Rwandan doctor given 24-year jail sentence in France over 1994 genocide
Al Jazeera
Sosthene Munyemana, 68, has been found guilty on charges of genocide despite denying any wrongdoing.
A Rwandan doctor was sentenced by a Paris court on Wednesday to 24 years in prison for his role in the 1994 genocide in his home country.
After a deliberation lasting nearly 15 hours, Sosthene Munyemana, 68, was found guilty of charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and participation in a conspiracy to prepare those crimes. He has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers said he would appeal the decision.
The six-week-long trial at the Assize Court in Paris came nearly three decades after a complaint was filed against Munyemana in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux in 1995.
Munyemana, who was impassive as the verdict was handed down, was immediately jailed. He is the sixth suspect to have faced trial in France over the 1994 massacres in which an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them, were killed over 100 days.
At the time, Munyemana was a 38-year-old gynaecologist in Tumba, in Rwanda’s southern university district of Butare.
