PARIS (AFP) -
Two former
Rwandan mayors go on trial in France on Tuesday facing charges of crimes
against humanity and genocide over the 1994 massacres in the central
African country.
As the second trial in Paris by a special court
created to go after suspected Rwandan killers who fled to France, it is
expected to lay bare the strained relations between the two countries.
Two
decades on, Rwanda accuses France of complicity in the genocide --
which saw at least 800,000 people die in an 100-day slaughter -- because
of its unwavering support for the Hutu nationalist government at the
time.
Two years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the mass killings,
Rwanda's minority Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, openly accused French
soldiers of not only complicity in the genocide but of actually taking
part in it.
On Tuesday, Octavien Ngenzi, 58, and Tito Barahira,
64, will go on trial for allegedly playing a direct role in the massacre
of hundreds of Tutsi refugees in a church in the eastern town of
Kabarondo on April 13, 1994.
The pair were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by Rwandan people's courts, known as gacaca, in 2009.
They were both mayors of Kabarondo, Ngenzi having succeeded Barahira in 1986.
They
deny accusations of carrying out "massive and systematic summary
executions" and implementing a "concerted plan aimed at the
annihilation" of the Tutsi minority.
Their lawyers Philippe Meilhac and Francoise Mathe have highlighted "contradictions" in witness testimony.
Meilhac
has also said he is "extremely concerned" over Barahira's fitness to
stand trial, as he suffers from kidney failure and must have dialysis
three times a week.
The killings in Kabarondo, a town near the border with Tanzania, took place with great speed.
The
bloodshed was over by the end of April, when Tutsi rebels in the armed
wing of what is now the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) took
control of the area.
Elsewhere in the former Belgian colony, the slaughter would continue until the FPR fighters finally prevailed in July.
The
mayors' trial, which is set to last eight weeks, comes two years after
that of Pascal Simbikangwa, a former Rwandan army captain who was jailed
for 25 years for his role in the genocide.
The defence has denounced that verdict as "political" and is appealing it.
"With
this second trial, we will be dealing with a much more concrete
genocide, with victims," said Alain Gauthier, president of the
Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda (CCPR).
"There are
around 50 witnesses coming from Rwanda," Gauthier, whose wife lost her
mother and dozens of other relatives in the genocide, told AFP.
- A 'good mayor' -
Witnesses
have said that on the morning of April 13, they saw Barahira, wielding a
spear, at a rally at the football field where he called for "work" --
then already code for killing Tutsis.
Soon afterwards, hundreds of
refugees who had arrived in the previous days were hacked or beaten to
death or blown up with hand grenades within the space of a few hours,
according to survivors.
They say Ngenzi and Barahira took part in the process of separating the Tutsis from the Hutus.
Barahira,
as the town's former mayor, was said to have "exceptional influence",
his lawyer said, adding that he "went to see if he could do something to
help the refugees".
Ngenzi, accused of initial passivity before
taking on an active role, is described by his lawyer as "a good mayor
overwhelmed by events".
He has been held since 2010 when he was
captured in the French overseas department of Mayotte off the east coast
of Africa, where he had been living under a false name.
Barahira was arrested in 2013 in the southwestern French city of Toulouse where he was living.
- 'Time on killers' side' -
Gauthier's non-profit CCPR is devoted to tracking down alleged perpetrators of the genocide who fled to France.
Likened by some to a Nazi hunter, he says his task is a race against time.
"We're
well aware that it is going to be more and more difficult to try
people. More than 20 years after the genocide some witnesses contradict
each other, or they're vague... Time is on the killers' side," he said.
Kigali
broke off ties with Paris in 2006 after a French judge issued arrest
warrants against nine Rwandan officials over the assassination of Hutu
president Juvenal Habyarimana.
The shooting down of the
presidential plane on April 6, 1994, was blamed on the Tutsis and is
considered to be the event that sparked the genocide.
The diplomatic freeze lasted for three years.
Last
year, charges were thrown out against a priest, Wenceslas Munyeshyaka,
the first Rwandan to be prosecuted in France in what had also been
viewed by his defence as a politically motivated case.
by Sofia Bouderbala
© 2016 AFP
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