MONTREAL (AFP) - A Rwandan militia leader found guilty of crimes against humanity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in Canada's first war crimes trial was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.

Desire Munyaneza, 42, had been found guilty of seven counts of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity for the rape, murder and torture of dozens of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in southern Rwanda from April to July 1994.

He received the maximum penalty under Canadian law -- 25 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

The trial was the first test of a Canadian law passed in October 2000 claiming "universal jurisdiction" over the world's most horrific crimes.

"It was a very challenging case as it involved events dating back 15 years in a foreign country," prosecutor Pascale Ledoux said after the May verdict.

The mere fact this case went to trial shows Canada's resolve in bringing war criminals to justice, she added.

Munyaneza was arrested in Toronto in 2005 after seeking asylum in Canada, which Canadian immigration officials rejected. He had fled to Cameroon after 1994 where he was exiled, before arriving in Canada in 1997.

His two-year trial heard testimony from 66 witnesses in Canada, France, Rwanda and Tanzania, including former Canadian general Romeo Dallaire who headed a UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda, and American Alison des Forges, a now deceased historian and international observer for Human Rights Watch who provided context for the charges.

The court heard Munyaneza, the son of a wealthy Hutu beer distributor, had set up and manned roadblocks in southern Rwanda during the genocide to select Tutsis and moderate Hutu as victims based on their ethnicity or allegiances.

A man imprisoned in Rwanda for his own role in the genocide testified that Munyaneza orchestrated the massacre of 300 to 400 Tutsis in a church.

He also raped women at gunpoint at his residence, others said in court.

Quebec Superior Court judge Andre Denis had said in his ruling that Munyaneza "specifically intended to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group in Butare and in the surrounding communes.

According to the United Nations, some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in the 1994 genocide.