A Dutch court in The Hague has convicted a 66-year-old Rwandan man of participation in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and sentenced him to life imprisonment. This was reported by infohub.kz.
The defendant, whose name was not released, took part in attacks in which homes were looted and torched in two predominantly Tutsi communities and threw a grenade into a crowd of Tutsis sheltering in a soccer stadium. The Hague District Court said in a written statement after the conviction that the defendant's actions showed a significant lack of respect for human dignity and human life.
The court found that only a lifelong prison sentence does justice to the immense suffering inflicted on the victims and their bereaved families. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. The massacre was orchestrated by Hutu extremists. Many leaders of the slaughter were tried and convicted by a United Nations war crimes tribunal that has now closed down.
The defendant left Rwanda after the genocide and settled in the Netherlands, where he was arrested and prosecuted. The trial was the culmination of a yearslong investigation involving police and an investigating judge interviewing more than 30 witnesses, most of them in Rwanda. Nine victims or their next of kin attended the trial earlier this year.