In Belgium, in the trial of two suspected Rwandan genocidaires, it was time for the final arguments of the civil parties on Wednesday. As a reminder, Séraphin Twahirwa is accused of having been an interahamwe militia leader in Kigali, and Pierre Basabose a financier of the massacres. They are being prosecuted in particular for war crimes and the crime of genocide. On Wednesday, Maître Michèle Hirsch, a true figure of the Brussels bar who represented victims in the 6 genocide trials organized so far in Belgium, made rape as a war crime the main issue in this case.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Brussels, Laura Broulard
Michèle Hirsch focused on the case of Séraphin Twahirwa, prosecuted for the rapes of at least twelve women, but also of an indeterminate number of other unidentified Tutsi women. Rapes committed by him or by militiamen under his orders between January and June 1994 according to the indictment. Rape as a “mass crime”, as a “genocidal weapon” for the lawyer of the civil parties, who considers that this is a first in the context of a trial of universal jurisdiction on the genocide of the Tutsis in Belgium.
“ There was previously a charge of rape as a war crime in the trial of Ephrem Nkezabera (nicknamed the Genocide Banker) in 2009. But the victims did not testify. But that was the case here. The court heard from numerous rape victims, sometimes in open court, but most often behind closed doors. By rape, the accused was in reality carrying out a sort of ethnic cleansing. »
The lawyer places the facts in the context of the racist propaganda of the 1990s in Rwanda, which presented Tutsi women as hypersexualized spies in the service of their community, that of the RPF rebels, but also of the Tutsi enemy of the interior. In the room, the atmosphere is heavy, several genocide survivors have tears in their eyes.
Félicité Lyamukuru attended the pleadings. “ Given the way in which the Tutsi woman has been portrayed, it is very important that today, in a trial like this, we can understand how she was demonized, humiliated, destroyed in her womb… And that leaves us speechless. . »
For his part, Séraphin Twahirwa disputes the facts with which he is accused. His lawyers question the credibility of the witnesses and the fairness of the procedure.