In a few months, a France-based court will begin the trial of genocide suspect Dr. Eugene Rwamucyo for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, particularly in the Butare prefecture, now known as Huye in the Southern Province.
Jean Damascene Bizimana, the Minister of National Unity and Civic Engagement, said the trial will start in two months’ time, however Alain Gauthier, president of the France-based rights group Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR), revealed that Rwamucyo’s trial is scheduled to run from October 1 to 25.
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Who is Dr. Rwamucyo?
Born on June 6, 1959, in Gatonde commune, Ruhengeri prefecture, Dr. Rwamucyo is a specialist in occupational medicine, environmental and industrial hygiene, and toxicology.
He worked at the University Centre for Public Health (CUSP), University Teaching Hospital, and lectured at the University of Rwanda.
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He fled the country after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, and reports say he was denied refugee status by the UNHCR in Côte d’Ivoire, in 1995.
Between 2001 and 2007 he worked as a medical specialist in various places and capacities in France.
In May 2008, he got a job as a doctor in a city hospital in Maubeuge, northern France, near the Belgian border. However, he was temporarily dismissed there in October 2009 following the Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR) charges against him.
Rwamucyo is suspected of being one of the masterminds of the Genocide against the Tutsi in southern Rwanda, in 1994.
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On September 12, 2002, he was denied refugee status in France and in April 2007 the CPCR presented its charges against him to the public prosecutor’s department in Lille where he worked.
In August 2007, Rwanda indicted him and sent an international arrest warrant to Interpol, later on in November of the same year, the initial CPCR complaint was handed to a court in Paris.
In February 2008, French prosecutors started investigating the case against him. He was expelled from Maubeuge Hospital in April 2010.
On May 26, 2010, Rwamucyo was arrested in Sannois, north of Paris, while attending the funeral of Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, another genocidaire who was convicted for Genocide against the Tutsi by the now defunct International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR).
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Rwamucyo was detained in Bois d’Arcy, a Community in north-central France, and on September 15, 2010, the French appeals court in Versailles refused to hand him over to Rwanda and immediately set him free.
On December 21, 2018, the investigation into his case started, which led to the prosecutor’s indictment issued on April 17, 2020; his trial is expected to take place at the Cour d’Assises de France from October 1 to 25.
Previous Conviction
On September 2, 2009, the Ngoma Gacaca Court in Rwanda sentenced Rwamucyo to life imprisonment in absentia, convicting him of forming gangs of killers, inciting genocide, supplying killing equipment, kidnapping Tutsi women and girls, and identifying and counting the dead.