A French court on Saturday upheld a 25 year prison sentence handed to a former Rwandan intelligence agent jailed in France's first trial over the African country's 1994 genocide. 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 genocide suspects living on its soil.
Simbikangwa, a 56-year-old former presidential guard member who insists he is innocent, launched an appeal in October prompting a six-week trial that was decided by nine jurors and three magistrates.
His legal team blasted the decision as "botched".
"We were naive - we wanted to believe that he would not be sentenced in advance," his lawyer Fabrice Epstein said as she left the court in Bobigny outside Paris.
She said the proceedings had been treated as a wider trial on the genocide that left more than 800,000 people dead, "rather than the trial of Mr Simbikangwa" alone. Lawyers for the five activist groups that were civil parties in the case meanwhile left the courtroom to applause from supporters. Alain Gauthier, head of the Civil Plaintiffs Collective for Rwanda, hailed the decision. "This legitimises the fight we've been leading for 20 years without any glory," he said.
The International Federation of Human Rights and Human Rights League, which were also among the civil parties, said the ruling gave a voice to "victims who have been waiting for justice to be done for more than 20 years". Previously, France, widely considered to have supported the Rwandan Hutu regime that carried out the bulk of the killings, had been accused of dragging its feet on prosecuting cases.