Rwamucyo, aged 50, was last month dismissed from his hospital post in Maubeuge (North of France), officially for lack of a working permit. However, his dismissal followed suspicion raised by a nurse, who had "googled" Rwamucyo's name on the Internet.
Kigali accuses Eugène Rwamucyo of participating in meetings with "top genocidaires" in Butare (South of Rwanda), including a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Hutu interim government in 1994, Jean Kambanda.
Kambanda has been sentenced to life in jail by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and is serving his term in Benin.
Kigali welcomed Rwamucyo's arrest. "We are pleased. We have noticed these past few days that France is committed to prosecuting alleged 'genocidaires' who have taken refuge there", Rwanda's Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga declared Thursday on Radio Rwanda.
"France's attitude with regard to the genocide has changed very recently. We hope that this process will go on leading to trials and judgments ", he added, speaking in Kinyarwanda.
Ngoga also reiterated that, ideally, the Rwandan authorities would want genocide suspects to be extradited to Rwanda.
Eugène Rwamucyo was arrested in Sannois, north of Paris, after attending the funeral of Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, a former Rwandan official convicted by the ICTR for genocide, who had died last month in a Benin jail.
Rwamucyo lived in Belgium with his spouse and children who carry Belgian citizenship.
His arrest follows Nicolas Sarkozy's landmark trip to Kigali in March during which the French President had pledged that his government would do its best to ensure that "all those responsible of genocide are found and punished."
In a few days, Sarkozy is to welcome Rwandan President Paul Kagame among numerous other African heads of state attending a Franco-African summit meeting in Nice.
ER/SRE/GF
© Hirondelle News Agency