Dutch prosecutors on Tuesday called for a life sentence for a 66-year-old man suspected of inciting and participating in the massacre of 3,000 Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
The man, identified as Eugene N., is accused of being "personally involved in the killing of Tutsis", around 800,000 of whom were murdered over a three-month period.
Prosecutors believe he went on a "rampage of looting and destruction" against Tutsis in the southern Rwandan district of Mbazi, torching houses and plundering possessions.
Shortly afterwards, an estimated 3,000 Tutsis who had fled to a stadium in Mbazi were killed.
The suspect faces charges of inciting and co-perpetrating genocide, as well as war crimes over the looting.
N. has denied the accusations and told judges he himself was a victim of the violence and lost family members during the massacres.
But the prosecutor told the court that only a life sentence was appropriate for N.'s alleged actions.
"If the horrific crimes of the suspect -- in which not one but an estimated 3,000 innocent people were literally slaughtered, in which the suspect personally threw a grenade into a stadium... do not deserve a life sentence, then what does?" asked the prosecutor.
More than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda between April and July 1994, according to UN figures, most of them from the Tutsi minority.
According to Dutch authorities, the suspect has long been in the crosshairs of Rwandan prosecutors, who issued an international arrest warrant for him in 2014.
However, the man has obtained Dutch nationality and cannot be extradited to Rwanda. He has lived in the Netherlands since 1998.
Dutch investigators have been looking into his case since 2020, interviewing dozens of witnesses including in Rwanda.
N.'s defence lawyers have told the court their client did "everything in his power" to prevent the genocide and that he finds it "unbearable" to be now accused of those crimes.
"This case has torn his scars open again. He is a broken man," one defence lawyer told the court.
The trial at the district court of The Hague is set to last until June 29, with a verdict expected on August 28.
