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Rwanda deplores French decision on case of genocide suspect

Xinhua, August 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

Rwanda has described a decision by French prosecutors to drop genocide charges against Rwandan priest Wenceslas Munyeshyaka as genocide denial.

Munyeshyaka is accused by authorities in both Rwanda and France of taking part in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

The Catholic priest, who has lived in France since 1995, refused repeated calls to return to Rwanda, and French authorities have declined to extradite him.

Paris prosecutors last Wednesday said they had asked for the case against the priest to be thrown out, two decades after he was charged with genocide and torture.

"From our investigations, it appears the role of Wenceslas Munyeshyaka during the 1994 genocide raised a lot of questions," Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said in a statement.

"But the probe was not able to formally corroborate specific acts pertaining to his active participation" as a perpetrator or an accomplice, he added.

It is understood it now up to magistrates to decide whether to bring the case to court or not.

But in a statement Tuesday, Rwanda's National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) deplored the decision.

"CNLG deplores the attitude of French prosecution that denies genocide against the Tutsi and calls for justice to be done and to end impunity for genocide masterminds roaming on French soil," the statement signed by Jean Damascene Bizimana, the executive secretary of CNLG said.

The Rwandan government maintains that sufficient evidence abound that Father Munyeshyaka committed or helped to commit massacres and rapes on Tutsi refugees at Saint Famille Parish and Saint Paul in Kigali among other crimes.

"The National Commission for the Fight against Genocide requests that French judges to ignore the Paris prosecutor...and requests the trial to proceed as it was expected."

Munyeshyaka was charged by a French judge in July 1995 with several counts including, genocide, torture, mistreatment and inhuman and degrading acts.

A Rwandan military court in 2006 handed him life jail term in absentia for rape and helping extremist militias.

But Munyeshyaka, who is now a priest in the northern French town of Gisors, denies all the charges.

Rwanda and France have enjoyed lukewarm relations following the former's accusations of Paris of complicity in the genocide, accusations which France roundly rejects. Endit