the roadmender accused of genocide sentenced to 14 years of criminal imprisonment by the Paris Assize Court
Claude Muhayimana, accused of knowingly aiding killers during the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994 in Rwanda, had been on trial since November 22, 2021 for complicity in genocide.
After ten years of proceedings and two reports due to the health crisis, the trial of the roadmender of Rouen lasted nearly a month, with the hearing of dozens of witnesses, some of whom came especially from Rwanda.
This Thursday, December 16, 2021, Claude Muhayimana was sentenced to 14 years of criminal imprisonment.
After the verdict was announced, his lawyers said they would appeal.
The day before, the public prosecutor had requested 15 years of criminal imprisonment against this 60-year-old Franco-Rwandan, accused of having transported killers to Tutsi massacre sites in Kibuye (western Rwanda) between April and July 1994.
Before the court retired to deliberate, Claude Muhayimana made a short statement: “I would like you to try to put yourself in my shoes in 1994, which I did to save people. Thank you“, simply declared the accused.
During the hearings, about fifty witnesses, survivors of the genocide but also ex-killers convicted in Rwanda, were heard. Several of them declared having seen Mr. Muhayimana, then a hotel driver, transporting Hutu Interahamwe militiamen going to massacre the Tutsi refugees in places of Kibuye or in the neighboring hills.
The defense insisted on “the weakness and the lack of credibility of the testimonies”, lack of evidence, and insisted that the accused had saved Tutsis, which most witnesses testified.
Claude Muhayimana, roadmender in Rouen, in the north-west of France, where he arrived in the 2000s, appeared free.
The genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, orchestrated by the extremist Hutu regime, left more than 800,000 dead between April and July 1994, one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century.