From the pseudo-scientific Hamitic, Nilotic, and Bantu racist theories to the sophisticated strategy of genocide denial, the planners and perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi borrowed not only the ideology of genocide from Europe but also the methods for evading justice, which they copied directly from the Nazi playbook.
Faustin Nsabumukunzi, a gardener and beekeeper living in a seemingly idyllic hamlet in New York, epitomises this disturbing narrative. Like many Nazis who sought refuge in South America for a quiet, hidden life, the sixty-five-year-old fled Rwanda and settled in Bridgehampton, USA. Like those fleeing Nazi hunters, Nsabumukunzi did not merely seek a new life; he aimed to completely reinvent his identity.
In Rwanda, survivors of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi remember him as a local government official in Kibirizi, present day Gisagara District, in the southern province, who led the killings with enthusiasm. He even devised additional forms of torture for the victims, such as encouraging the rape of women and girls. He directed the notorious roadblocks where individuals had to be identified by their ethnicity, with those deemed to belong to the “wrong” group facing execution, often in ways that haunt the minds of decent human beings for a lifetime.
These grave crimes are not mere allegations. In 2008, Rwanda tried and convicted Nsabumukunzi in absentia, sentencing him to life imprisonment.
Upon arriving in the USA, where he hoped to live free from the long arm of the law, he lied, claiming to be a “survivor” of the Genocide Against the Tutsi and asserting that he had relatives who were murdered.
This claim is a common and grotesque tactic employed by many Rwandan mass murderers attempting to evade justice. The killers often portray themselves as victims, sometimes appropriating the stories of those they themselves murdered.
It was these lies that ultimately led to his downfall. “I know I am finished,” he reportedly declared upon his arrest, aware that the web of deceit would unravel with the slightest scrutiny.
When Nsabumukunzi applied for refugee resettlement in the USA in 2003, he had little choice but to lie. His options were either to confess to being a mass murderer fleeing the scene of his unspeakable crimes or to fabricate a tale of victimhood.
He followed the path established by other planners and perpetrators of the Genocide Against the Tutsi, and in a world largely indifferent to pursuing killers like him, he believed he had a good chance of evading justice. He nearly succeeded. In 2007, he received his green card, and he must have felt that everything was going according to plan. Confident, he applied for naturalisation in 2009 and again in 2015.
However, it was then that someone checked the veracity of his earlier applications, and the past came back to haunt him. Suddenly, the gardener and beekeeper was unmasked as the monster who had presided over death at the roadblocks in Rwanda thirty-one years ago. In his own words, he knew he was finished—his façade could no longer withstand the truth. No longer a beekeeper, he stood exposed as the mass murderer his intended victims in Rwanda had known him to be.
Ultimately, as with so many like him, no punishment could ever be severe enough. No penalty devised by humanity could atone for the suffering of his victims. Nonetheless, some measure of justice may offer a small balm for the wounds of the survivors.
Like many before him, Nsabumukunzi pleaded not guilty. Authorities granted him bail at $250,000, but imposed a restriction requiring him to wear a GPS tag and remain at home. His lawyer asserted that Nsabumukunzi was a “law-abiding immigrant who lost family during the genocide [the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi] and intends to contest the decades-old allegations.” However, he did not mention that his client had already been tried and convicted, albeit in absentia.
Over a thousand fugitives from justice for the Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsi remain scattered around the world, many in Western countries. With very few exceptions, the global response has been one of indifference in bringing them to justice. Arrests like that of Nsabumukunzi provide hope that others accused in the Genocide Against the Tutsi have reason to keep looking over their shoulders.
Celestin Mutabaruka, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Charles Munyaneza, Vincent Bajinya, alias Vincent Brown, and Emmanuel Nteziryayo, have been living in the UK despite Rwanda’s demand for Justice.
For the best part of twenty years, Britain has in many important ways been a friend to Rwanda. But time and again, at moments when Rwanda needed the ear of a friend, defaness was feigned from Britain. Few instances reflect this selective deafness than Britain’s apparent disregard for pursuing justice for the victims of the Genocide Against Tutsi, an offhandedness that extends to its view of the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The capture of the city of Goma, by the M23/AFC (Congo River Alliance) rebel movement, as they bring more territory under their control, will bring one sickeningly grotesque spectacle at an end.
It is an image any decent human being would desperately wish they had not seen. A young man, grinning from ear to ear, is surrounded by a baying crowd. He holds a severed head in his hands, an act the crowd applauds.
Elsewhere, another young man, surrounded by a crowd that seems confused, unable to decide whether to be horrified or fascinated, look away or pay closer attention, is burning a man on an impromptu pyre. He takes different body parts from where the victim has been hacked to death, and nonchalantly places them on the fire. His expression is defiant, boastful, as though to say, yes, I am breaking a taboo.
These are films circulating on the internet that anyone with a strong enough stomach can see. The victims are Kinyarwanda-Speaking Congolese. The Genocide ideology that gave birth to the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, was transported to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), or Zaire it was then in 1994, when the genocidal establishment, complete with its army and Interahamwe militia, was conducted into the country by its French backers.
That severed head, those burning bodies, that ideology, now sustained and enforced by the so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are why the M23/AFC rebel movement fights. It is why Rwanda has its troops on alert on the Rwanda-DRC border, and in the words of President Kagame, why Rwanda “will do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves.”
Like other European powers however, this is the salient reality that the UK stance on the crisis in the DRC studiously ignores. They offer platitudes about peace, but steadfastly refuse to engage with the causes of the crisis.
