BELGIAN COURT SENTENCES RWANDAN FORMER MILITIA LEADER TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT OVER 1994 GENOCIDE
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Seraphin Twarhirwa, 66, was found guilty of directly participating in or overseeing the atrocities by Hutu Interahamwe militiamen in Kigali during the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus 30 years ago.
A second defendant, Pierre Basabose, a one-time close associate of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, was also found guilty of “genocide” and “war crimes” for funding the militia.
But the 76-year-old, who suffers from incurable senile dementia and was unable to attend hearings, was spared jail for health reasons.
The six-day trial related to the 1994 Rwandan genocide took place in Belgium in 2020, when the two men were apprehended while residing there as refugees.
During the colonial era, Belgium ruled over what is now modern-day Rwanda, which is home to a sizable Rwandan diaspora.
Following the downing of Habyarimana’s plane on April 6, 1994, there were 100 days of mass killings that resulted in the estimated 800,000 deaths of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The former doctor, Sosthene Munyemana, was sentenced to 24 years in prison by a court in adjacent France on Wednesday for his role in the genocide. This was followed by the punishment in Belgium.
In their two-month trial, Twarhirwa and Basabose refuted the allegations.
Both men’s attorneys declared they would file an appeal.
Michele Hirsch, a lawyer who represented victims’ relatives during the trial, applauded the guilty verdict.
“The judges considered that the mass rapes perpetrated by Twarhirwa were part of the genocide,” she told AFP.
However, defence attorney Vincent Lurquin stated that there were significant concerns highlighted by the trial regarding Belgium’s legal cooperation with President Paul Kagame’s “authoritarian regime” in Rwanda.
He added that in a procedure started in Kigali by Rwandan authorities in the early 2000s, Belgian investigators had depended on re-examining witnesses.
AFP
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