In a first for France, a jury will decide whether Pascal Simbikangwa, who prosecutors allege was the No. 3 in Rwanda's intelligence services, is guilty of genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity during a wave of bloodletting in which 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus died, according to the Associated Press.
The former Rwandan intelligence chief targeted in France's first trial over the Rwandan genocide proclaimed his innocence Friday and insisted he never even saw any the dead bodies that littered the country's roads and towns at the time, the AP reported.
In his final appeal to the jury, Simbikangwa insisted that the "authenticity of my innocence needs no more proof," according to the AP.
Simbikangwa, 54, was initially charged as an accessory to genocide. But prosecutors said the testimony heard from some 50 witnesses during a complex and harrowing six-week trial shows he is guilty of genocide itself, the AP reported.
"Pascal Simbikangwa is among those who were behind (the crimes)," vice-prosecutor Aurelia Devos told the court in statements summing up the prosecutors' case on Wednesday, according to the AP.
"It is clear that as well as distributing weapons, he encouraged and ordered (these acts)," Devos added, the AP reported.
A staunch ally of President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu whose death in the downing of his plane in April 1994 triggered the massacres, Simbikangwa cast himself as a "mere agent" with little decision power as his country descended into chaos and his lawyers also questioned the reliability of witness memories, according to the AP.
A guilty verdict could smooth future prosecutions by France's special genocide unit, the AP reported. Diplomatic sources say a short sentence or acquittal could complicate Franco-Rwandan ties.
"On the Rwandan side, it's pretty straightforward: they are saying 'you didn't want to extradite him, you wanted to judge him yourselves - now let's see if you can bring Rwandan genocidaires to justice'," a senior French judicial source said on Friday, according to the AP.
Similar trials have already taken place in Belgium, Sweden and Germany with guilty verdicts, the AP reported.
