A Belgian court on Friday, December 22, sentenced a Rwandan former militia leader to life in jail for dozens of murders and rapes committed during the 1994 genocide. Séraphin Twarhirwa, 66, was found guilty of directly participating in or overseeing the atrocities by Hutu Interahamwe militiamen in Kigali during the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus 30 years ago.
A second defendant Pierre Basabose, a one-time close associate of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, was also found guilty of "genocide" and "war crimes" for funding the militia. But the 76-year-old, who suffers from incurable senile dementia and was unable to attend hearings, was spared jail for health reasons.
Both Twarhirwa and Basabose contested the accusations during their two-month trial. Lawyers for both men said they would appeal.
The trial of the two men, who were arrested in 2020 in Belgium where they were living in exile, was the sixth held in the country over the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Belgium ruled what is now modern-day Rwanda during the colonial period and has a sizeable Rwandan diaspora.
An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered during 100 days of mass killings sparked by the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane on April 6, 1994.
The sentencing in Belgium came after a court in neighboring France on Wednesday jailed former doctor Sosthene Munyemana for 24 years for his involvement in the genocide.
The guilty verdict was welcomed by Michèle Hirsch, a lawyer who represented relatives of victims at the trial. "The judges considered that the mass rapes perpetrated by Twarhirwa were part of the genocide," she told Agence France-Presse.
But defense lawyer Vincent Lurquin said the trial had raised serious issues over the judicial cooperation between Belgium and the "authoritarian regime" of President Paul Kagame in Rwanda. He said that Belgian investigators had relied on re-examining witnesses from a procedure opened in Kigali by Rwandan authorities in the early 2000s.