After 28 years, 68-year-old Sosthene Munyemana, a former doctor in Rwanda now living in France, has finally been put on trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in the Rwandan genocide. In 1995, a complaint was filed in Bordeaux against Munyemana, one year after the genocide. He has been accused of organising torture and killings and almost 70 witnesses are expected to testify. Given this background, why has it taken so long for this case to come to trial? Generally speaking, cases with this level of complexity, combined with a lack of personnel have a bad habit of being pushed off into the “too-hard” box or dragged along for decades. Additionally (and more specifically), France refused to extradite Munyemana to Rwanda in 2010, citing the French prohibition on retroactivity. Since there was technically no law in Rwanda on genocide at the time, and since Rwandan village courts have already sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment, France argued that Munyemana would not receive a fair trial. Only in 2011, did France charge Munyemana on suspicion of genocide and finally, 12 years later, it has come to trial. Munyemana denies the charges claiming that he aided the Tutsis. High complexity cases, when dragged on, collect interest on complexity. The longer the case is drawn out, the fewer witnesses will be alive to testify. It’s better that contemporary tribunals deal with contemporary cases than new ones, given that the defence can claim that any new tribunals, customs, and laws began to exist after the case. At the birth of the trial, the case is well past its best-before date and it’s the job of the court to salvage the most just verdict possible.