OSLO, Norway — A Norwegian court Thursday convicted a Rwandan man living in Norway for participating in the 1994 genocide in his home country and sentenced him to 21 years in prison.
The Oslo District Court found Sadi Bugingo, 47, guilty of complicity in the premeditated killings of at least 2,000 people belonging mainly to the Tutsi ethnic group. It singled out three prolonged attacks in his hometown of Kibungo, eastern Rwanda, during April 1994.
Bugingo has denied all charges and says he will appeal.
The court said that the former businessman participated in the massacres and organized them by transporting armed killers and victims to the sites of the killings.
During his defense, Bugingo claimed that he was not in the region at the time of the massacres and said he had not known about them. Madsoe noted that he had been a wealthy local businessman and found his claims “not credible.”
Bugingo arrived in Norway in 2001 to join his family who had fled from Rwanda some years earlier. He was granted a residence permit in 2005 and worked in the western city of Bergen as a cleaner until he was arrested in 2011.