Tried in Paris on his possible involvement in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, former doctor Sosth\u00e8ne Munyemana assured Wednesday that far from having wanted to kill Tutsi, he had tried to “save” them.<\/p>\n
Since Monday, he has been answering a barrage of questions before the Paris court on the merits of the accusations against him, which he has contested from the start.<\/p>\n
Standing at the bar from morning to late in the evening, Sosth\u00e8ne Munyemana, 68, gives his version of events, point by point, without wavering.<\/p>\n
In this procedure, opened 28 years ago, he is accused in particular of having held, during part of the genocide, the key to the Tumba sector office, in the prefecture of Butare (southern Rwanda), and of having locked up Tutsi, who were then taken to other places and executed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sector office constituted a refuge for people who had nowhere to hide,\u201d the accused told the court.<\/p>\n
Having \u201clearned that people who took refuge around the sector office were killed on the night of April 21 to 22 (\u2026), that girls were raped, I took the initiative of informing\u201d the sector advisor Fran\u00e7ois Bwanakeye, he explains.<\/p>\n
The latter sends him the key to the office the next day. \u201cFrom that moment on, I opened the door to the refugees gathered around the sector office. \u201d<\/p>\n
The advisor came the next day and called the mayor Joseph Kanyabashi, who “sent a team to look for these people”. \u201cI thought they were going to be kept safe since Kanyabashi promised it to Bwanakeye,\u201d argues the accused.<\/p>\n
Joseph Kanyabashi was definitively sentenced in 2015 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to 20 years of criminal imprisonment for incitement to genocide.<\/p>\n
In total, between April 23 and May 15, the date on which he said he returned the key, Sosth\u00e8ne Munyemana opened the office door four times to Tutsi in distress. Out of the fifty people who passed through the sector office, only one managed to escape at the time of his transfer. The others were never seen alive again.<\/p>\n
Confronted with the testimonies of relatives of the victims, who accuse him of having left the Tutsi without water or food, the former doctor refutes: “there was a pane of a broken window and the people could be fed or had something to drink “.<\/p>\n
\u201cI intended to save these people. I responded to my heart by doing at least what was possible for me,\u201d he continues. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect these people to be killed where they were brought. It\u2019s a shame,\u201d he breathes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWere you fooled?\u201d, asks the president of the Assize Court, Marc Sommerer_. \u201cIt\u2019s possible that I was abused,\u201d replies Sosth\u00e8ne Munyemana. The magistrate pointed out to him that what happened in Tumba was a \u201ccopy and paste\u201d of what was happening in the rest of the country, where Tutsi were gathered in administrative places or even churches before being killed.<\/p>\n
Does he understand that he could have \u201cappeared as an administrative link\u201d in the genocidal chain? \u201cFrom the start, I intervene as a citizen\u201d, opposes the accused. \u201cI see my objective as saving people,\u201d he maintains. \u201cI never thought there would be another plan, another scheme. \u201d \u201cYou were naive with a big heart,\u201d retorts the president.<\/p>\n
At the end of the afternoon, and while until now, he has not lost his calm, Sosth\u00e8ne Munyemana lets emotion shine through by evoking an episode from this period, where his daughter, then a child, had been threatened by militiamen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also experienced difficult times,\u201d he said, his voice strangled and his eyes red while admitting that these ordeals were not at the \u201csame level\u201d as those experienced by the Tutsi. \u201cI\u2019m creating a shell for myself, I know it. \u201d<\/p>\n
The trial is scheduled until December 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tried in Paris on his possible involvement in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, former doctor Sosth\u00e8ne Munyemana assured Wednesday that far from having wanted to kill Tutsi, he had tried to “save” them. Since Monday, he has been answering a barrage of questions before the Paris court on the merits of the accusations against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"AFP","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,1129,34],"tags":[1193,140,1844],"class_list":["post-10195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-security","category-society","tag-1994-rwandan-genocide","tag-rwanda","tag-tutsis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}