Prosecutor Nicolas Peron said there was no evidence that Rwamusio personally carried out summary executions or torture.
But he said the 65-year-old should not “shirk his responsibility” as he “could kill with words”.
Prosecutors accused Rwamucho, who was born into a Hutu family, of spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda.
They also cited statements from witnesses who accused him of helping bury victims in mass graves as part of a final effort to destroy evidence of the genocide.
The prosecution requested 30 years in prison, and the survivor’s representative requested life imprisonment.
According to the Associated Press, Angelique Uwamahoro, who was 13 years old at the time of the genocide, said she saw Rwamusio on a road block in the town of Butare and heard him encouraging militiamen to kill ethnic Tutsi people.
“He wanted to incite them to kill us so we wouldn’t escape alive,” she said.
But Rwamucyo told the court: “I assure you that I neither ordered the survivors to be killed nor did I allow them to be killed.”
His lawyers argued that his involvement in mass grave burials was because he wanted to avoid a “health crisis” that would have occurred if he had not been buried.
They said he was accused of disagreeing with Rwanda’s current government.
Rwamucho was arrested in Sannois, north of Paris, after attending the funeral of a former Rwandan official convicted of war crimes during the 2010 genocide.
Last December, former doctor Sosthene Munyemana was sentenced to 24 years in prison by a French court for crimes including genocide and crimes against humanity. He is accused of organizing torture and murder during the genocide.
