Rwanda’s ex-intel chief defiant at genocide trial
15 March 2014 6:03 AM IST
A former Rwandan intelligence chief targeted in France’s first trial over the Rwandan genocide proclaimed his innocence on Friday and insisted he never even saw any the dead bodies that littered the country’s roads and towns at the time. In his final appeal to the jury, Pascal Simbikangwa insisted that the ‘authenticity of my innocence needs no more proof.’
After 5-1/2 weeks in court, the jury of three magistrates and six civilian jurors retired to discuss accusations of genocide, complicity in genocide and complicity in war crimes against the 54-year-old Simbikangwa over the 1994 genocide that left at least 500,000 dead, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. They were expected to deliver a verdict later on Friday.
Prosecution and defense lawyers noted the seminal nature of the trial, the first in which a French court has decided on a case of genocide since changes to the French criminal code in the mid-1990s. While French officialdom was not on trial, the subtext of the case was that French officials - politicians, diplomats and judicial investigators - turned a blind eye to the genocide for years.
Critics - many of them French citizens - say authorities from President Francois Mitterrand down thought that France’s strong support for the Hutu-led Rwandan government was wise. Naively at best, those officials helped some perpetrators to flee Rwanda and others with ties to the genocide lived in France for years unpunished, the critics say.
The proceedings were squarely focused on Simbikangwa’s case. In his 15-minute final remarks, he claimed he never saw a single corpse during the genocide though he acknowledged moving about the verdant African nation.
After 5-1/2 weeks in court, the jury of three magistrates and six civilian jurors retired to discuss accusations of genocide, complicity in genocide and complicity in war crimes against the 54-year-old Simbikangwa over the 1994 genocide that left at least 500,000 dead, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. They were expected to deliver a verdict later on Friday.
Prosecution and defense lawyers noted the seminal nature of the trial, the first in which a French court has decided on a case of genocide since changes to the French criminal code in the mid-1990s. While French officialdom was not on trial, the subtext of the case was that French officials - politicians, diplomats and judicial investigators - turned a blind eye to the genocide for years.
Critics - many of them French citizens - say authorities from President Francois Mitterrand down thought that France’s strong support for the Hutu-led Rwandan government was wise. Naively at best, those officials helped some perpetrators to flee Rwanda and others with ties to the genocide lived in France for years unpunished, the critics say.
The proceedings were squarely focused on Simbikangwa’s case. In his 15-minute final remarks, he claimed he never saw a single corpse during the genocide though he acknowledged moving about the verdant African nation.
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