man extradited to Rwanda from the Netherlands has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for genocide crimes committed when he was 19.
During Jean-Claude Iyamuremye’s five-year trial, he denied involvement in the 1994 genocide when around 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days by Hutu extremists.
The high court judge said Iyamuremye had been a member of a youth militia that hunted and killed members of the Tutsi community in his neighbourhood in the capital, Kigali.
The 45-year-old defended himself, saying his own mother was a Tutsi.
The judge said he could have sentenced Iyamuremye to life, but had decided not to as he was “so young” when the crimes were committed and he had also saved some Tutsi families.
Iyamuremye was arrested in 2013 in the Netherlands, where he had worked as a driver for staff at the Israeli and Finnish embassies.
He was sent back to Rwanda by the Dutch authorities in 2016.
