Dutch court jails 66-year-old for life over Rwanda genocide

A Dutch court has sentenced a 66-year-old Rwandan man to life imprisonment for his role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. The man, identified as Eugene N. by RTE News, was found guilty of participating in the massacre of 3,000 Tutsis. According to the Associated Press, he took part in attacks in which homes were looted and torched in two predominantly Tutsi communities and threw a grenade into a crowd of Tutsis sheltering in a soccer stadium.

The violence occurred in April 1994, during which terrified victims sought refuge in a football stadium in Mbazi, southern Rwanda, only to be systematically slaughtered, as reported by both the South China Morning Post and RTE News. The 1994 Rwandan genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly from the Tutsi minority, over the course of three months.

The court stated that the defendant's conduct showed a significant lack of respect for human dignity and human life, and that a lifelong prison sentence was necessary to do justice to the immense suffering inflicted on the victims and their families, according to the Associated Press. The defendant had denied the charges, but prosecutors argued that his crimes, including the killing of 3,000 innocent people, warranted a life sentence.

Brief written by urgent.news from Punch Nigeria, Punch, South China Morning Post, Associated Press, RTE News — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.