses was Angélique Uwamahoro, who was only 13 years old during the genocide. She explained her presence in court was to “seek justice for my people, who died for who they were.”
Uwamahoro recounted a traumatic experience where she recognized Rwamucyo, who had been her mother’s physician, at a massacre site in a convent where her family had sought refuge. Tragically, several of her family members were among those killed there.
After her escape, she encountered Rwamucyo again at a roadblock in Butare, where she claimed to have witnessed him urging militiamen to eliminate Tutsi individuals. “He wanted to incite them to kill us so we don’t get out alive,” she emphasized.
Other attendees at the trial provided unsettling accounts of mass graves and noted how some were forced to bury victims, including reports of wounded individuals being interred alive.
The prosecution argued that Rwamucyo engaged in anti-Tutsi propaganda while supervising the mass burial of victims.
Defending himself, Rwamucyo stated that his involvement in mass burials stemmed solely from “hygiene-related” concerns and denied the occurrence of live burials.
Rwamucyo was apprehended in a suburban area north of Paris back in 2010, where he was employed as a physician at a hospital in northern France at that time.
He was taken into custody while attending the funeral of Jean Bosco Baravagwiza, recognized as one of the principal architects of the genocide and previously convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2003.
In a related case, last December another physician named Sosthene Munyemana was convicted of offenses including genocide and crimes against humanity, receiving a 24-year sentence, which he is currently appealing.