THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – A Dutch court on Friday convicted a Rwandan man of participation in his home country’s 1994 genocide and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The 66-year-old defendant, whose name was not released, took part in attacks in which homes were looted and torched in two predominantly Tutsi communities and threw a grenade into a crowd of Tutsis sheltering in a soccer stadium, The Hague District Court said in a written statement after his conviction.
“The conduct of the defendant establishes a significant lack of respect for human dignity and for human life,” the court said, adding that “only a lifelong prison sentence does justice to the immense suffering that has been inflicted on the victims and the bereaved families.”
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a campaign of mass murder orchestrated by Hutu extremists. Many leaders of the slaughter were tried and convicted by a United Nations war crimes tribunal that has now closed down.
The defendant left Rwanda after the genocide and settled in the Netherlands, where he was arrested and prosecuted.
The trial was the culmination of a yearslong investigation that involved police and an investigating judge interviewing more than 30 witnesses, most of them in Rwanda. Nine victims or their next of kin attended the trial earlier this year.