Life imprisonment was requested this Friday, July 8 against the former prefect of Gikongoro. Defense lawyers will plead on Monday, before the verdict expected on Tuesday, July 12.
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Audience sketch: Laurent Bucyibaruta, tried for genocide in Paris, May 9, 2022.
The representatives of the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) requested, this Friday, July 8, life imprisonment against the former Rwandan prefect Laurent Bucyibaruta, tried since May 9 before the Paris Assize Court for genocide. They believe that he “failed in his duty” to protect the Tutsi in his prefecture when he “had the means to act”.
This former senior official was “an essential cog without which the murderous machine could not have been implemented”, estimated the prosecution, demanding his conviction not only as an accomplice but also as “main author” of the “crime crimes”.
Laurent Bucyibaruta, prefect of Gikongoro between 1992 and July 1994, is on trial for genocide, complicity in genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity. The former prefect denies these accusations.
“He conscientiously carried out the directives”
The province of Gikongoro, a region in southern Rwanda where the Tutsi represented 17% of the population against 12% nationally, was one of the most affected by the genocide targeting this minority, which claimed at least 800,000 victims according to the UN.
The two Advocates General held against Laurent Bucyibaruta “complicity by aid or assistance” for the massacre of approximately 25,000 Tutsi refugees in the parish of Kibeho on April 14, 1994, where, “aware of the situation, he let it happen” .
They consider him an “author” of genocide for the killings of April 21 and 22 in a school under construction in Murambi, Cyanika and Kaduha, where some 75,000 people were killed.
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“He conscientiously carried out the directives given to him by the interim government” and then “passed them on to all the links in the administrative chain”, they justified.
The Advocate General, Sophie Havard, summarized: “This man did not kill anyone” with his hands “but he has on him the blood of all the victims killed in Gikongoro”.
Defense lawyers will plead on Monday, and the verdict will be delivered on Tuesday, July 12.
With AFP