The trial has opened of a suspect in the Rwandan genocide who fled to France. Former military policeman Philippe Hategekimana allegedly set up roadblocks to identify ethnic Tutsis, who would be murdered.
A Paris court heard the charges against Philippe Hategekimana, who is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in his home country.
The trial is the latest to be held in France of alleged participants in the 1994 massacres, in which 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, died.
"My name is Philippe Manier," said the accused — using an assumed name — when the president of the assize court, Jean-Marc Lavergne, asked him to state his identity.
What are the charges against the suspect?
Prosecutors allege that Hategekimana was involved in the murder of dozens of Tutsis as well as setting up roadblocks to stop members of the ethnic group.
The detainees were murdered in and around the southern provincial capital of Nyanza, where Hategekimana worked as a senior police official.
Plaintiffs accuse the now 66-year-old of "using the powers and military force conferred to him through his rank in order to... take part in the genocide."
Hategekimana is also accused of involvement in the murder of both a nun and the mayor of the town of Ntyazo. Both had opposed the executions.
He is also accused of having a role in the killing of 300 Tutsi refugees at a hill named Nyamugari, and with involvement in an attack at another hill, Nyabubare, where some 1,000 civilians were slaughtered.
100 days of slaughter: Rwanda's genocide
Rwanda's genocide began on April 7, 1994. It was a mass slaughter that shocked the world. At the time the international community — above all France and the UN — failed to come to the aid of victims.
Image: Timothy Kisambira
A signal to extremists
On April 6, 1994, unidentified attackers shot down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana as it was about to land at Kigali airport. President Habyarimana, his Burundian counterpart and eight other passengers died in the crash. The next day organized killings began. Massacres continued over the course of three months, and nearly 1 million Rwandans lost their lives.
Image: AP
Targeted killings
After the assassination of the president, Hutu extremists attacked the Tutsi minority and Hutus who stood in their way. The murderers were well-prepared, and targeted human rights activists, journalists and politicians. One of the first victims on April 7 was Prime Minister Agathe Uwiringiymana.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Foreign nationals rescued
While thousands of Rwandans were being killed every day, Belgian and French special forces evacuated about 3,500 foreigners. On April 13, Belgian paratroopers rescued seven German employees and their families from Deutsche Welle's relay transmitting station in Kigali. Only 80 of 120 local staff members survived the genocide.
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Appeals for help
As early as January 1994, UNAMIR commander Romeo Dallaire wanted to act on information he had received about an "anti-Tutsi extermination" plot. The warning he sent to the UN on January 11, later known as the "genocide fax," went unheard. And his desperate appeals after the genocide began were rejected by Kofi Annan, who was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at the time.
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Hate media
The Mille Collines radio station (RTLM) and Kangura, a weekly magazine, stoked ethnic hatred. In 1990, Kangura published the racist "Hutu Ten Commandments." Mille Collines radio, which was known for its pop music and sports programs, fueled the genocide by urging Hutu civilians to hunt down and kill Tutsis. Director Milo Rau devoted his film "Hate Radio" to these appalling broadcasts (photo).
Image: IIPM/Daniel Seiffert
Refuge in a hotel
In Kigali, Paul Rusesabagina hid more than 1,000 people in the Hotel Des Mille Collines. Rusesabagina had taken over the position of the hotel's Belgian manager, who left the country. With a great deal of alcohol and money, he managed to prevent Hutu militias from killing the refugees. In many other places where people sought refuge, they were not able to escape the slaughter.
Image: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/GettyImages
Massacres in churches
Churches were no longer sanctuaries. About 4,000 men, women and children were murdered with axes, knives and machetes in the church of Ntarama near Kigali. Today, the church is one of the country's many genocide memorials. Rows of skulls, human bones as well as bullet marks in the walls are a reminder of what happened there.
Image: epd
France's role
The French government maintained close ties to the Hutu regime. When the French army intervened in June, it enabled soldiers and militiamen responsible for the genocide to flee to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even take their weapons with them. They still pose a threat to Rwanda today.
Image: P.Guyot/AFP/GettyImages
Streams of refugees
During the genocide, millions of Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus fled to Tanzania, Zaire and Uganda. Some 2 million of them went to Zaire alone. These included former members of the army and perpetrators of the genocide, who soon founded the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a militia that is still terrorizing the population in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Capture of the capital
On July 4, 1994, rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) patrolled the area around the Church of the Holy Family in Kigali. By that time, they had liberated most of the country and routed the perpetrators of the genocide. However, human rights activists also accused the rebels of committing crimes, for which no one has been held accountable to this day.
Image: Alexander Joe/AFP/GettyImages
End of the genocide
On July 18, 1994, the RPF's leader, Major General Paul Kagame, declared that the war against the government troops was over. The rebels were in control of the capital and other important towns. Initially, they installed a provisional government. Paul Kagame became Rwanda's president in the year 2000.
Image: Alexander Joe/AFP/GettyImages
Lasting scars
The genocide went on for almost three months. The victims were often slaughtered with machetes. Neighbors killed neighbors. Not even babies and elderly people were spared, and the streets were strewn with corpses and body parts. It's not only the physical scars on the bodies of the survivors that remind Rwandans of the genocide. A deep trauma also remains.
Image: Timothy Kisambira
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The trial is set to last until June 30. Hategekimana denies the charges.
Decades under an assumed name
Hategekimana fled to France, where he obtained refugee status, after the genocide under the name Philippe Manier.
He worked as a security guard at a university in the western city of Rennes and gained French citizenship in 2005.
Hategekimana left France and headed to Cameroon in late 2017 after learning that the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR), which is among the current plaintiffs, had filed a charge against him.
Police arrested him in the capital, Yaounde, in 2018 and he was extradited to France where the charges were filed.
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Questions of jurisdiction
France became one of the main destinations for fugitives connected with crimes of genocide and the country has convicted several figures since 2014.
President Paul Kagame had accused Paris of denying Rwanda jurisdiction, although relations warmed considerably since a report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and released in 2021 recognized France's "overwhelming" responsibilities in failing to halt the massacres.
The location of hearings can depend on numerous factors including the nature of crimes committed, jurisdiction, availability of evidence, and the mandates and capacity of the courts themselves.
The majority of Rwanda genocide trials were in Rwanda's domestic courts while the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the Tanzanian city of Arusha was primarily focused on prosecuting high-ranking or prominent individuals.
The ICTR's work was taken over by the UN's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in Arusha and in the Dutch city of The Hague.
Former colonial power Belgium has also held several trials related to the Rwanda genocides, and there have been a dozen or so convictions in Canada, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.
AFP contributed to this report.
Edited by Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
A previous version of this article mistakenly referred to The Hague as the Dutch capital. Although it is the political and judicial center of the country, Amsterdam is the official capital. The department apologizes for the error.