Their perverse refusal to acknowledge the causes of a crisis that affects the entire region, is replaced by the equally perverse spectacle of amplifying Felix Tshisekedi’s somewhat puerile strategy of escaping responsibility for his failures, by pinning the blame for any and all of Congo’s ills on Rwanda.
It is difficult to overstate the depth of feeling evoked by the apparent indifference to the threat posed to Rwanda, by the FDLR and its ideology. And yet, Britain’s indifference verges on the contemptuous.
Just as they seem to dismiss the dangers of the FDLR and their genocide ideology, which is at the root of the conflict in the DRC, Britain seems equally as contemptuous of calls to bring to justice, those accused of crimes of genocide, in the 1994 Genocide Against Tutsi, who fled to Britain.
Following the defeat of the genocidal establishment by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces in July 1994, a number of fugitives from Rwanda justice fanned out across the world. Travelling and in many cases, living in various countries, a number of them, who included the leaders of the genocidal establishment, eventually found their way to Western nations, where they expected to live out the rest of their lives, untroubled by Rwanda’s calls to have them answer for their crimes in the courts of law. For many, including those in Britain, have had plenty of reason to be gratified by their decision.
Among those who ended up in the UK, the most well known are Celestin Mutabaruka, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Charles Munyaneza, Vincent Bajinya, alias Vincent Brown, and Emmanuel Nteziryayo. Mutaburuka now styles himself as “Bishop” after he and his wife founded the Fountain Pentecostal Church, in the village of Willsborough, Ashford, Kent.
The Church is part of an even more ambitious project, a company, Belles of Revival (Worldwide) Ministries. The five fugitives have been in and out of the courts, usually after a clamour from the media, forcing the authorities to take some action.
Britain prides itself on the excellence of its judicial tradition, and while there is ample reason to justify such self affirmation, it nonetheless jars with the apparent nonchalance, with which the country has failed to rouse itself to allow justice for the victims and survivors of one of the worst genocides of any generation, the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, in Rwanda.
It is now more than two decades, since the the five men, all of whom had originally adopted aliases, and living comfortable lives in different parts of the UK, were identified through media reports, as fugitives from allegations of having played direct roles, in the mass murder of over a million women, men, children, including in all too many horrifying cases, children yet to be born, still in their mothers’ wombs.
With media pressure, they were eventually arrested in 2006, and held, pending their extradition to Rwanda, where they would stand trial. The case which was heard in London’s Westminster Magistrates Court, and presided over by District Judge Antony Evans, would begin in September of 2007.
All five men stood accused of the crime of genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; complicity in genocide; crimes against humanity; premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder; formation, membership, leadership and participation in an association of a criminal gang, whose purpose and existence is to do harm to people or their property; inciting, aiding or abetting public disorder; participation in acts of devastation, massacres and looting.
The UK has been a safe haven for the wanted genocidaires.
Among the “expert” witnesses called for the defence, was one Paul Rusesabagina, the self-styled “hero,” in the film Hotel Rwanda, who was flown from Belgium, before his emigration to the United States of America. His testimony however, would be dismissed by the judge as “worthless.”
The judge noted that Rusesabagina’s claims, were “so contrary to all evidence and facts placed before this court as to be worthless…I have spent a great deal of time look at this evidence…the evidence [Rusesabagina’s], the evidence was not that of an independent expert, but rather that of a man with a background strongly aligned to the extremist Hutu faction, and as such cannot be considered as independent and reasoned.”
In serving the cause of the five accused, Rusesabagina, was continuing the role he had played in Rwanda, before and during the genocide. Despite his anointment by Hollywood, as a “hero,” he was an enthusiastic factotum for the extremist government. He will have been well acquainted with the accused, all of whom had occupied privileged positions within Rwanda’s genocidal establishment, three of them as mayors of their districts. In their positioin, it would have been unheard of for them not to have played a significant part in the commission of the Genocide Against the Tutsi.
In their first court appearance, Judge Evans was happy for their extradition to Rwanda to proceed. His judgement was passed on to the then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who signed off on it.
But, as might have been predicted, the defendant’s array of some of Britain’s most distinguished lawyers, immediately launched an appeal. They included Sir Keir Starmer, before his appointment as Director of Public Prosecutions, a position he would occupy, until he entered parliament, rising to become prime minister, today.
Predictably, the lawyers relied on claims from Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), that their clients would not get a fair trial in Rwandan. They knew full well that barring the political will to see the case expedited, the appeal processes would almost certainly amount to lengthy, if not indefinite delays.
Further attempts by the prosecution to have the men extradited failed, but the courts seemed in no doubt that they should stand trial for the crimes of which they stood accused. Denying the prosecution’s motion for extradition, judge Emma Arbuthnot, nevertheless made it clear that the men had “a prima facie case to answer.”
Whether or not they are asked to stand trial, remains to be seen. Their lawyers continue to skillfully play for time, banking on that lack of political will to see justice done.
It is of course, perfectly valid for successive UK governments, to point at the independence of the courts, that is undoubtedly true. But it is also disingenuous to pretend that the judiciary does not respond to the political will, a point well understood by some UK parliamentarians. It is of some significance for instance, that progress in these cases is largely in the hands of the Attorney-General, a member of the government, rather than completely in the hands of the directorate of public prosecutions.
