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On the basis of what facts does one become an accomplice in genocide? Can fear annihilate any will to oppose a mass killing? Since May 9, the Paris Assize Court has judged Laurent Bucyibaruta, former prefect of Gikongoro from 1992 to July 1994, for “genocide”, “complicity in genocide” and “complicity in crimes against humanity”. In his prefecture located in the south-west of Rwanda, nearly 125,000 Tutsi were exterminated during the spring of 1994. He faces a life prison sentence.
This trial is the fourth in France linked to the genocide of the Tutsi, the first for a senior official. The former official, a refugee in France since 1997, is being prosecuted following a complaint filed in 2000 by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Survie association. His responsibility for the massacres that bloodied the territory he administered is at the heart of the trial. “Laurent Bucyibaruta retained all the powers attributed to his supreme function”, said the two attorneys general, Sophie Havard and Céline Viguier, on Friday July 8: “He continued to ensure order and security. He could have strongly condemned the massacres, but he did nothing. »
The public prosecutor retained his “complicity by aid or assistance” for the massacre of approximately 25,000 Tutsi in the parish of Kibeho, on April 14, 1994. For the April 21 massacre in a school in Murambi, where nearly 40,000 people were exterminated, witnesses even declared having seen the accused on the spot, which he disputes. On this site, then in the localities of Cyanika, Kaduha and finally for the assassination of a hundred students in Kibeho, the two general prosecutors considered that it was necessary to condemn Laurent Bucyibaruta as” author “ of genocide.
At the end of a pleading of almost six hours, life imprisonment was requested against him, because even if the prefect “did not kill anyone with his hands, he carries on him the blood of all the dead of Gikongoro”.
“What could I do? »
In fulfilling his ” work ” – as the Interahamwe militiamen used to say to describe their sad task – this prefecture stood out: 75% of the Tutsi were massacred there, most of them thrown into mass graves. This ” efficiency “ was even hailed at the time by Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, who said he was ” proud ” of these results. At the end of April 1994, during a meeting, the head of the genocidal government – since sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) – addressed his congratulations to the prefect of Gikongoro for having “dedicated to implementing the government’s program”.
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