A court in France has sentenced to life imprisonment a former Rwandan police officer, after finding him guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Philippe Hategekimana's crimes took place during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when Hutu militias killed hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The prosecutors had described him as having played a central part in carrying out the killings, not only murdering people but inciting others to do so.

Hategekimana, who had worked as a senior gendarme in Nyanza, a town in the south of the country, fled to France after the genocide.

He acquired refugee status and French nationality under the name of Philippe Manier.

He had worked as a university security guard in France and fled to Cameroon in 2017 when he heard a complaint had been filed against him, AFP reports. He was arrested in Yaoundé and extradited to France the following year to face trail.

It was the fifth such trial in France of an alleged participant in the genocide. The killings of around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus took place over 100 days in 1994.