In a debate in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British parliament, Dame Margaret Hodge, wondered if there would have been greater impetus to see the cases tried, if the crimes had been committed in a different country other than Rwanda. Referring to responses from the government, she was as inadequate, she noted that, “Were we talking about people who were allegedly involved in the Nazi holocaust, there would be a much stronger sense of urgency on the action that needs to be taken…during the extradition proceedings, there has been 10 years in which I assume information has been gathered by the authorities…Complexity and thoroughness do not justify this level of delay…”
It is difficult to see what can justify that level of delay. As long ago as 2017, a press summary of the UK High Court’s judgement, forcefully asserted, “It must be clear that these are charges of the most serious kind. It is highly desirable that trials in such cases should take place in the country concerned. Anyone against whom there is apparently credible evidence of involvement in genocide should face trial and, subject to the requirements of law any such trials should take place in Rwanda. It is highly undesirable that Britain should become a haven for genocidaires fleeing trial or seeking impunity.”
There is little doubt however, that Britain has become such a haven, nor despite legal technicalities, is there much doubt that Rwanda fully meets the requirements of the law, that would have allowed the accused to be extradited to be tried in the country.
In the time it has taken Britain to do very little to nothing, other jurisdictions, from the United States of America, Canada, to Europe, have both tried individuals, who in the words of the High Court, sought impunity in their countries. These countries also extradited some suspects, having satisfied themselves that Rwanda, did indeed more than fulfill the requirements of the law, for fair trials.
In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights, ruled that genocide suspect, Sylvere Ahoruguze would get a fair trial in Rwanda, and could be extradited. And in 2012, the United Nations judged that Rwanda’s reform of the justice system, was sufficient for them to send the remaining cases from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), to be tried in Rwanda, after the ICTR was wound up in 2015.
The irony of course, is that Rwanda’s reforms of the justice system, were necessary because the very people now fleeing justice, had all but destroyed the country’s justice system, largely by turning it into another tool of persecution and genocide.
Despite all that however, it is unlikely that the fugitives in Britain will ever touch Rwandan soil again. After several years of appeals to have Britain extradite the suspects, Rwandan finally gave up, and asked Britain to have them tried in British courts. International conventions oblige nations to extradite suspects, in cases of genocide, or triy them. So far, Britain has failed to do either.
The longer Britain takes to fulfill that obligation, the less likely it becomes that the accused will ever answer for their alleged role in the crime of genocide. As happened in the case of Felicien Kabuga, who was eventually tracked down after decades on the run, the suspects, all of whom are now in their sixties, could plead senility, if they ever get to court.
And their highly paid lawyers, will almost certainly use the delay to question witnesses’ memory, while some witnesses are likely to have died, by the time any of the five’s cases gets before a judge.
In the meantime, the survivors of the Genocide Against the Tutsi, are forced to watch, as Britain’s indifference rubs salt in their wounds, by allowing the accused to thumb their noses at the very idea of justice.
And the cost is not just to the emotional wellbeing of survivors. So far, the case has cost the British tax payer, more than three million pounds sterling, and rising.
In the DRC too, the main cause of the conflict now raging there, the genocide ideology seeded by the FDLR, into Congolese society and body politic, is ignored by the UK, as the government simply repeats the hapless Felix Tshisekedi’s claims against Rwanda. Wish such friends, does Rwanda need any enemies?
Genocide survivors who escaped the massacre of ISAR Songa in the Southern Province told the Paris Court of Assizes that the Gendarmes of the nearby Nyanza were part of the death squad.
The witnesses testified on Friday in the appeal trial against Hategekimana Philippe Manier famously know as Biguma. The defendant was in June 2023 sentenced to life in jail after he was found guilty of crimes of Genocide against Tutsi.
He appealed the sentence with an alibi that he was not in Nyanza during the Genocide, but in Kigali.
One witness who testified said that she was 22 years old and she had come to find refuge at the farms of ISAR, the Rwanda’s agricultural research institute alongside 160 family members who would be massacred, with only 10 members surviving.
“I may recall a very difficult day that was April 28, 1994 when heavy weapons fired on us after one week of starving. I could feel the pains of corpses falling on me after an injury that I had sustained,” said the witness.
“Firing on us were gendarmes of the government forces. We could recognize them through their khaki uniform and red berets.”
The same gendarmes picked the witness from the corpses, and, the court wondered how they stopped targeting her and helped her through.
“It was not out of charity, they wanted to rape me. They raped me and impregnated me before vanishing to Zaire-Congo today,” she said.
“In the end I have birth to a baby girl who survived.”
This witness said that she went through a lot, including one incident where the Interahamwe militia asked her to dig her own grave, only to be saved by the same gendarmes who had interests in her.
“They raped me however they wanted,” she said. “The gendarmes would come every evening praising Biguma while saying he was the one behind the attacks. Some would say that he was more brave than his boss Birikunzira.
Another witness recalls that at ISAR, before trying to escape, a helicopter went around and the refugees divided themselves into two groups which tried to run for their life, trying to connect with the border to Burundi.
“They arrested us and tied the men among us and killed them, then kept women for rape while children were also put in the houses of Hutus to serve them,” said the witnesses.
The trial of Hategekimana Philippe Manier alias Biguma in appeal at Paris Court of Assizes has continued with new revelations from witnesses who are sharing shocking testimonies.
Biguma was Sergeant Gendarme in the ex-force armee Rwandaise(Ex-FAR) which is responsible of the extermination of the innocent civilians during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda.
In June 2023, he was handed life sentence in jail over genocide crimes committed in and around Nyanza, Southern province. The court found that he was directly involved in the killings of the mass, and he was leading the interahamwe militia in attack of the Tutsi. He was also found guilty of mounting roadblocks and killing Narcisse Nyagasaza who was Bourgmester of Ntyazo Commune.
New witnesses are now being heard in appeal, and they are bringing new evidences to the court.
A former workmate of Biguma said that the Genocide found her on maternity leave, while her husband continued to serve also as gendarme, driver of Biguma.
