Dutch national gets life term for Rwandan genocide

A Rwandan-born Dutch national was on Friday sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in the Netherlands for his role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, reports DW. The Hague District Court found that the 66-year-old man, identified only as Eugene N, had taken part in attacks on homes in Tutsi communities and thrown a grenade into a crowd of Tutsis sheltering in a football stadium. It convicted him of war crimes and genocide. ‘The conduct of the defendant establishes a significant lack of respect for human dignity and for human life. Only a lifelong prison sentence does justice to the immense suffering that has been inflicted on the victims and the bereaved families,’ a statement from the court said. Handing down the verdict, the presiding judge said N’s actions were committed with ‘genocidal intent’. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, more than 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a campaign of mass murder 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. N was sentenced for his role in the massacre of around 3 000 Tutsis in Mbazi in southern Rwanda in April 1994, in which prosecutors said he was ‘personally involved.’ N, however, denied the charges, claiming he himself had been a victim who had lost dozens of his own relatives in ‘those horrific events’. Last month, German prosecutors also announced the arrest of a man suspected of being an accomplice in the Rwandan genocide.

Full report on the DW site