A former senior Rwandan official convicted of complicity in the African nation's genocide by a French court in 2022 died on Wednesday aged 79, his lawyer Jean-Marie Biju-Duval told AFP Saturday.
Laurent Bucyibaruta, who was handed a 20-year prison sentence, was the highest-ranking Rwandan to have faced trial in France over the 1994 massacres in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in 100 days of mass killings.
A source close to the case also confirmed with AFP that he had died.
Bucyibaruta had suffered from a number of illnesses. His counsel declined to comment.
Following a nine-week trial, Bucyibaruta was found guilty on July 12, 2022 for complicity to genocide and crimes against humanity over four massacres in the southern province of Gikongoro.
The massacres, committed at a school that was under construction in Murambi and the parishes of Cyanika and Kaduha, left some 75,000 people dead on April 21, 1994.
The court however acquitted him as the perpetrator of the killings.
He had appealed the conviction against him and was released from prison pending a new trial.
"He has died (presumed) innocent" because of the pending appeals processes, Alain Gauthier, head of a Rwandan justice group, told AFP. "For us, he was convicted and we will continue to consider him guilty."
Throughout the original trial, Bucyibaruta contested the accusations against him and downplayed his importance in the chain of command as well as the resources available to him to prevent the killings.
He repeatedly said he had been "overwhelmed by the events".
The genocide survivors' group Ibuka welcomed his conviction at the time, saying it was a "strong" message of "France's political will" to bring those accused of genocide to justice.
Bucyibaruta became prefect of the Gikongoro province, which was among the worst-affected regions by the genocide, in 1992.
He fled Rwanda at the end of the genocide, on July 23, 1994, and had lived in France since 1997.
France has been one of the top destinations for fugitives fleeing justice over the Rwandan slaughter.
A former Rwandan doctor, Sosthene Munyemana, 68, has been on trial since November 14 over his involvement in the 1994 massacres -- the sixth such proceeding to be held in France.