BRUSSELS: A Brussels court found a former Rwandan official guilty of genocide Thursday after hearing of his role in the 1994 massacres in his country.
Neretse remained passive in the dock during the sentencing. He and the families of his victims will learn of his fate after a separate sentencing hearing on Friday. To demonstrate the more serious charge of genocide, the prosecutor cited Neretse’s appearance at public rallies urging fellow members of the Hutu ethnic group to slaughter the minority Tutsi community.Belgium has already held four trials and condemned eight perpetrators of killings in its former colony, but Neretse is the first defendant to be specifically convicted of the most grave charge – genocide.
He was seen as a local kingpin in Mataba, and a cadre in the former MRND ruling party of late president Juvenal Habyarimana.“I will never stop insisting that I neither planned nor took part in the genocide,” he insisted on Tuesday, before the jury retired to contemplate its verdict. If he has now finally been brought to book, it is large measure thanks to the determination of 70-year-old Belgian former EU civil servant Martine Beckers.Ice cream parlour
Magistrates have been compiling evidence in the case for 15 years and the fact that it came to trial “owes a lot to her determination” her lawyer Eric Gillet said before the hearings.
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