Belgian prosecutors on Friday urged a court to impose a 30-year jail term on a former Rwandan official convicted of genocide for his role in the 1994 massacre.

71-year-old Fabien Neretse was arrested in France in 2011 and found guilty of genocide and war crimes on Thursday after a trial in the Brussels High Court.

“Bear in mind the extreme gravity of the facts... this will to exterminate the other," prosecutor Arnaud D'Oultremont told the jury.

Neretse denied the accusations throughout the trial. He is the first person to be convicted in Belgium of a genocide charge.

He was also convicted of war crimes for 11 killings in Rwanda.

Rwanda this year marked 25 years since it experienced the genocide that not only killed over one million people, but also displaced millions more.

The ethnic killings were sparked by the murder of former president Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 1994, whose plane was shot down overhead Kigali.

The Rwandan government earlier this year held a series of commemorative events meant to encourage Unity among Rwandans and the world at large.