End of a long legal episode: the trial of Eugène Rwamucyo will take place. The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal filed by the Rwandan doctor against his dismissal for genocide and crimes against humanity, according to a decision consulted by AFP.
Eugène Rwamucyo, 63, was returned to the assizes in October 2020 for his participation in the genocide which killed around 800,000 people in Rwanda, mainly among the Tutsi minority, between April and July 1994.
He proclaims his innocence
The former Rwandan doctor, who claims his innocence, ended up filing an appeal which was not accepted by the Court of Cassation during a hearing on Thursday. His referral to the Assize Court is therefore final.
Eugène Rwamucyo is notably accused of having participated in meetings of genocidal leaders in Butare, in the south of Rwanda, in 1994. He is also suspected of having directed the mass burial operations of the bodies of Tutsi civilians during the massacres committed between April and July 1994, and ordered the completion and burial of survivors.
The man, who resides in Belgium, was sentenced in absentia in 2007 in Rwanda to life imprisonment. Doctor at the Maubeuge hospital, in the North, he was suspended in October 2009, then dismissed, when the management of the establishment learned that he was the subject of an international arrest warrant.
Already arrested in May 2010
He was arrested in May 2010 in the Paris region after the funeral of another Rwandan, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, co-founder of the Free Radio-Television of the Thousand Hills (RTLM). The Versailles Court of Appeal, however, opposed his extradition in September 2010, ordering his release.
To date, four cases related to the genocide in Rwanda have given rise to trials in France, two of which have been finally judged. Two trials are scheduled for 2023: the former Rwandan gendarme Philippe Hategekimana, naturalized French under the name of Philippe Manier, then the Rwandan doctor Sosthène Munyemana.