November 14, 2023
PARIS (AP) — A Rwandan doctor who has been living in France for decades goes on trial Tuesday in Paris over his alleged role in the 1994 genocide in his home country.
Sosthene Munyemana, 68, faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in such crimes. He has denied wrongdoing. If convicted, he faces a life sentence.
The trial comes nearly three decades after the genocide in which more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them were killed between April and July 1994.
Munyemana arrived in September 1994 in France, where he has been living and working as a doctor until he recently retired.
He has been investigated for decades. Over 60 witnesses are expected to testify at his trial. Members of the Rwandan community in France first filed a complaint against Munyemana in 1995.
Munyemana was a 38-year-old gynecologist in the district of Burate at the time of the genocide. He is accused of co-signing in April 1994 “a motion of support for the interim government” that supervised the genocide and of participating in a local committee and meetings that organized roundups of Tutsi civilians.
He is also accused of detaining Tutsi civilians “without care, hygiene and food” in the office of the local administration that was “under his authority at the time,” and of relaying “instructions from the authorities to the local militia and residents leading to the roundup of the Tutsis,” among other things.
This is the sixth case related to the Rwandan genocide that is coming to court in Paris. The trial is scheduled to run until Dec. 19.
Many suspected perpetrators left Rwanda during and after the genocide, some settling in Europe. Some never faced justice. On Tuesday, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said it had confirmed the death of Aloys Ndimbati, a fugitive indicted by the tribunal.
Ndimbati, the leader of a rural community at the time of the genocide, was accused of organizing and directing massacres of Tutsis. He faced seven counts of genocide, among other crimes. Ndimbati died by around the end of June 1997 in Rwanda, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement: “The exact circumstances of his death have not been determined owing to the confusion and absence of order at the time.”
“While the survivors and victims of Ndimbati’s crimes will not see him prosecuted and punished, this result may help bring some closure in the knowledge that Ndimbati is not at large and he is unable to cause further harm to the Rwandan people,” the statement said.
Only two fugitives indicted by the tribunal remain at large, it said.
In recent years, France has increased efforts to arrest and send to trial genocide suspects.
Last year, Laurent Bucyibaruta was sentenced by a Paris court to 20 years in prison for complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity, making him the highest-ranking Rwandan to be convicted in France on such charges. He appealed.
Earlier this year, United Nations judges declared an 88-year-old Rwandan genocide suspect, Félicien Kabuga, unfit to continue standing trial because he has dementia and said they would establish a procedure to hear evidence without the possibility of convicting him. Kabuga was arrested near Paris in May 2020 after years on the run.
The mass killings of Rwanda’s Tutsi population were ignited on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying then-President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down and crashed in Kigali, the capital, killing the leader who, like most Rwandans, was a Hutu. Tutsis were blamed for downing the plane, and although they denied it, bands of Hutu extremists began killing them, including children, with support from the army, police and militias.
UK's Sunak to learn fate of his Rwanda migrant plan this week
MICHAEL HOLDEN AND SAM TOBIN
November 14, 2023
By Michael Holden and Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Supreme Court will deliver its ruling on Wednesday on whether the government can go ahead with its plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, a decision which could have far-reaching ramifications for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
At hearings in October, government lawyers argued that the top court should overturn a ruling that the scheme to send thousands of asylum seekers more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to East Africa was unlawful as Rwanda was not a safe third country.
Sunak hopes the Rwanda scheme will help stop the flow of migrants across the Channel from Europe in small boats, and so deliver one of his key policy pledges and energise his ailing premiership ahead of an election expected next year.
With his Conservative Party languishing about 20 points behind in the polls and immigration a major concern for some voters, victory in the Supreme Court would be seized on by the government as a sign it was getting to grips with the issue. Defeat would be viewed as another failure.
The court's decision could also magnify calls from some Conservative lawmakers for Britain to pull out of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), especially after Sunak upset some on the right of his party by sacking Suella Braverman, a vocal critic of the treaty, as the minister in charge of the issue on Monday.
The government has suffered a number of major defeats in the Supreme Court in recent years, most notably when it found former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had acted illegally when he suspended parliament in 2019.
The five senior judges, including the court's president Robert Reed, will deliver their decision at about 1000 GMT on Wednesday.
PRESSING NEED
During three days of hearings, the judges heard from government lawyers who said there was a "serious and pressing need" for the Rwanda scheme.
They argued Rwanda was "less attractive" to those who might come to Britain, and so the scheme would be a deterrent, while the deal struck with the East African country would ensure the human rights of migrants deported there would be protected.
"There is a strong public interest in deterring illegal, dangerous and unnecessary journeys from safe third countries to the UK, whilst ensuring that those who continue to make such journeys are removed to a safe third country," they said.
Rwanda has said it would offer migrants sent from Britain the opportunity to build a new, safe life.
But lawyers representing asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam and Sudan who face being sent to Rwanda argued it was unlawful to send people there because it would breach the ECHR, and put them at risk of being returned to their home countries despite having valid asylum claims.
They also said asylum seekers faced inhuman or degrading treatment within Rwanda, and their argument has support from the United Nations' refugee agency.
The Rwanda deal, struck by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022, was designed to deter asylum seekers from making dangerous journeys across the Channel, and Sunak has made ending the influx one of five priorities as he seeks to turn around his and his party's fortunes.
"We will stop the boats," James Cleverly, Braverman's replacement as interior minister, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This year more than 27,000 people have arrived in Britain on small boats without permission, after a record 45,755 were detected in 2022.
The scheme was put on hold in June last year after the European Court of Human Rights granted a last-minute injunction, blocking the first planned flight. That directive lasts until three weeks after British legal action is concluded.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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