Simbikangwa sentenced to 25 years by French court for his part in 1994 genocide that left 800,000 people dead

A French court has sentenced a wheelchair-using former Rwandan soldier to 25 years in prison for his part in the 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 people dead.

Pascal Simbikangwa, 54, a former intelligence chief and captain of his country's presidential guard, was convicted of complicity in genocide and in crimes against humanity.

After a six week trial, the jury took 12 hours to deliver its verdicts against Simbikangwa, who was described as being steeped in "extremist Hutu ideology". He had denied the charges and claimed he was the victim of "a witch hunt".

Simbikangwa was left paraplegic in 1986 after a car accident. He is the first Rwandan to be put on trial in France, which, two decades on, has been accused of being slow over bringing those accused of the massacre to justice.

The prosecution described him as a "genocide denier" and claimed he helped supply arms to ethnic Hutu militia who set up and controlled road blo cks around the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1994. He was also accused of giving detailed instructions as to which Tutsi families to kill and how.

Simbikangwa was one of the main shareholders in Free Radio-Television des Milles Collines, nicknamed Radio Machete for its role in exhorting Hutus to attack Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

It was the deliberate shooting down of a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira as it prepared to land in Kigali that sparked the genocide. The majority of victims, slaughtered between April 7 and July 17, 1994, were killed with machetes. Simbikangwa was arrested in 2008 on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, where he was living under a false identity, and flown to France the following year.

He has been in prison since and France has repeatedly refused requests from the Rwandan authorities to extradite him.

Investigators claim the former Rwandan intelligence chief was close to the government of Habyarimana, a Hutu and reportedly one of his distant cousins .

The accusations against Simbikangwa, who was said to have been in the "first circle" of Hutu power at the time, include drawing up lists of political opponents to be killed with details of how they should be murdered. France's failure to act to stop the genocide and attitude since has poisoned the relationship between Paris and Kigali, which had enjoyed close diplomatic relations and a shared language for 20 years.

Rwanda accused France of training and arming Hutu forces, then turning a blind eye to members of the genocidal regime allegedly implicated in the massacre who had fled to France. France was also accused of protecting the perpetrators as they disappeared to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo through a "humanitarian" operation called Turquoise.

Diplomatic ties were broken in 2006 after a French judge accused Rwandan president Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who commanded the rebel forces that ended the genocide, of sparking the slaughter. In 2010 Kagame took Rwanda into the Commonwealth of Nations, signalling a definitive rupture with France.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy tried to patch up relations, admitting France had committed "serious errors of judgment" and suffered "a form of blindness". However, he stopped short of the apology demanded by Rwanda.

During his trial, Simbikangwa insisted he had not seen a single murdered person during the 100-day period in which the genocide took place.

Simbikangwa's lawyer, Fabrice Epstein, said the judgment was political and added that he and his client were considering an appeal.