French court sentences former Rwandan mayor to 20 years for Rwandan genocide

July 13 (EUROPA PRESS) –

A French court on Tuesday sentenced the former mayor of the Rwandan city of Gikongoro, Laurent Bucyibaruta, to 20 years in prison for his role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis.

Bucyibaruta, 78, has been living in France for more than two decades and this Tuesday he was found guilty on charges of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity, as reported by ‘The New Times’.

“After all these years moving freely around France, he has finally been brought to justice, but there is something more; when a person like Bucyibaruta appears in court, there are many things that we come to know about the genocide, how it happened and other people. who may have been involved,” stressed the president of Ibuka, the association that brings together the survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, Egide Nkuranga, adding that his wish would have been life imprisonment.

Bucyibaruta is known to survivors as “the butcher of Gikongoro” and is accused of masterminding the massacres of Tutsis in Murambi, Cyanika, Kaduha and Kibeho.

Bucyibaruta was born in 1944 in Gikongoro and became mayor of Gikongoro in July 1992, a position he held until July 1994.

In December 1993, during a public meeting, he gave a speech in which he encouraged the population to make financial contributions to buy weapons to fight the “Tutsi enemy”.

In addition, on April 10, 1994, Bucyibaruta encouraged many Tutsis to go to the Murambi Technical School, where they were promised food and later killed, according to the aforementioned newspaper.

The roots of the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis go back several generations, but the genocide was unleashed after the death of President Habyarimana, the victim of the downing of his presidential plane with a missile on April 6, 1994. After the president’s death, the Interahamwe militia he launched a campaign of executions that lasted for 100 days, on many occasions tearing his victims to pieces in their homes, in churches, football stadiums or on barricades.

Mass graves are still being discovered to this day, especially since convicts who have served their sentences have provided information about where they buried or abandoned their victims.