The former Rwandan prefect Laurent Bucyibaruta was sentenced on Tuesday July 12 to 20 years in prison by the Paris Assize Court. The 78-year-old, France’s highest-ranking official ever in connection with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, was found guilty as an accomplice to genocide and crimes against humanity for four massacres. Charges, which he has always contested, for which life had been requested.
“I have never been on the side of the killers”, had again proclaimed Tuesday the former senior official, refugee in France since 1997: ” One thing is certain: I never wanted the suffering of the Tutsi in my prefecture. It’s true that I couldn’t save them, neither them, nor their families, nor their friends”. Sweeping away the accusations which accuse him of having been the accomplice of a massacre of Tutsi, and the author of four others, in the region of Gikongoro, one of the most affected by the genocide which killed at least 800,000 died in the country between April and July 1994.
An “indispensable cog” in the “murderous machine”
As elsewhere in Rwanda, the burning and looting of Tutsi homes, and the killings, began in the prefecture shortly after the attack on Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Among the charges against the then prefect is the massacre committed in the technical school under construction in Murambi, in the commune of Nyamagabe. One of the bloodiest dramas of the genocide, the site of which has since become a memorial.
On the morning of April 21, 1994, tens of thousands of Tutsi refugees, gathered on the spot at the initiative of the prefect who assured them « protection », are surrounded and killed. A handful survived, fleeing or hiding among the corpses. The killings continued during the day in two neighboring parishes, where Tutsis had hoped to gain sanctuary. If survivors of Murambi have certified that they saw the prefect on the spot the morning of the massacre, his defense set out to portray him « hors champ » and without “no power”.
Rwanda: teaching the genocide, between duty and precautions
During the nine weeks of debates, the prefect in office from July 1992 to July 1994, who appeared free under judicial control, said to himself ” outmoded “ by the extent of the massacres, claiming to have always done everything to “seeking peace” et “protect the people”. But for the general counsel, Laurent Bucyibaruta was “an essential cog without which the murderous machine could not have been implemented”. If he “didn’t kill anyone”the man “has on him the blood of all the victims killed in Gikongoro”.