A French court on Wednesday sentenced former Rwandan doctor Sosthene Munyemana to 24 years in prison for his involvement in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in his native East African country.
After a deliberation lasting nearly fifteen hours, the 68-year-old former gynaecologist was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and participation in a conspiracy to prepare those crimes.
Munyemana was accused of helping draft a letter of support for the then interim government, which encouraged the massacre of the Tutsis.
He was also accused of helping set up roadblocks to round people up and keeping them in inhumane conditions in local government offices before they were killed in the southern Rwandan prefecture of Butare, where he lived at the time.
He is the sixth suspect to have faced trial in France over the 1994 massacres in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in 100 days of mass killings. Munyemana, who was impassive as the verdict was handed down, was immediately incarcerated.
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