Life sentence demanded for Ede man over Rwanda genocide

Public prosecutors have demanded a life sentence for a 66-year-old Ede resident accused of helping to massacre around 3,000 Tutsis who had sought shelter in a stadium during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The public prosecution department (OM) made the demand on Tuesday, on the fifth day of the trial of Eugène N at the district court in The Hague. N is accused of co-perpetrating and inciting genocide, and of war crimes, including throwing a grenade into the crowd at the Byiza stadium in Mbazi, in southern Rwanda’s Butare region.

A verdict is expected on 28 August.

Prosecutors said the gravity of the case far exceeded the threshold for the maximum sentence. If crimes in which thousands of defenceless people were killed did not merit a life term, they asked the court, “what crimes do?”

N, who came to the Netherlands in 1998 and later took Dutch nationality, denies all the charges. He says he was himself in danger during the genocide and was regarded as a Tutsi, although his 1994 identity papers listed him as a Hutu – an account prosecutors say they do not accept.

An estimated 800,000 people, most of them Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed in three months in 1994. Because N holds Dutch nationality he cannot be extradited, and is being tried in the Netherlands instead.

The Dutch police international crimes team began investigating him in 2020, travelling repeatedly to Rwanda to question witnesses, and arrested him in Ede in February 2024.

Nine survivors gave victim statements on Monday, five of them present in the courtroom. N’s defence lawyers were due to put his case on Wednesday.