PARIS－Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga, who is accused of funding militias that massacred about 800,000 people, was arrested on Saturday near Paris after 26 years on the run, the French justice ministry said.
Kabuga was indicted in 1997 on seven criminal counts including genocide, complicity in genocide and incitement to commit genocide, all in relation to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, according to the UN-established International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, or IRMCT.
Rwanda’s two main ethnic groups are the Hutus and Tutsis, who have had an antagonistic relationship and fought a civil war in the early 1990s.
Kabuga, a Hutu businessman, is accused of funding the militias that massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and their moderate Hutu allies over 100 days in 1994.
Rwandan prosecutors have said financial documents found in the capital, Kigali, after the genocide indicated that Kabuga used dozens of his companies to import vast quantities of machetes that were used to slaughter people.
He was also accused of establishing the station Radio Television Mille Collines that broadcast vicious propaganda against the ethnic Tutsi, as well as training and equipping the Interahamwe militia that led the killing rampage.
“Since 1994, Felicien Kabuga, known to have been the financier of Rwanda genocide, had with impunity stayed in Germany, Belgium, Congo-Kinshasa, Kenya, or Switzerland,” the French justice ministry said.
A reminder of justice
IRMCT hailed the arrest. Its Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said that “the arrest of Felicien Kabuga today is a reminder that those responsible for genocide can be brought to account, even 26 years after their crimes”.
Following the completion of appropriate procedures under French law, Kabuga is expected to be transferred to the custody of the Mechanism, where he will stand trial, IRMCT said.
Two other Rwandan genocide suspects, Augustin Bizimana and Protais Mpiranya, are still being pursued by international justice.
Brammertz said the arrest was the result of cooperation between law enforcement agencies in France and other countries including the United States, Rwanda, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Kabuga’s arrest, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
It “sends a powerful message that those who are alleged to have committed such crimes cannot evade justice and will eventually be held accountable, even more than a quarter of a century later”.
His arrest “is an important step toward justice for hundreds of thousands of genocide victims … survivors can hope to see justice and suspects cannot expect to escape accountability,” said Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.