A court in the Netherlands has sentenced a Dutch-Rwandan man to life for his involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.<\/b><\/p>\n
The 66-year-old, named only as Eugene N, was accused, among other things, of throwing a hand grenade into a crowd of Tutsis who were seeking shelter in a stadium in Mbazi. He was convicted of war crimes and the crime of genocide, having acted with “genocidal intent”, the judge said.<\/p>\n
Rwanda had sought his extradition in 2014 but the authorities in the Netherlands then launched their own investigation into N, who had become a Dutch citizen.<\/p>\n
In 100 days in April 1994, an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus people were killed by Hutu extremists.<\/p>\n
The Hague district court heard N held an authoritative position in the community at the time of the massacre, overseeing around 1,000 people in Mbazi in southern Rwanda.<\/p>\n
“The suspect was a man who was held in high regard and must have been aware of his role and the influence he had as a local administrator,” the court explained, adding that he “committed multiple severe crimes”.<\/p>\n
Judges called his conduct a \u201csignificant lack of respect for human dignity and for human life,\u201d and said that only a life sentence would serve justice \u201cto the immense suffering that has been inflicted on the victims and the bereaved families\u201d.<\/p>\n
At a football stadium, he instructed Hutus not to let any of the Tutsis escape. Trapped inside, they were pelted with stones, shot at and had hand grenades thrown at them.<\/p>\n
Any who had survived, were killed with clubs and machetes, the court said.<\/p>\n
Prior to the stadium massacre, N had watched on as people looted houses and set them on fire.<\/p>\n
“Only a lifelong prison sentence does justice to the immense suffering that has been inflicted on the victims and the bereaved families,” the court said.<\/p>\n
As part of the Dutch investigation opened in 2020, more than 30 witnesses were interviewed. N was subsequently arrested in 2024.<\/p>\n
N denied all the charges, the AFP news agency reports, alleging that he was a victim who had lost family in “those horrific events”.<\/p>\n
“The case has torn his scars open again. He is a broken man,” his lawyers are quoted as saying by AFP. They had moved to seek acquittals on all accounts. N was acquitted of the incitement to genocide.<\/p>\n
His defence team said they will “almost certainly appeal the charges”, according to local news agency ANP.<\/p>\n
A United Nations tribunal prosecuted leading organisers, but European courts have since pursued lower-level suspects under universal jurisdiction, which allows atrocities and war crimes to be prosecuted regardless of where they occurred.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"