Rwandan genocide: life required on appeal against two former mayors tried in France

Rwandan genocide: life required on appeal against two former mayors tried in France
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AFP / File
/ BENOIT PEYRUCQ

"Craftsmen of death" with "full authority": the maximum penalty was requested on Wednesday in Paris against two former Rwandan bourgmestres, already sentenced to life imprisonment in 2016 for participating in the Tutsi genocide in their village in April 1994.

The attorneys general named Octavien Ngenzi, 60, and Tito Barahira, 67, as essential parts of the genocide in their commune of Kabarondo, in eastern Rwanda. A period of two-thirds security was requested for Ngenzi, burgomaster in office in 1994 and as such "responsible for all the deaths of the commune".

The two men, who succeeded each other at the head of the commune from 1976 to 94, denied to the very end any participation in the genocide.

Sitting straight in the box, they listened, almost impassively, to the heavy indictment. Frédéric Bernardo and Aurélie Belliot described two men who "accumulated privileges and heritage" and who "went to the end of the genocidal logic" to retain political advantages. A Ngenzi who kept his "full authority" and ended up "leading" the killers, a Barahira always "feared", who "harangues the killers" with which he willingly interferes.

"Do the interventions of Octavien Ngenzi have the effect of stopping the massacres? No. To trigger the killings? Yes. Does he retain his authority as bourgmestre? Yes. Does he manage to make himself respected by (Hutu extremist militiamen) Interahamwe? Aurélie Belliot, taking one by one the episodes of this beginning of April in the rural commune.

More than eight weeks of debates have given to see a genocide between neighbors, on the hills where the inhabitants participated formerly together Community work.

In Kabarondo, the most horrendous massacre took place in the church, on April 13, in this commune where thousands of Tutsi peasants had taken refuge, hoping to gain a sanctuary, as had been the case. places of worship in previous pogroms since the 1960s.

Cypress and banana plantation

As elsewhere in Rwanda, where the killings begin shortly after the attack on Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, massacres and summary executions went on.

The genocide has, according to the UN, more than 800,000 deaths in 100 days across the country. More than 2,000 in a single day at Kabarondo church, according to his parish priest, Oreste Incimatata. More than seven hours of chaos of powder and blood, the silent blades of the machetes succeeding the crash of grenades and mortars posted in the coffee trees.

Beyond their "total implication", Aurélie Belliot denounced the cynicism defendants: when at the height of the massacres, Barahira says that he takes care of his banana plantation and says he believes that the smoke that escapes from the burning roof of the church comes "from the kitchen of the refugees". When Ngenzi says he "sat for six hours behind a cypress hedge preventing him from seeing the massacre in the church," a few dozen meters down.

Frédéric Bernardo only distinguishes the two men to highlight the additional responsibility of the bourgmestre Ngenzi: "Barahira has blood on his hands, Ngenzi him, let it be, it is an authority.It is at all stages of the genocide, during the massacres, the burial of the bodies, until the last round. "

The Advocate General recalled that these men, arrested in France, were tried under the universal jurisdiction of the French courts. This trial is the second held in France on the 1994 massacres in Rwanda, after the conviction of former captain Pascal Simbikangwa for 25 years

The floor will be Thursday to the defense, the verdict is expected Friday.

04/07/2018 14:29:12 –
Paris (AFP) –
© 2018 AFP