APA – Kigali (Rwanda) – French prosector has appealed against the recent “lighter sentence” meted out by a French court against Dr Sosthene Munyemana, a judicial source confirmed to APA in Kigali.
Dubbed the Butcher of Tumba, Munyemana is a fugitive medical doctor convincted recently for his active role in organising the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda and sentenced to 24 years in jail.
Reports said that the French prosecutor has decided to file an appeal at the Court of Appeal.
In addition, the prosecution said that the evidence they presented was never given full consideration by the judge at the Paris Assize Court.
Dr. Munyemana, a former medical doctor at the University Hospital in Butare (CHUB) in southern Rwanda was accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in such crimes.
At the time, Munyemana a 38-year-old gynaecologist in Tumba in the southern university district of Butare, supervised the genocide and participated in a local committee and meetings that organised the rounding up of Tutsi civilians.
He was also accused of co-signing in April 1994 “a motion of support” for the interim government that supervised the genocide, according to the prosecution.
Reading the verdict, the judge said Munyemana was part of a group that “prepared, organised and steered the genocide of the Tutsis … on a daily basis”.
The defendant has repeatedly denied the accusations against him, claiming to have been a moderate Hutu who tried to “save” Tutsis by offering them “refuge” in one of the local government offices.
Munyemana acknowledged participating in local night patrols which were organised to track Tutsi people, but he said he did it to protect the local population. However, most of the witnesses saw him at checkpoints set up across the town where he supervised operations.
In one of the many testimonies before the Cour d’assises de Paris, a survivor of the 1994 genocide recounted the brutal nightmare she endured under the orders of Dr. Sostherne Munyemana.
The witness further revealed that Munyemana, in collaboration with other sector leaders, initiated roadblocks where numerous Tutsi were targeted and killed. She alleged that Munyemana maintained a list of people to be killed.
The killings did not stop at physical violence. The witness claimed that Tutsi women were injected with syringes containing deadly substances in their private parts.
The needles, provided by Munyemana, were allegedly filled with medicines aimed at causing rapid death.
The witness spoke of the unimaginable moment she witnessed, such as removing syringes from her mother-in-law’s body.
CU/as/APA