Ex-Rwandan gendarme found guilty of genocide, sentenced in France to life in prison

The Paris Assize Court found a former Rwandan gendarme guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity committed during a slaughter of innocent civilians in his home country in the spring of 1994 and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The Paris court was merciless in sentencing the 66-year-old Philippe Hategekimana, naturalized French under the name Philippe Manier, to life imprisonment when it found him guilty of “virtually all the charges” against him. He was prosecuted for participation in a criminal conspiracy to prepare the crimes of genocide and other crimes against humanity. There is no statute of limitations for genocide and crimes against humanity. The former chief warrant officer of the Nyanza gendarmerie in southern Rwanda acknowledged the reality of the genocide but denied any involvement in its implementation.

Manier was accused of participating in or encouraging the murder of dozens of Tutsis in the Butare prefecture, including the mayor of Ntyazo who resisted the implementation of genocide in his commune. According to the prosecution, he ordered and supervised the erection of several roadblocks “intended to control and kill Tutsi civilians.”

Hategekimana fled to France after the genocide, obtaining refugee status and then French nationality. The trial, which opened last month, was the fifth such trial in France of an alleged participant in the massacres. More than 800,000 people were killed between April and July 1994, according to UN figures, most of them from the Tutsi minority.