Google – AFP, Stéphane Orjottet, 4 February 2014
 |
An undated
picture released by Interpol shows Pascal Simbikangwa, a former
Rwandan army
captain arrested on the French island of Mayotte in 2008
(Interpol/AFP/File)
|
Paris — The
landmark trial of a former Rwandan army captain charged with complicity in the
genocide that left 800,000 dead opened Tuesday in Paris, the first of its kind
in France.
Hailing it
as "history being made" -- albeit "late" -- Rwanda's
justice minister welcomed the opening of the trial of Pascal Simbikangwa nearly
20 years after the 100-day genocide shocked the world.
The case of
Simbikangwa -- who denies all accusations against him -- is being closely
watched in France, which has long been accused of failing to rein in the
Rwandan regime at the time of the genocide in 1994.
 |
Fabrice
Epstein (C), lawyer of former
Rwandan army captain Pascal
Simbikangwa, arrives at the Paris'
courthouse, on February 4,
2014 (AFP, Martin Bureau)
|
The trial
began with an immediate request from Simbikangwa's lawyers for the case to be
dismissed.
One of
them, Alexandra Bourgeot, said the case could not be treated fairly because of
the "inequality of power" between the prosecution and defence.
Simbikangwa's
lawyers said they did not have the "means" to properly defend him and
had not even been able to visit Rwanda to verify prosecution evidence.
The
54-year-old defendant appeared in court in a wheelchair after a 1986 car
accident that left him a paraplegic. He faces life in prison.
Arrested in
2008 on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, he is accused of inciting,
organising and aiding massacres during the genocide, particularly by supplying
arms and instructions to militia who were manning road blocks and killing Tutsi
men, women and children.
"I was
a captain in the Rwandan army then in the intelligence services,"
Simbikangwa, a small, bald man wearing a brown jacket and white tracksuit
bottoms, told the court in a brief opening statement.
After his
arrest, France refused to extradite him to Rwanda, as it has done in previous
cases, and decided to try him under laws that allow French courts to consider
cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in other
countries.
'History being
made'
Rwandan
Justice Minister Johnston Busingye welcomed the opening of the trial.
"It is
history being made. We have always wondered why it has taken 20 years... it is
late, but it is a good sign," he said.
 |
The 1994
genocide in Rwanda (AFP, P. Pizarro / A. Bommenel)
|
The trial
is expected to last six to eight weeks and, in a rare case for France, will be
filmed, with recordings available once the case is concluded.
After jury
selection, the first few weeks are expected to lay out the historical context
for the genocide.
Simbikangwa
acknowledges being close to the regime of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana,
whose assassination on April 6, 1994, unleashed the genocide, in which most of
the victims were members of the minority Tutsi community.
But he
denies participating in or organising massacres.
He was
initially charged with genocide and crimes against humanity but the charges
were downgraded to complicity.
His lawyers
have attacked the prosecution's case as being based purely on unchallenged
witness accounts.
In a
statement released prior to the opening of the trial, Bourgeot and Fabrice
Epstein said Simbikangwa was being made a "scapegoat" for the
genocide on the approach of its 20th anniversary.
 |
A
firefighter installs a wheelchair in a
courtroom at the Paris' courthouse
before
the start of the trial of former Rwandan
army captain Pascal
Simbikangwa, on
February 4, 2014 (AFP, Martin Bureau)
|
But Simon
Foreman, a lawyer who represents civil parties in the case, said the charge of
complicity "in no way diminishes the responsibility" of Simbikangwa,
whom he described as "a cog in a mechanism operated by others".
Alain
Gauthier, chairman of the group of civil parties in the case, said the opening
of the trial was a "big relief."
"We
have denounced the role of France enough times, now we will see what justice
says," he said.
The charges
against Simbikangwa are connected to incidents in the Rwandan capital Kigali
and his native Gisenyi region in the northwest.
Prosecutors
abandoned an attempt to also implicate him in an April 1994 massacre at Kesho
Hill in Gisenyi, because witness accounts of his role only came in years later
and were marked by contradictions.
About 1,400
Tutsis were killed at Kesho, many of them in a church where women, children and
the elderly had taken refuge.
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