“At first Biguma was not harmful, but he changed when a new Interahamwe came to Nyanza to preside over the killing of the Tutsi in Nyanza,” said the witness.
She recalls that, Rupangu came on a special mission to eliminate the Tutsi. He would have found the gendarme in a meeting that intended to study a strategy to prevent the killings by Interahamwe and gave a new order
“When he came, he asked the Gendarme why they were being a hindrance of the Interahamwe killing,” the witness recalls.
Ever since, the witness said, Biguma followed in the footsteps of Rupangu and on April 22, 1994, the former sent a team of Interahamwe to find Nyagasaza who was struggling to cross to Burundi as the Genocide was intensifying.
“They brought Nyagasaza for Biguma, and upon arrival, the latter went to find a hummer to kill the local leader. As he was away, Nyagasaza pleaded the driver who was actually my husband-also a gendarme- to shoot him. He refused but another gendarme did it,” the witness recalled.
In the following days, the driver of Biguma pleaded the commandant of Nyanza to change his appointment because he had been having issues with Biguma who wanted him to be part of the killings.
“I beg not to go with Biguma anymore because we shall risk to kill each other,” the witness quotes the driver who was her husband.
On Friday, November 11, when asked by court what he had to say about this testimony, Biguma dismissed everything while saying that the witness was no longer a Gendarme. The witness brought evidences to prove Biguma wrong.
After supervising the massacres and conducting killings in Nyanza, according to the witness, Biguma sought a transfer to Kigali in Mai 1994.
“The objective was for him to find an opportunity to go hide what he had stolen from the Tutsi homes,” the witness said.
Theoneste Bagosora, the head of a commission which is believed to have laid the foundation of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi
The French Court of Assizes has continued the trial in Appeal of Genocide convict Hategekimana Philippe Manier famously known as Biguma.
The defendant, an Adjutant Gendarme in the EX-FAR was sentenced to life in jail in June 2023 after he was found guilty of Genocide crimes committed in and around Nyanza.
Among others, he was found guilty of participating in attacks and massacre of Tutsi in Nyanza, Nyabubare, Nyamure, Ntyazo and Isar Songa where Biguma was in most cases reported to have led the gendarmes who were firing on the desparate Tutsi or was coordinating both the gendarmes and Interahamwe on roadblocks.
He was also allegedly heard and seen himself firing on the Tutsi or pledging to kill them in several areas according to dozens of witnesses who include eyewitnesses, or Genocide survivors who narrowly survived the tragedy after several torture.
Biguma was found guilty of killing Bourgmester Nyagasaza Narcisse of the then Ntyazo commune, then Pierre Nyakarashi who was a police officer and Musonera alias Sana Sana.
He was also found responsible of the killings at Rwesero, Mushirarungu and Nyanza roadblocks.
On November 7, from the side of prosecution Me Philppart referred to a report that were commissioned by President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1991, to define the enemy of Rwanda.
The report was written by the officials of the Ecole Superieure Militaire(ESM) with at the helm, Col. Theoneste Bagosora.
The report narrated events of Rwanda since 1959 where Bagosora’s commission said that, the Tutsi who didn’t want to “concede defeat” after abolition of the kingdom regime in Rwanda fled the country to the neighboring Burundi and Uganda.
They said that the tutsi who fled the country organised themselves under the name of Inyenzi and attacked several occasions the Northern, the Southern and Eastern provinces respectively.
Portraying MRND, the ruling party until 1994 As “Peacemaker”
The Bagosora commission did not stop to this history of the year 1960s, but they continued their report to include the period of the second Republic, and the creation of the Mouvement Revolutionaire Nationale de Development (MRND) by then President Juvenal Habyarimana.
“The second republic thought that they were doing good when they created a single political party which did not have any discrimination, be it on ethnic, religious and regional ground; the party fought for the the development and unity of all Rwandans,” the commission alleged before adding: “The Hutus, naive that they were became drunk of peace and prosperity that offered the party and just relaxed while the extremist Tutsi were busy preparing to reconquer the power.”
A statement like this could be similar to what artiste Simon Bikindi put in his hatred songs when he called the Hutu “naive who do not see what the Tutsi are cooking against them.” Bikindi was sentenced over Genocide crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha. He died in jail.
The report then alleged that the Tutsi “gave their women to the influential Hutu in politics to seduce them and spy them, to be able to overturn power at the opportune time.”
The report continued to call the Tutsi “betrayers and bloodthirsty race of people who always believe that they are superior and want to dominate the rest of people around them and always seek to make the Hutu their subjects and to reconquer the monopoly that they lost during the 1959 revolution.”
“The Hutu, naturally naive do not understand that their being majority is not an assurance that the minority Tutsi cannot dominate them as they did for the last four centuries,” writes Bagosora at Al.
Bagosora and his commission made several other allegations against RPF.
This army officer was sentenced to 35 years in jail over Genocide; Crimes against humanity; War crimes -He is said to have said that he was going to prepare the apocalypse against the Tutsi.
He died on September 25,2021 in Bamako, Mali Prison aged 80 years.
Genocide convict Hategekimana Philippe Manier famously known as Biguma has returned to the French Court of Assizes in appeal against his life sentence in jail.
In June 2023, Biguma, a Rwandan with France nationality was sentenced to life in jail by the Court of Assizes.
Hategekimana was found guilty of genocide offenses committed during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in several areas of Nyanza district-southern Province where he was Adjutant Gendarmes in the government which planned and executed the Genocide.
