Slumped on his cane, Philippe Hategekimana, naturalized French in 2005 under the name of Philippe Manier, listened to his judgment on Wednesday June 28. The 66-year-old former Rwandan gendarme was sentenced to life imprisonment and convicted of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” on “virtually all of the charges” against him .
“The court considered that you committed the most serious acts, those of mass crimes, that you were a zealous agent in the plan to exterminate the Tutsi, said Jean-Marc Lavergne, the president of the court of sitting. In particular, you used military armament, a mortar and a machine gun, to kill civilians. It was intended that there would be no survivors. These imprescriptible facts were committed in the prefecture of Butare, in the south of Rwanda, in April 1994.
According to the nine members who made up the court (a president, two assessors and six jurors), the former chief warrant officer of the Nyanza gendarmerie ordered the erection of several roadblocks where hundreds of Tutsi been killed. He is also behind the assassination of a mayor, Narcisse Nyagasaka, because he was resisting the application of the genocide in his commune. He is also condemned for having taken an active part in the massacre of Nyamure, a hill on which several thousand Tutsi were exterminated.
“It is a just deliberation, a deserved sentence, given the seriousness of the charges,” said Rachel Lindon, lawyer for Ibuka, one of the main associations of survivors of the Tutsi genocide. But no one can rejoice to see a man condemned to life imprisonment. »
Not a “little fish”
“The court entered the heart of the genocide to understand all the details and all the mechanisms, welcomed Marcel Kabanda, president of Ibuka France. At the end, the suffering of the victims is taken into account. I am happy with France’s work in this area. »
This judgment, obtained after almost twelve hours of deliberations, concludes a seven-week marathon trial, during which 105 witnesses, almost all of them for the prosecution, were heard. The material evidence being non-existent because of the anteriority of the facts, the credibility of the accounts was at the heart of the trial. The Assize Court considered that they were sincere, trustworthy, and that Philippe Manier was indeed the man everyone nicknamed “Biguma” in the spring of 1994.
Damning testimonies were held against him, such as that of Mathieu Ndahimana, stating on Wednesday, June 7: “The attack [on Nyamure hill] was led by “Biguma”. I saw him arrive in a gendarmerie van with gendarmes armed with light and large caliber rifles. “Biguma” was seated in the cabin on the passenger side. »
Valens Bayingana explained that he saw “Biguma” fire shots at a group of women to signal the start of the massacre. “He’s aged a bit, but it was that face,” he said on June 7, pointing to the defendant. The next day, Telesphore Nshymiyimana recalled that around April 24, 1994, the gendarme had asked him for reinforcements to attack Nyamure. “Philippe Hategekimana is not a ‘little fish’ nor a simple executor, but a fundamental link in the implementation of the genocide”, pleaded Monday, June 26, Cécile Viguier, general counsel, before requesting the maximum sentence.
A sometimes casual attitude
Many of the stories, however, felt flimsy. “All the witnesses contradict each other, pleaded Emmanuel Altit, one of the four lawyers for the accused. When the facts diverge so much, it is because one is wrong. But it may also be because they are all fake. How do you condemn when there is so much conflicting information? »
The former gendarme arrived in France in 1999, thanks to false documents and claiming with the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) to have been a sports teacher in Rwanda. He was naturalized by decree in April 2005 under the identity of Philippe Manier. Settled in Brittany with his family, he worked as a receptionist at the University of Rennes-II until 2017 before being fired due to his absences.
After a complaint was filed against him by the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda, he then fled to Cameroon, where he was arrested on March 30, 2018 before being extradited to France. “The court saw your complex and manipulative personality,” Jean-Marc Lavergne told him. You locked yourself in your lies and were incapable of any personal questioning. »
Silent during the majority of the hearings, Philippe Manier showed “no emotion or empathy”, according to the civil parties, during the stories of rape or abuse. On the day of the verdict, the 1.64m man, with broad shoulders and a shaved head, finally spoke. “I trust your judgement. You will listen to reason and your heart,” he said before the court retired to deliberate. It is the cry of the victims of Nyanza that has been heard.