Phillippe Hategekimana, a former senior police officer in the genocidal regime, has had his life sentence upheld by a French court, making the ruling final after his appeal was rejected.

Hategekimana, 69, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2023 by the Cour d’Assises de Paris, a verdict he challenged in an appeal hearing that began the following year.

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The lower court had found him guilty of genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity linked to massacres in Nyanza, Nyabubare, Nyamure, Ntyazo, and at ISAR Songa.

He was found to have led police units involved in killings of Tutsis or coordinated attacks with police and Interahamwe militia at roadblocks. He was also convicted over the murders of Ntyazo commune mayor Narcisse Nyagasaza and police officer Pierre Nyakarashi.

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After fleeing Rwanda, he lived in France under the identity Philippe Manier, where he obtained refugee status, worked as a university security guard in Rennes, and later acquired French citizenship in 2005.

With the appeal rejected, he becomes the fourth person definitively convicted in France over the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.