A Dutch court on Friday handed a life sentence to a man for inciting and participating in the massacre of 3,000 Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
“Only a long life imprisonment would be appropriate. So that’s the punishment we will impose,” said the presiding judge handing down the verdict.
“We’re talking about war crimes and genocide in this case,” added the judge.
Prosecutors had alleged the Rwandan-born Dutch national, identified only as Eugene N., went on a “rampage of looting and destruction” before the massacre, torching houses and plundering possessions.
During the violence that took place in April 1994, terrified victims sought refuge in a football stadium in Mbazi, southern Rwanda, only to be systematically slaughtered.
Prosecutors believe N. was “personally involved” in the killings and had called for him to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“If the horrific crimes of the suspect — in which not one but an estimated 3,000 innocent people were literally slaughtered, in which the suspect personally threw a grenade into a stadium… do not deserve a life sentence, then what does?” one prosecutor asked the court in June hearings.
The 1994 Rwandan genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 people over the course of three months. According to UN figures, most of the victims were part of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda.
The suspect had denied the charges, saying he himself was a victim who had lost dozens of his own relatives in what he described as “those horrific events”.
N.’s lawyers had urged an acquittal on all counts, saying their client in fact did “everything to prevent the genocide”.
“The case has torn his scars open again. He is a broken man,” said one of the defence lawyers during the trial.
N. fled to the Netherlands in 1998. Rwandan authorities issued an international arrest warrant for him in 2014. However, according to Dutch law, he cannot be extradited as he has obtained nationality in the Netherlands.
Dutch prosecutors opened their own investigation in 2020 and have since interviewed dozens of witnesses in Rwanda. N. was arrested in 2024.
European courts have tried and convicted several dozen people involved in the Rwanda genocide under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows them to hear the most serious crimes even if committed abroad.
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