He was found guilty of Genocide crimes and crimes against humanity. Of these crimes include the massacre in Nyanza, Nyabubare, Nyamure, Ntyazo and Isar Songa where Biguma was in most cases reported to have led the gendarmes who were firing on the desparate Tutsi or was coordinating both the gendarmes and Interahamwe on roadblocks.
He was also heard and seen himself firing on the Tutsi or pledging to kill them in several areas according to dozens of witnesses who include eyewitnesses, or Genocide survivors who narrowly survived the tragedy after several torture.
On this list is even included fellow gendarmes at the time who reported threats from Hategekimana who was working in close collaboration with his superior Captain Birikunzira, according to witnesses.
He was found guilty of killing Bourgmester Nyagasaza Narcisse of the then Ntyazo commune, then Pierre Nyakarashi who was a police officer and Musonera alias Sana Sana.
He was also found responsible of the killings at Rwesero, Mushirarungu and Nyanza roadblocks.
“Some of the reasons that reinforced the decision to hand him this sentence could be, but are not limited to his attitude in court. He was not showing remorse at all, he was trying to deny everything whatsoever and to pretend that he didn’t know anyone among the witnesses,” said Me Richard Gisagara, from the civil parties after the verdict on June 28,2023.
According to a Rwandan reporter on ground, through the trial, strong testimonies were shared, sending all the courtroom into shocks, but for Biguma would behave as if nothing happened.
Towards the end of the trial, Hategekimana decided to keep quiet completely, except for a statement he led to plead not guilty. His defence made of four lawyers continued their submissions in the name of their client.
Hategekimana Philippe Biguma was arrested in 2018 in Cameroun and deported to France where he had earlier on got nationality under the name Philippe Manier which he obtained after lying to the French competent institutions.
In appeal, Biguma is present in court with his four lawyers in the trial that is set to conclude by December 20,2024.
As the trial presided by Judge Marc SOMMERER started, Biguma was reminded his right to keep silence during the proceeding.
Yesterday, as the court was still discussing procedures, Me ALTIT from the defence advanced an argument that “witnesses from Rwanda via video conference should not be heard because they cannot testify independently because there is no democracy in Rwanda.”
However, the prosecution responded that the trial “is taking place in France, a country which has a reputation of giving equity justice.”
The Paris Court of Assizes has found guilty of Genocide crimes against the former Director of Public Health and influential person during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, Doctor Eugene Rwamucyo and therefore sentenced him to 27 years in prison.
In a trial that started on October 1 and was concluded on October 30, Rwamucyo was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Genocide, Genocide crimes and crimes against humanity committed in and around Butare town in Gishamvu, Nyumba, Ngoma, Ndora among others.
“Justice has spoken. Strong thoughts for the victims of Butare Ville, Nyumba, Ndora and everywhere else,” said Ricbard Gisagara, one of the lawyers of civil parties after the verdict.
“It is a very important thing because, people like Rwamucyo are very dangerous in the society; thirty years on, Dr. Rwamucyo never showed any regret of his acts. It is the first time he is going to spend time in prison over genocide crimes where he will feel the severity of his crime.So, we are very thankful,” Gisagara said.
Among others, Rwamucyo was accused to have supervised the burial of the Tutsi in mass graves, and among the dead, he could also bury the living victims.
Yesterday, as he was given the floor to say his last word in court, he reiterated that the place where he buried the Tutsi are known, and, that he only buried the dead bodies, not the living ones.
He said he was doing that burial to prevent public danger related to the bodies in environment.
“Therefore, for those who accuse me, I cannot help them-ku banshinja rero, ndumva ntacyo nabamarira,” he said before court.
In this trial, nearly 60 witnesses were heard while the civil parties included nearly 800 people.
Gisagara said he is satisfied with the trial because, for the fist time, the French court admitted that the Genocide was planned.
The trial of Eugene Rwamucyo who is battling Genocide trial at the Paris Court of Assizes is nearing conclusion.
Started October 1, 2024 in substance, the trial entered the phase of pleading since Friday withe the prosecution which concluded by requesting the court to hand the suspect 30 year in jail on October 28.
On Monday, the prosecution concluded its pleading with Maitre Peron indicating that “a lie is generally the vocabulary of perpetrators”, also adding that the circles of exiled extremists present strong similarities with mafias.
He said that the defense has based their arguments on three allegations, including that the witnesses were manipulated, that Rwamucyo’s trial is a political, not a judiciary case, and that the French judiciary is being used for political and diplomatic matters.
However, the prosecution constructed its arguments on facts before during the Genocide where they say that, the hate media, case of Kangura and RTLM and the stigmatization of the tutsi mark “a deliberate will to destroy where government is responsible of the massacre of its own people.”
Me Peron said that, with his membership at RTLM, and extremist political parties like CDR, his influence at ONAPO and University of Rwanda, “Rwamucyo was a precursor of the Genocide.”
“The support of Rwamucyo in the genocidal politics is as both theoretical and material,” said the prosecution.
“He filed three abrupt reports that followed the murder of a Tutsi who was working at Medicin Sans Frontieres and then the massacre of the Tutsi who had fled at Butare University Teaching Hospital.”
Practically, said the prosecutor, Rwamucyo supervised the burying of the Tutsi who were killed, and among the bodies, he also buried the living people.
The prosecution said that Rwamucyo moblised prisonners from Karubanda prison, then ordered for a machine_Caterpillar for this work, according to a testimony of the driver of the machine.
The same witness also said, that there were 11 mass graves in Butare which were meant to throw the Tutsi in Gishamvu, Nyakibanda, Kabutare, IRST, Nyumba, Kabuye, Hotel Faucon, and Ngoma among others.
