Rwanda genocide trial begins in Paris

A court in France has begun hearing the trial of a former Rwandan intelligence chief charged with complicity in the African country’s 1994 genocide.

Pascal Simbikangwa’s trial opened in France on Tuesday, about 20 years after the genocide left hundreds of thousands people dead in Rwanda.

Simbikangwa was arrested in 2008 on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte. He is accused of inciting, organizing and aiding massacres during the genocide, when the ethnic majority Hutus killed some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis.

The genocide occurred after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down on April 6, 1994. It lasted approximately 100 days and hence is called the “100 Days of Hell.”

“I was a captain in the Rwandan army then in the intelligence services,” the 54-year-old said in his opening statement at the court.

His lawyers asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that it could not be treated fairly because of the “inequality of power” between the prosecution and defense.

France refused to extradite Simbikangwa to Rwanda after his arrest, as it has done in previous cases. Instead, it decided to try him under laws allowing French courts to consider cases of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes committed in other countries.

Rwandan Justice Minister Johnston Busingye welcomed the trial, saying, “It is history being made. We have always wondered why it has taken 20 years… it is late, but it is a good sign.”

SAB/PR 

 

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/02/05/349315/rwanda-genocide-trial-begins-in-paris/

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