A court in Paris begins hearing Monday the trial of Claude Muhayimana, a former hotel driver accused of complicity in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide by transporting Hutu militiamen who massacred hundreds of Tutsis. Muhayimana, 60, is being tried for complicity in helping in “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”.
During the 1994 genocide – where 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate members of the Hutu majority were slaughtered in just three months – he was working as a driver at a tourist hotel in Kibuye, western Rwanda.
He is accused of knowingly driving Hutu police and militiamen to carry out massacres in the hills around the Kibuye region, and of aiding an attack on a school in April 1994.
Muhayimana, who was married to a Tutsi woman at the time, has denied the charges, saying he was not in Kibuye when the massacres took place.
Covid-19 travel restrictions prompted judges to postpone the trial earlier this year. If found guilty he faces life imprisonment.
Credit: rfi.fr
