Laurent Bucyibaruta, one of the former senior Rwandan administrative officials in Gikongoro (South), who is serving out a 20-year jail term for his role in the 1994 genocide was released from prison in France, few weeks into his sentence due to poor health, an authoritative source confirmed to APA on Wednesday.
Bucyibaruta who faced charges of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity has been locked in a French jail.
Sources have not said where he was being released and on what specific health grounds.
The defendant is accused of masterminding the massacre of Tutsis in the Gikongoro sectors of Murambi, Cyanika, Kaduha, Kibeho, Gikongoro prison and the Murambi technical school in southern Rwanda.
He denied the charges.
The jury that was presided over by Judge Jean Marc Lavergne ruled that he is guilty of complicity in the genocide and crimes against
humanity.
The court particularly found that with his virtue of position and authority, Bucyibaruta committed crimes of complicity in Genocide against humanity that happened at Ecole Marie-Merci in Kibeho.
He was however, cleared on all charges related to genocide that occurred in Kibeho where the prosecution had accused him of participating on the killing of over 28,000 people.
Throughout the hearing, the UN prosecutors had accused him of criminal liability by commanding duties, where in capacity and performance as a person responsible for ensuring order and public law had the authority to request the intervention of the Rwandan army.
Prosecutors also accused him of complicity in crimes of genocide as a person by virtue of position who had full control of the Interahamwe
and exercised control over them and other members of the MRND political party in Gikongoro prefecture.
They also claimed that a few days after the death by a plane crach of President Juvenal Habyarimana, Bucyibaruta went around Gikongoro Town in a car with a megaphone inciting revenge over the president’s death, encouraging Tutsis to be hunted down and killed.
His indictment was issued in 2007 after fleeing Rwanda in 1997.
CU/as/APA