IBUKA, the umbrella association of Genocide against the Tutsi, is unhappy following the early release of Laurent Bucyibaruta, a genocide convict sentenced to 20 years in prison in France.
Naphtali Ahishakiye, the Executive Secretary of IBUKA, said they are displeased with the court’s ruling of Bucyibaruta’s early release.
According to Ahishakiye, French prisons are facilitated enough therefore, the early release of the genocide convicts under the pretext of treatment should not be an excuse.
“We are unhappy with the court’s decision because it has turned to be an excuse to release convict under the pretext of sickness,” he told Taarifa.
Laurent Bucyibaruta suffered acute health problems shortly after his imprisonment in July last year.
With the court’s decision, Bucyibaruta is allowed to attend medical treatment while under house arrest as doctors attend him for treatment.
The former prefecture of the southern province of Gikongoro was accused of having persuaded thousands of people to take refuge in the Murambi Technical School, by promising them food, water and protection.
Bucyibaruta’s case took two months and involved over 100 witnesses, including experts who witnessed the events for the civil party.
According to witnesses and indictments dated January 21, 2021, Bucyibaruta participated in the crimes of genocide between April, and July 1994, in his prefecture of Gikongoro and “committed serious attacks on the life and physical and mental integrity of the Tutsi’s at the sites of the ETO technical school of Murambi, Tutsi prisoners in the Gikongoro prison, and people arrested at the roadblocks and during local ‘roundups’, in the execution of a concerted plan aimed at the total or partial destruction of the Tutsi ethnic group.”
In her report ‘Leave None to Tell the Story” American human rights activist Alison Des Forges wrote “The Prefect, Laurent Bucyibaruta, was originally from Gikongoro and had devoted himself to the service of party and state through the decades when the two were identical,” and “was one of the MRND loyalist officials to come out in support of the interim government on national radio.”