The court in Hillerød has implemented a Rwandan sentence so that a Danish citizen can serve his sentence in Denmark.
Danish-Rwandan Wenceslas Twagirayezu will be sentenced to 20 years in prison for participating in the 1994 genocide in a series of incidents in which thousands of ethnic Tutsis lost their lives in Rwanda.
The Court in Hillerød will decide on Tuesday.
The case in Hillerød is about converting a 2024 verdict from a court in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, into a verdict under Danish law, so that Twagirayezu can serve his sentence in Denmark.
In Rwanda he was also sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He was extradited from Denmark to Rwanda in 2018 with the proviso that if convicted, he would serve his sentence in Denmark.
Wenceslas Twagirayezu is today a Danish citizen and resident of Smørumnedre. In 2018 he was extradited to Rwanda, where he was suspected of having participated in the genocide of the ethnic Tutsi.
The Central African country was plunged into bloody ethnic conflict in 1994, following the killing of the country’s president, who belonged to the ethnic Hutu population, when his plane was shot down.
First acquitted
In 2001, Twagirayezu came to Denmark and later became a Danish citizen. But over the years, the Rwandan authorities focused the spotlight on him in connection with the extensive legal showdown after the genocide.
The man, who was a school teacher in Rwanda, has denied participating throughout the process, and the witnesses who have participated in the case have given such varying explanations that he was acquitted by a first instance court in Rwanda in January.
But the case was appealed, and in July last year, an appeals court in Rwanda overturned the verdict. Wenceslas Twagirayezu was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Therefore, the Court in Hillerød was to decide on Tuesday what sentence he could be sentenced to in Denmark.
ritzau
