A court in Brussels sentenced a 65-year-old Belgian-Rwandan man, Emmanuel Nkunduwimye, on Monday to 25 years in prison for murder and rape committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Nkunduwimye was jailed for war crimes and genocide, including a series of murders and the rape of a Tutsi woman.
In April 1994, when the genocide began, Nkunduwimye owned a garage in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. The garage was part of a complex where Interahamwe militiamen perpetrated massacres.
Nkunduwimye was close to several militia leaders, including Georges Rutaganda, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and died in 2010.
The jury at the Brussels trial found that Nkunduwimye assisted the militia “with full knowledge of the facts.”
“He could not have been unaware of the abuses committed there,” the sentencing said, according to Belga news agency.
During the trial, Nkunduwimye was formally identified by the woman he raped, who testified in private at the hearing.
Nkunduwimye denied the accusations, and his defence called for his acquittal, arguing that the prosecution’s evidence was unreliable.
The trial of Nkunduwimye was the seventh such trial held in Belgium since 2001 involving alleged crimes committed during the genocide.
Belgium, which controlled Rwanda during the colonial period, can prosecute alleged genocidaires because its court recognises universal jurisdiction for crimes under international humanitarian law committed outside the country.
