(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 18, 2008, former Rwanda army's Colonel Theoneste Bagosora sits at the Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) in Arusha. - Theoneste Bagosora, Rwandan army colone, the "brain" of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, died on September 26, 2021, at the age of 80, in Mali where he was serving his sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
Rwandan activists have called on France not to allow the burial on its soil of a key orchestrator of the 1994 genocide.
They said they did not want the grave of Theoneste Bagosora to become a pilgrimage site for those who supported the killings of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
France is already a “shelter for many suspects of the genocide and should not become a ‘pilgrimage site’ for people nostalgic of the genocidal regime”, the activist group, Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR), said in a statement.
Several members of Mr Bagosora’s family live in France.
Bagosora, 80, died in Mali on Saturday where he was serving a 25-five year jail sentence for war crimes.
He was a senior figure in Rwanda’s ministry of defence at the time of the killings.
It is not yet known where he will be buried.
Source: BBC
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