A former Rwandan prefect involved in the genocide which left more than 800,000 dead according to the UN was indicted in Paris and imprisoned, according to a judicial source cited by Agence France Presse (AFP), Saturday September 23. According to the same source, the individual was indicted by a Parisian judge from the crimes against humanity division, for genocide, complicity in genocide, complicity in crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit these crimes.
According to a source close to the case, it is Pierre Kayondo, who was reputed to have lived in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) for many years. According to another close source, he was arrested on Tuesday by the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH) and presented the same day to the investigating magistrate.
This former Rwandan prefect was the subject of a judicial investigation in France since the end of 2021 after a complaint from the Collective of Civil Parties of Rwanda (CPCR). The association, which has been tracking suspected genocidaires in France for more than twenty years on behalf of victims and survivors, relied on several testimonies which, according to it, “establish the active role of Mr. Kayondo”, “former prefect of Kibuye”, region of western Rwanda, and “former MP” of Gitarama prefecture, in the center of the country.
In its complaint, the CPCR thus affirmed that Pierre Kayondo had “actively participated in the organization of the exterminations in Ruhango and Tambwe in the prefecture of Gitarama by allowing the formation of a group of Interahamwe militia”, the main Hutu militias of the genocide, “by providing weapons and attending meetings.”
“Shareholder of Radio-Télévision des Mille Collines”
For Alain Gauthier, the president of the CPCR, Mr. Kayondo was “a shareholder of Radio-Télévision des Mille Collines”, the radio which had broadcast calls for the murder of Tutsis, and “considered a “diehard of the National Republican Movement for the democracy and development”, very linked to the Interahamwe movement”. This man, whose age Mr. Gauthier estimates at around 70 years, “was close to figures convicted of genocide.”
Questioned by AFP, Dafroza and Alain Gauthier, a couple who co-founded the CPCR, welcomed the fact that their “complaint was followed by the opening of an investigation and that justice was interested in Mr. Kayondo. It’s good “. Six civil parties were formed in January in the investigation, also specified Me Domitille Philippart, lawyer for the CPCR. “They had important information and were heard in the spring. Indictment was the logical next step.” Mr. Kayondo “is an important personality. This is a file in which we have quite important elements,” she added.
Several trials to come in France
Under the “universal jurisdiction” exercised under certain conditions by France to judge the most serious crimes committed outside its soil, French justice has already definitively sentenced several Rwandans. Other cases are close to their conclusion: former Rwandan gendarme Philippe Hategekimana, 66, naturalized French under the name of Philippe Manier, announced that he had appealed his sentence in June to life imprisonment. Other trials are to come, such as that in November and December of the Rwandan doctor Sosthène Munyemana, or that of another Rwandan doctor, Eugène Rwamucyo, possibly in 2024. Around thirty cases are under investigation at the crimes against humanity in Paris, according to a specialized magistrate.
In 2020, Félicien Kabuga, one of the main targets among the alleged ex-genocidaires, was also arrested near Paris after two decades on the run, and then handed over to international justice.
For a long time, the judicial fate of suspects who had taken refuge in France was one of the points of tension in the complicated relationship between Paris and Kigali, poisoned by the question of France’s role in the genocide, but the tone is now one of appeasement. Emmanuel Macron pledged “that no person suspected of crimes of genocide can escape justice.” The genocide left more than 800,000 dead according to the UN, mainly Tutsis exterminated between April and July 1994.