Contrary to what alleged Rwamucyo that he never supervised the burial of the living, that he only assisted in the burial of the dead as a hygienic measure, the prosecution said that it was not an act of decency, “it was a deliberate act of concealing the facts, to an extent that they would dare to even throw living people in the pits.”
“The hygiene in their language meant to ‘clear the city with its tutsi population.”
The prosecution admits that Rwamucyo may have no blood on his hands, but “one can kill by words”. “Rwamucyo was in intellectual of action who did not hesitate to head to the mass graves. He put his knowledge to the service of the genocidal politics,” the prosecutor said and added:’He is today retired in pension, while his victims lay to rest without sepulchre in Rwanda.”
With all these, the prosecution suggested that the suspect deserves “a life sentence in jail, but looking at previous trials, we may request the court to hand him 30 years in jail.”
The founder and president of Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda which prepares complaints against suspects of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, Alain Gauthier has testified before the Paris Court of Assizes how he knew about Rwanda and contributed to its justice in the wake of the Genocide without being scared by insults of genocide deniers who continue to increase every day.
This particular story of Gauthier, husband to Rwandan-French national Dafroza Gauthier can be traced from 1961 when the former was 11 years old. He watched a film on Uganda’s martyrs and told the white father priest who screened the movie: “I want to be like you. He summoned me and told me to be patient: “Pass your baccalaureate and we’ll see!”
Indeed, by 1968, he had enrolled at the Faculty of Theology in Strasbourg where he spent two years, after which he traveled to Rwanda for a voluntary teaching job in Minor Seminary of Save in Butare where Bishop Jean Baptiste Gahamanyi needed French teachers.
Only two years spent in Rwanda would be enough to give Gauthier a great connection and a strong bond with Rwanda.
In 1974, while in France, a parish priest of Save who was in holiday in his France hometown asked him to come and greet a young girl whom he had met in Rwanda.
“It was during the Christmas holidays that my story with Dafroza began,” Gauthier said adding that they later on got married and settled in France. They regularly visited their Rwanda’s new family until October 1990 when the RPF struggle started and made it hard for them to come.
However, in 1993, Gauthier started realizing that his second home, Rwanda was under threat and the Genocide was imminent. He thus started attracting the attention of French President Francois Mitterand asking him to intervene with his Rwandan counterpart to prevent such a tragedy.
In the end of February 1994, Gauthier’s wife went to Kigali to visit her mother, but she cut her stay short, her mother having asked her to leave. They would never see each other again because the mother would be killed on April 7,1994 in Nyamirambo, alongside other relatives.
Alain Gauthier speaking in Kigali after being awarded Igihango medal as Dafroza Gauthier looks on
“Our son Emmanuel, aged eleven, had only a few words to say: ‘ Mama, I will avenge you’.
We will spend the next three months trying to alert the press and the international community to what is
happening in Rwanda. In June, we organised a demonstration in REIMS to protest against France’s role in
Rwanda, under one slogan: ‘ RWANDA, la honte!” recalls Gauthier.
The Gauthiers would be able to return in Rwanda in 1996 where they initiated the pursuit of genocide suspects and they opened a case against Father Wensceslas MUNYESHYAKA, the priest of Holy Family- Sainte Famille church whose case was eventually dismissed after 25 years.
More cases will also follow until 2001 when Alain and Dafroza Gauthier started the Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda(CPCR) and they continued the struggle to date.
Their struggle however, always comes with heavy costs, according to the witness. He gave a case of a colloquium he attended in France in 2002.
“A participant took the liberty of introducing me in the following terms: ‘ This white man only knows
Rwanda through pillow talk ’. My neighbour, Servilien SEBASONI, with whom I had come, pointed out that this
was Dr RWAMUCYO,” Gauthier said.
Since the foundation, CPCR filed complaints against 35 genocide suspects in France, many of whom were tried and others in process. Those in process include the one of Dr. Eugene Rwamucyo which is ongoing at the Paris Court of Assizes.
Already concluded include the case of Sosthène MUNYEMANA, Fabien NERETSE and Laurent BUCYIBARUTA.
According to the witness, their family goes through many challenges due to this search for justice. Alain Gauthier presented to court several abstracts of emails that targeted him, for having contributed to bringing Dr. Rwamucyo before court.
One of them dated October 6,2024 reads in part: “Through your omnipotence, you authorise those who must atend a public trial. […] The powerful pro-Tutsi trials in France led by the diabolical Franco-Tutsi couple of Alain and Dafroza Gauthier the sinister CPCR, you are sure to have already put the Court in your pocket so that nothing can come to the rescue
of the innocent Doctor RWAMUCYO…”
Rwanda recognizes efforts of CPCR in tracking and having the genocide suspects in France brought before justice.
In November 2017, Alain and Dafroza Gauthier were awarded with national order of friendship medals ‘Igihango’ in recognition for their exemplary service that has changed the country’s relationship with others.
October 18, was day 14 of the trial of Eugene Rwamucyo, the director of public health department from National University of Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi.
From October 1 through October 30, Rwamucyo, a medical doctor and lecturer at the university is appearing before Paris Court of Assizes to answer allegations related to the Genocide.
He faces trial on charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity, complicity in crimes against humanity and conspiracy to prepare genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Among others, Rwamucyo is accused to have buried people alive at Nyakibanda Major Seminary and the adjacent Nyumba parish with intention to conceal the mass murder.
In this trial, the defence quoted one Michel Murenzi, currently a priest in Italy, who was a lecturer in Nyakibanda during the 1994 Genocide committed against Tutsi, but he claims to know little or absolutely nothing about the tragedy.
