Two former Rwandan officials accused of “war crimes” and “crime of genocide” are on trial from Monday October 9 in Brussels. This is the sixth assize trial in Belgium linked to the Tutsi genocide, which left at least 800,000 dead, according to the UN, between April and July 1994.
Séraphin Twahirwa, 65, and Pierre Basabose, 76, had found refuge in Belgium, a former colonial power where a large Rwandan community lives. They were arrested there in September 2020. Targeted by international arrest warrants issued in Rwanda, they were also in the crosshairs of the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, alerted by the immigration services to their suspicious profile.
These two relatives of the former Habyarimana presidential couple were described by witnesses to the investigation as having participated very actively in the anti-Tutsi campaigns of the early 1990s, which ultimately led to genocide. Séraphin Twahirwa is accused of having led an Interahamwe (Hutu extremists) militia in Kigali which was responsible for dozens of murders between April and July 1994. He is also accused of a dozen rapes committed against Tutsi women.
For his part, Pierre Basabose, who obtained political refugee status in Belgium, is suspected of having been “a financier” of the Hutu militia. According to the prosecution, this former soldier, who became a rich entrepreneur, supplied the Interahamwe with money and weapons, taking advantage of his links with the party and the entourage of President Juvénal Habyarimana. A former member of the presidential guard in the 1970s, he was also one of the shareholders of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, infamous for having broadcast calls to kill Tutsi during the genocide.
“Pioneer” Belgium
Also claimed by Rwanda, the two men are being tried in Belgium under the “universal jurisdiction” of the Belgian courts for crimes under international humanitarian law committed abroad. They face life imprisonment. The hearing before the Brussels Assize Court was due to open this Monday at 9 a.m. It is scheduled over two months, with four days of debate per week, from Monday to Thursday.
Since 2001, Belgium has already organized five trials linked to this genocide. As with the most recent one, that of senior Rwandan official Fabien Neretsé, sentenced in 2019 to twenty-five years in prison, two figures from the Belgian bar will oppose each other during this trial. These are the lawyer Jean Flamme, on the defense benches, and Michèle Hirsch, on the side of the civil parties, who will plead for several victims.
“Belgium is a pioneer in the prosecution of genocidaires and these trials are always historic,” Mr. Hirsch, who was part of all these “Rwandan” trials in Brussels, told AFP. In June, during a preliminary hearing, Me Flamme, who defends Pierre Basabose, called for the prosecution to be nullified, arguing that his client, in his seventies, suffers from dementia and would not be able to participate in his trial. The lawyer was dismissed but the subject could resurface at the opening of the trial.
