Dr. Sosthene Munyemana continues to plead innocent. Prosecution witnesses say he had the passport to death
The appeal trial in the case of Sosthene Munyemana, a medical doctor accused of Genocide crimes committed in Butare, current Huye district proceeds in the Paris Court of Assizes with the defence seeking to have a-24 year jail sentence reversed.
At 21 years, one witness who spoke last week became the Gendarme in the former Force Armes Rwandaise(Ex-FAR) since 1992. He was appointed in Butare, to serve as a driver for Butare barrack.
This witness told the court that he was married and in 1994, he had two children and his wife, a Tutsi, was pregnant. They lived 50 meters from the sector office, in a rented house about 100 meters from Munyemana’s home.
The witness started by confirming the allegation which most, if not all witnesses reiterated, that Munyemana detained the keys of Tumba sector office in which he locked dozens of Tutsi who would later be executed, “in his order.”
“I will speak about the period of 1992 when I settled in Tumba. I lived near Sosthène Munyemana’s house, even closer to the sector office where Sosthène Munyemana imprisoned the Tutsis. When he left Butare, I was there,” he said just spontaneously when the presiding judge gave him the floor.
He said that in his neighborhood, hostilities started in 1992 following the steady advancing of the Rwanda Patriotic Army(RPA) Inkotanyi, a rebel group that had launched an attack against Habyarimana’s regime two years earlier.
In Tumba, there was an atmosphere of ethnism; he recalled a university lecturer saying, “We do not need peace from Arusha. We must kill all the Tutsis.”
The lecturer was referring to the peace talks that were going on between the RPF Inkotanyi and the regime of Rwanda at that time.
The witness proceeded by saying that at the beginning of the genocide, anyone who refused to kill Tutsis was dismissed from their position or killed. In this context, one Bwanakeye, the Tumba sector executive secretary was dismissed for not having the Tutsi homophobia.
Bwanacyeye was replaced by a more zealous team that included Dr. Munyemana and behind these decisions were the witness’ commander, Cyriaque Habayrabatuma who is now in jail over Genocide crimes.
Back to Dr. Munyemana’s case, he said people referred to him as very intelligent man, but he finds it useless because he killed people.
“He sent soldiers to kill the Tutsi in Cyahinda sector. I am a living testimony because he sent me to pick them after four days of killings,” said the witness who was the driver for the Butare barrack.
“He is not innocent, for he sent people to kill. Since I was a soldier, people did not suspect me because they thought it was obvious for soldiers to be by the side of the government’s atrocities. Few knew that I could save lives. I saved a woman who is still alive. The genocide was well prepared by educated and intelligent people.”
He told the court, that Munyemana had the power to save or to kill.
“He imprisoned the tutsi in the sector office, among them my wife’s cousin (the witness cries here). We were soldiers and armed, but the power was in the hands of the killers. The Interahamwe were stronger than we were,” the witness said before adding. “Sosthène Munyemana says he saved the Tutsi. He will have to explain how he did so. I saw many women raped, and many people killed on his order.”
“He was the one directing the killings in Tumba,” the witness said while giving an example of his own cousin.
In this area, he said the killings began on the evening of the 20th and the following day, one Karanganwa was killed, and, knowing his background of Tutsi parents, he was advised not to return to Tumba.
In fact, this gendarme himself used to have death threat, because, though he had an identity card of Hutu, his mother was a Tutsi from the Abakono clan, while his father had a Hutu identity card. However, towards 1990, both of his parents happened to turn “Tutsi”. To be able to enter the army, this witness testified that he had to hide those roots.
The witness did not attend meetings where killings were planned, but he said, Munyemana used to boast about them.
“In April, he invited gendarmes and neighbors to drink. He said that he had organized a crisis committee. He said: ‘We civilians are fighting the Inyenzi.’ He then asked us to be ready to intervene if needed. He knew we were always armed.”
The witness confirms that meetings of the crisis committee were often held at Munyemana’s house from where he exercised a leadership role and supervised roadblocks that targeted the Tutsi.
The witness did not hear Munyemana give direct orders to kill. But as head of the crisis committee, he had the key to the sector office.
