By Karla E General
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

MONTREAL, Canada – A Quebec court today found Desire Munyaneza guilty of all seven counts of war crimes committed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, under a Canadian law enacted in 2000 that allows residents to be tried for crimes committed abroad.

Munyaneza, 42, the first person to be convicted under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, was found guilty on all counts related to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, in connection with the three-month genocide perpetrated by Rwanda’s Hutu group. The actions of the Hutus resulted in the murder of an estimated one million members of Rwanda’s Tutsi group as well as moderate Hutus.

Munyaneza, an ethnic Hutu and son of a wealthy businessman, first came to Canada with his family in 1997, but was refused refugee status. He was arrested in Toronto in 2005 following an RCMP investigation that linked him to the murder and rape of civilians, and of leading attacks against ethnic Tutsis at the National University of Rwanda during the genocide. The organization known as African Rights also linked Munyaneza to Rwandans indicted by the United Nations International Criminal Court, and accused him of being a leader in a militia group that raped and murdered dozens of people. He was 27 at the time of the genocide.

Each of the seven counts that Munyaneza was convicted of carries a lifetime prison sentence.