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A French appeals court has sentenced Claude Muhayimana to 14 years in prison for complicity in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and crimes against humanity, reaffirming an earlier conviction handed down in 2021.
Muhayimana, now 65, was working as a hotel chauffeur in Kibuye, a town on the shores of Lake Kivu in western Rwanda, during the genocide that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 people, predominantly Tutsis.
According to the Paris appeals court, he transported members of the Interahamwe militia, the armed wing of the extremist Hutu regime, to massacre sites in Kibuye and the surrounding hills, where tens of thousands were killed.
The court found that his actions facilitated the operations of those carrying out systematic killings. The sentence delivered on Friday mirrored the original 14-year term imposed in 2021, despite arguments presented by the defence during the appeal.
Muhayimana fled Rwanda months after the massacres and eventually settled in France in 2001. He was granted French nationality in 2010 and had been living and working in Rouen, northern France. He remained at liberty between his initial conviction and the latest ruling.
His lawyers, Reda Ghilaci and Hugo Latrabe, criticised the judgment as “incoherent”, pointing to what they described as new elements introduced during the appeal, including altered witness testimony. The defence team indicated they would consider taking the case to the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest criminal court.
France has pursued several cases linked to the 1994 genocide under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows its courts to prosecute the gravest international crimes regardless of where they were committed. The latest ruling reinforces France’s ongoing efforts to hold perpetrators accountable decades after the atrocities.
