An appeal court has upheld the 24-year prison sentence imposed on Sosthène Munyemana for his role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, judicial sources said on Friday.
The Court of Appeal in Paris upheld the sentence handed down in 2023 against Munyemana, now aged 70, finding him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, participation in a conspiracy to prepare for these crimes, and complicity with crimes against humanity.
Incarcerated since his conviction in 2023, Munyemana was accused of signing a motion of support for the interim government established after the attack on the plane of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana, which was immediately followed by massacres.
That motion encouraged the genocide committed in Rwanda between April and July 1994, which left more than 800,000 people dead, mostly ethnic Tutsis, along with moderate Hutus, according to the UN.
Sosthène Munyemana was also tried for setting up roadblocks and patrols in Tumba, a locality in the southern prefecture of Butare, where people were arrested then killed, and for holding the key to a district office where Tutsis were locked up before their execution.
He was a close associate of Jean Kambanda, Prime Minister in the interim government, who was sentenced in 2000 to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his participation in the genocide.
Munyemana arrived in September 1994 in France, where his wife was already living. The father of three children, he rebuilt his life in south-western France, working as an emergency doctor and then as a geriatrician.
