PARIS (AP) — Paris court delivered France’s first-ever conviction for genocide Friday, sentencing a Rwandan former intelligence chief to 25 years in prison over the 1994 killings of at least 500,000 people in the African country.

The landmark trial of 54-year-old Pascal Simbikangwa sets off what could be the first of dozens of French trials into one of the 20th century’s greatest atrocities — two decades after it happened — and provides a judicial reckoning for a former colonial power that still has many ties to African countries like Mali, Central African Republic and beyond.

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