However, where he happens to admit that he saw “people being killed”, he said it was none of his business to do something towards their safety, because, he didn’t have a vocation of martyrdom.
Father Murenzi who has been in Italy since the last 30 years now, stated that he had known Eugène RWAMUCYO before the genocide. At the major seminary of NYAKIBANDA, they “ended the same class in 1979/1980.”
The accused left the seminary at the end of the first year “for unknown reasons and they only reconnected in 1994 still in the same place where Murenzi had become a lecturer in charge of Biblical Sciences.”
The witness was asked several questions about the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi where more than 1 million tutsi were killed, but he said he knew nothing about it. For example, he said that he did not know who had killed whom in Kibeho.
During the Genocide, 30,000 tutsi were killed in and around the church, but Gonecide survivors said that the number is far bigger than this because there are bodies that were not found for decent burial. Some of the victims were burnt inside the church, part of which is now serving as a genocide memorial. The victims lay to rest in Kibeho memorial.
Some priests are accused to have played a role in the massacre of Kibeho, including Emmanuel Uwayezu, now allegedly ministering in France.
Back to Father Murenzi, he alleged that “many people were killed in Kibeho, and they were mainly Tutsis.”
He claimed that he once went to Kibeho, but not at the church, to an extent that he even didn’t manage to know the parish priest during his time.
He claimed to have remained in Nyakibanda, to handle administrative matters, but on some occasions, he would go out to see the displaced people whom he could give some sacraments, including penitentia, which consists of confession of sins.
Father Murenzi claimed to have seen at a roadblock “men carrying guns checking national identity cards, adding however, that he didn’t know whether holding an identity card marked Tutsi posed any problems for the holder. He only heard it said but has never witnessed it.
“It seems that Tutsis were taken in for questioning,” Father Murenzi said adding that he he doesn’t know what happened to them.
After sometimes, he claimed going to Butare to hide at Karubanda minor seminary because he was hearing that there was a crisis in the country. He could hear guns, but he said he didn’t know who was being shot at.
Abbé Murenzi continued to answer the court President’s questions, always with short answers.
“The Interahamwe? I don’t know them,” he told court to the surprise of the audience.
On 27 April 1994, when he returned from BUTARE, many displaced people had been killed in Nyakibanda, “with corpses piled up and decomposing, which prevented him from speaking. ”
He said it was difficult for him to try to find out what had happened because ‘ a lot of people were going wild and killing everyone ’. With this, he said, bodies started decomposing and the Butare health services started intervening to bury them, through the support of public health services.
He said that one morning, he saw RWAMUCYO, who greeted him and told him that he had come to see him. The witness cannot say how long he stayed with Rwamucyo: in any case, he did not spend the night in NYAKIBANDA. He had not invited him to return.
The priest said he met him outside the seminary from which he had left‘ to get some fresh air’. He had not gone to see the corpses because he was afraid of being killed. Towards the end of his statement, Abbé MURENZI said that when he had gone out ‘to get some fresh air’ he had experienced a feeling of sadness, that he had even often cried!
‘Any survivors?’ asked the presiding judge. He remembers that a young girl was brought to him, found among the
corpses, but by the time he went to fetch her some milk, the killers had taken her away and killed her.
When confronted, he said that on his return to the major seminary, he had seen ‘ dying people “. The priest replied:
” It was a deduction I had made. I imagined that there might be survivors. However, he confirms that no one
looked after the survivors.
Abbé MURENZI said he did not see Rwamucyo give instructions to the engine driver who was burying the bodies in mass grave. However, that is what he had said earlier during the confrontation.
“Probably because of a faulty memory!” he said.
The presiding judge insisted and asked the priest if the case was the genocide against Tutsis or not, but the priest replied:
‘I didn’t immediately understand that it was genocide. I realised when ‘they’, the UN, used that
term.Well before the ICTR. When a group is eliminated for what it is, that’s genocide. I left when I was afraid of
the arrival of the RPF, I was above all afraid of death,” he said.
After seeing these massacres, Murenzi said he left for Gikongoro and then Zaire, where he stayed for several
months before returning to Italy. Since then, he has never returned to Rwanda. For him, it was the best
solution ‘ to be at peace ’.
“During the genocide, Father, you were not a great witness of evangelical love! Do you have any regrets?’ the
presiding judge asked in an almost religious tone, in a confessional voice, underlining the turmoil he seemed to be
experiencing at this point in the hearing.
Father Murenzi answered: “No regrets. I did the right thing. I didn’t have a martyr’s vocation. My conscience is not
entirely clear. Fear kept me awake at night. I have nothing to regret. Thank you.”
On a question from a juror, Father Murenzi said he was sorry that the bodies had not been identified and that
there had been no proper religious ceremony.
However, he said he prayed for the victims during the mass and confessed to some of them! ’ I prayed for these poor people who had been killed unjustly. Abbé Thaddée and I concelebrated’.
The president pointed out that priests and nuns have been tried for Genocide.
“I know that. It’s not my role to judge. I am concerned if they have betrayed their mission. I’ve asked myself
questions but haven’t found an answer. It’s the court that has the evidence. It hurts me to see that someone has
betrayed the teaching that was given to others. I’m a priest in charge of several parishes. I’m a pastor, I do
what I can to help people,” he said.
Still on questioning by the president, the witness said he had not understood what was happening in BUTARE
during his stay; he could hear the bombs and bullets.
As for SINDIKUBWABO’s speech and the death of Prefect Jean-Baptiste HABYARIMANA, he said he had not heard about it. He added that it was the role of the court to decide whether RWAMUCYO was guilty.
