France jails ex-chauffeur for Rwanda 1994 genocide role

A French appeals court on Friday jailed a former hotel chauffeur for 14 years for complicity in Rwanda's 1994 genocide and in crimes against humanity.

Claude Muhayimana, now 65, worked as a chauffeur at a hotel in Kibuye, on the banks of Lake Kivu, western Rwanda at the time of the genocide of more than 800,000 Rwandans, mainly Tutsis.

The Paris court found that he transported members of the Interahamwe militia, the armed wing of the genocidal Hutu regime, to the sites of massacres of Tutsis in Kibuye and the surrounding hills.

Tens of thousands of people were killed there.

Muhayimana fled Rwanda a few months after the massacres, arriving in France in 2001 and receiving French nationality in 2010.

Living and working in the northern French city of Rouen, he remained free in the time between his initial conviction in 2021 and Friday's appeal court ruling, which handed down an identical sentence.

His lawyers Reda Ghilaci and Hugo Latrabe denounced the ruling as "incoherent" given the new elements before the court, notably the changed testimony of some witnesses.

They said they would consider an appeal to the Cour de Cassation, France's highest criminal court.

French courts, acting on the principle of "universal competence" to try the most serious crimes committed outside of its territory, have already convicted several Rwandans for their part in the 1994 genocide.