THE HAGUE — A Dutch appeals court on Thursday sentenced a Rwandan citizen living in The Netherlands to life in prison for war crimes committed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Joseph Mpambara, 43, was found guilty of having carried out an attack on a Protestant church where Tutsis had fled. The lower court, which sentenced him to 20 years in prison, had previously acquitted him on this charge.
"Hundreds of persons were literally slaughtered or hurt," with guns or machetes, Judge Raoul Dekkers said, who added Mpambara "encouraged others to commit (these crimes)."
Because he was now convicted of the attack, Mpambara's crimes have been qualified as war crimes, which was not upheld by a lower court.
Mpambara was also convicted by the appeals court of torture causing the deaths of two Tutsi mothers and their four children on April 13, 1994, upholding a previous lower court conviction.
"The appeals court... sentences the suspect to life in prison," said judge Dekkers, the head of the appeals chamber, during a public session in The Hague.
"The appeals court is of the opinion that you have made yourself guilty of war crimes," the judge told Mpambara, qualifying his crimes as "extremely serious".
Mpambara was also found guilty of detaining a German-Rwandan couple and their baby on April 27, 1994, for several hours. The court ordered Mpambara to pay the couple 1,360 euros in damages.
Added the judge: "You showed no compassion for the Tutsis" while testimony was being heard during the appeal.
Worse, the judge added, the Rwandan has "stuck to your opinion that the victims deserved their fate."
Both the prosecution, which asked for life in jail, and Mpambara, who pleaded not guilty, appealed the lower court's decision.
"It was a very convincing judgment," one of the complainant's lawyers Liesbeth Zegveld told AFP afterwards.
"The crimes are very serious. It cannot be compared to anything we know in The Netherlands. A strong signal is being sent today across our borders," she said.
Mpambara was tried in The Netherlands as part of an agreement between several European countries and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) under which they try genocide suspects in their national courts.
The country also has a law which allows it to try people for suspected war crimes if the person lived in The Netherlands.
The son of a wealthy family, Mpambara had been living in The Netherlands since 1998 although his request for asylum was refused. The Dutch authorities detained him in 2006.
He was the first Rwandan to be condemned in The Netherlands for crimes during the genocide in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died, according to United Nations estimates.
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