Maître MATHE gave the witness the opportunity to add a few words. She tried to understand why, for example,
he said he did not know the Interahamwe.
Former PM Jean Kmbanda supplying the arms to Interahamwe during the Genocide
Former Prime Minister during the Abatabazi government who is serving life sentence over the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi crimes this week appeared before the Paris Court of Assizes to testify on the side of prosecution in the Genocide case of Dr. Eugene Rwamucyo.
Director of Public health department in Butare during the Genocide, Rwamucyo is accused of five charges embodied in Genocide, conspiracy to commit the genocide and conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity(other than the genocide) and crimes against humanity(other than the genocide).
Kambanda who pleaded guilty on Genocide crimes appeared on video conference from prison in Senegal, and, with so much boldness, he presented himself as a ‘UN political prisoner’ who still does not recognize his conviction.
Without hesitating, Kambanda portrayed the suspect as “ a courageous man who did his job and loved the people”.
Prosecution in previous audiences, indicated that Rwamucyo, was a close friend to Kambanda, and the cabinet members hailing from Butare, and those include Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, then minister of family who is serving jail sentence over genocide crimes, including rape.
Kambanda went ahead to allege that the suspect is “innocent”, and when he was asked to tell the situation of the country between April 6-July 4, he dwelt on the crash of President Habyarimana’s plane, which he blamed on Rwanda’s liberator at the helm of Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) Inkotanyi and then Romeo Dallaire who was the commander of UN Peacekeepers in Rwanda.
The witness was given the floor and he gave his version of events at a brisk pace, barely taking a breath, but with a certain
relish.
Among others, Kambanda admitted knowing the dismissal of BUTARE prefect Jean-Bapiste HABYARIMANA. He alleged that he had indeed been kidnapped and taken to GITARAMA, but that he had asked the Minister of justice to have him released.
“It was when he returned to BUTARE, free, that he was murdered!” Kmabanda said. Several witnesses in many trials accused Kambanda’s government to have removed Prefect Habyarimana and to kill him, simply because he had opposed the massacre of the Tutsi.
Kambanda gave his interpretation of President SINDIKUBWABO’s speech at the inauguration of the
new prefect, Sylvain NSABIMANA: ‘going to work’.
He said it meant that “people had to return to their fields to avoid starvation. Radio Rwanda would not have broadcast this speech, “stolen by the RPF” and given to Radio MUHABURA, which had given its own interpretation.”
Contrary to this claim, several witnesses in many trials indicated that the incendiary speech of President Sindikubwabo on April 19,1994 incited the extremist hutus and interahamwe militia to start killing the Tutsi. There was no massacre in Butare until he made this speech, calling the people of the South’lazy.’
Kambanda said that he failed to defend his country, against RPF rebels, “because there were so many divisions and enemies around him.”
He however admitted: “I was not trained in politics.”
Meanwhile, Kambanda admitted that there were incendiary speeches in Rwanda, but said, there were also good speeches.
“You’re talking about Léon MUGESERA’s speech at KABAYA, the Ten Commandments of the Bahutu, you’re telling me that there were no positive speeches! You don’t know anything about it.I’m the one who intervened to help these “accomplices”. I was against their arrest,” Kambanda claimed without producing some examples of ‘good speeches.’
On why he defends Rwamucyo, Kambanda claimed; ” I’ve seen him in action. I saw him in GOMA, in the camps, helping people, as his duty demanded. He worked with the Red Cross: we gathered corpses and in their midst were the living. He’s someone who loves his country, his people ”, and he adds: ” I’m a Christian!”
Among allegations brought against Rwamucyo is included the fact that he supervised interahamwe burrying the Tutsi victims in mass graves, but witnesses said, he used to bury even those who were still alive.
Several revelations continue to be made at the Paris Court of Assizes where former medical doctor at University of Rwanda Eugene Rwamucyo is battling a genocide case.
Rwamucyo, Director of Public Health during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi is accused of Genocide crimes, conspiracy to commit the Genocide and crimes against humanity.
He is alleged to have committed the crimes in and around Butare town in sectors of Kansi, Gishamvu, Ngoma, Ndora and others of the current Huye and Gisagara district respectively.
A witness from Rwanda knew Rwamucyo when he found her at her working place in Butare and quickly understood that Rwamucyo had a degree of arrogance and extremism.
“He boasted to me and my colleagues that he did not introduce himself by his first name to his students, but rather said in English “I am CDR!”, beating his chest,” said the witness.
“My colleagues told him not to say that in front of me because I was Tutsi. After that, he stopped saying hello, and showed me nothing but contempt and disdain.”
Before and during the Genocide, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (French: Coalition pour la Défense de la République, CDR) was a Rwandan far-right Hutu Power political party that took a major role in inciting the Rwandan genocide.
The witness who hails from Rwanda recalls incidences that confirmed to her that Rwamucyo had hatred against the Tutsi when he saw him making a list of the Tutsi, towards 1993 from a computer in the office of a Germany expatriate in Rwanda.
“When Rwamucyo left, the door was open and the computer was still on. I saw a list of names, one of which that I picked out of Athanase KAYITARE. He was one of the councillors from the town of Butare, in the Arab quarter,” said the witness.
During the genocide, the witness recalls that she was hiding in a soldier’s house when she heard Rwamucyo on Radio warning the Tutsi in the hideouts, that they had made systematic lists.
“Those in hiding need have no hope, we’re going to find them! It was at this point that she made the connection with the list of names found on the computer,” the witness quotes Rwamucyo as saying.
Rwanda recognizes efforts of CPCR in tracking and having the genocide suspects in France brought before justice.
