A Paris court will try 59-year-old Madjaliwa Safari, a Rwandan Hutu shopkeeper accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Safari, who has lived in France since 2009, allegedly oversaw a checkpoint where Tutsis were identified and executed during the civil war. He is accused of ordering the killings of ethnic Tutsi civilians, including children, in the former Gitarama and Butare prefectures between April and July 1994.
The indictment order, issued Thursday, states that Safari was previously sentenced to 15 years by a Rwandan court in 2007 but never served a sentence. In 2019, Rwanda requested his extradition, which France denied, opting instead to investigate the allegations under its universal jurisdiction laws.
Safari was arrested in July 2022, following investigations by the French anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office. His lawyer, Philippe Meilhac, said Safari categorically denies the charges and plans to appeal, accusing the legal process of having an increasingly political dimension.
France has hosted eight trials related to the Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people, primarily Tutsis, were killed by Hutu extremists. In the most recent case, a French court sentenced a former doctor to 27 years for aiding anti-Tutsi propaganda and participating in mass killings.
Safari’s trial is expected to shed further light on the atrocities of 1994 and France’s role in prosecuting genocide suspects under its jurisdiction.
