French court hears appeal by Rwandan genocide convict

A former Rwandan intelligence agent sentenced to 25 years in prison in France's first trial over the Rwandan genocide returned to court Tuesday to appeal against his conviction.

Pascal Simbikangwa was found guilty of genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity in a landmark 2014 trial that marked a turning point in France's approach to suspected genocide suspects living on its soil.

Previously France, which was seen as supporting the Rwandan Hutu regime that carried out the bulk of the killings, had been accused of dragging its feet on prosecuting cases.

Simbikangwa, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a car crash in the 1980s, was accused of organising roadblocks where Hutu militia murdered many of their victims, mostly members of the Tutsi minority.

The 56-year-old was also accused of arming the militia.

"I was a soldier but after my accident I returned to civilian life," he told an appeal court in the Paris suburb of Bobigny on Tuesday.

Over 800,000 people were killed in the three-month orgy of killing triggered by the shooting down of the plane of then president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, in April 1994.

Simbikangwa caused a sensation at his trial by declaring he had never seen any victims' bodies during the slaughter.

His defence had insisted on the fact that the prosecution produced no direct witnesses to his alleged crimes.

The former presidential guard member was arrested in 2008 on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, where he had been living under a false identity.

In France, appeals in a jury trial like that of Simbikangwa require the case to be fully reheard.

"We have to start all over again. We're not looking forward to this second trial," Alain Gauthier, a campaigner for justice for Rwandan victims' families whose wife lost several relatives in the genocide, told AFP.

In the second such case in July, a Paris court gave two former Rwandan mayors life sentences for their role in the genocide.