A Canadian court has denied the appeal request of a man convicted in 2009 of crimes related to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Désiré Munyaneza was the first person to be convicted under Canada’s relatively new Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. That law was introduced in 2000 to allow Canadian courts to try residents for war crimes committed abroad.
Munyaneza came to Canada in 1997 and filed a refugee claim, which was rejected three years later. Canadian authorities arrested him in October 2005 at his Toronto home, where he had been living with his wife and children. He had been spotted in the area by former Rwandan citizens who alerted authorities.
Munyaneza guilty of genocide
The a former Rwandan businessman was tried and found guilty of seven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in and around Butare, Rwanda, where his family had been based. During the genocide, an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were raped and murdered.
‘Worst crimes in existence’
In 2009, Quebec Superior Court Justice André Denis sentenced Munyaneza to life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years saying the sentence was severe because “the law considers the crimes committed by the accused to be the worst in existence.
“The accused, an educated man from a privileged background, chose to kill, rape and pillage in the name of his ethnic group’s supremacy.”
Munyaneza will have to continue to serve his sentence now that his request to appeal the conviction has been refused.
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