Germany charges former Rwandan mayor with genocide for alleged involvement in 1994 killings

Germany charges ex-Rwandan mayor with genocide

BERLIN — German prosecutors say they have filed charges against a former Rwandan mayor for his alleged involvement in the African country’s 1994 genocide.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that they charged the 53-year-old ethnic Hutu — identified only as Onesphore R. — with genocide and murder as well as incitement to those crimes. They said he was a mayor of an unspecified district in northern Rwanda at the time of the killings.

They say the man called for a pogrom against the Tutsi ethnic minority on three occasions in early April 1994 and forced a local official to throw out Tutsis who had taken refuge in his house.

Prosecutors say the man ordered and coordinated three massacres between April 11 and 15, 1994, in which at least 3,730 Tutsis were killed.