2023-09-23 11:16:42
Pierre Kayondo, a former Rwandan prefect suspected of having participated in the 1994 genocide in the country, was indicted on Tuesday in Paris and imprisoned, AFP learned on Saturday from a source close to the case.
Kayondo, who was the subject of an investigation in France since the end of 2021 after a complaint from a group of victims and who was suspected of living in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), in the North-West, according to a source judicially indicted for genocide, complicity in genocide, complicity in crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit these crimes.
According to another source close to the case, he was arrested Tuesday by gendarmes from the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH), on the basis of a warrant. bring issued by the investigating judge. He was presented the same day to this investigating magistrate, who indicted him. Kayondo was then remanded in custody.
“Active” participation in “the organization of exterminations”
This Rwandan politician was the target of a complaint with the constitution of a civil party from the Collective of Civil Parties of Rwanda (CPCR) filed in September 2021, and which gave rise to the rapid opening of a judicial investigation.
In its complaint, the CPCR affirmed that Pierre Kayondo, “former prefect of Kibuye and former deputy” in Gitarama prefecture, had “actively participated in the organization of the exterminations in Ruhango and Tambwe in Gitarama prefecture by allowing the constitution of interahamwe militia groups, by providing weapons and participating in meetings.”
More than 800,000 dead according to the UN
For Alain Gauthier, the emblematic president of the CPCR, Pierre Kayondo, whose age he estimates at around 70 years, “was close to personalities convicted of genocide”, including Colonel Aloys Simba and Ephrem Nkezabera, nicknamed the “banker of genocide.”
Questioned on Saturday by AFP, Alain Gauthier and his wife Dafroza, who co-founded the CPCR, were pleased that their “complaint was followed by the opening of an investigation and that justice was interested in Mr. Kayondo . It’s good “. The genocide left more than 800,000 dead according to the UN, mainly Tutsi exterminated between April and July 1994.
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