Félicien Kabuga, considered the “financier of the Rwandan genocide” and one of the main accused wanted by international justice, was arrested this morning outside Paris, according to the French prosecutor’s office.
At 84, Kabuga, who lived in a Parisian region with a false identity, is accused of having created the Interhamwe militias, the main armed arms of the 1994 genocide, which caused 800,000 deaths, according to the United Nations.
On the run since 1994, Kabuga is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Mechanism, the structure responsible for completing the work of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR).
In 1998, that court accused him of conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide or complicity to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity.
On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the Rwandan presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana, and Burundian, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down at the airport in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, starting an ethnic conflict in the country that killed more than 800 thousand people and provoked more millions of refugees.
About 8,000 moderate Tutsis and Hutus were killed daily between April and June 1994 in Rwanda by members of the Hutu ethnic group. According to the UN, about 800,000 people were killed between 7 April and 15 July, with Tutsis being accused of joining the rebels who had entered the north of the country since 1990 from Uganda.
The authorities made lists of people to be murdered and the Interahamwe Hutu armed forces and militias methodically slaughtered the “inyenzi” (cockroaches in Kinyarwanda, the official language of Rwanda, the name given to Tutsis), as well as the Hutus who opposed the party Habyarimana and those who refused to participate in the killing.
Men, women and children were wiped out in the streets, in their homes and even in schools and churches where they thought they were safe, while the United Nations Security Council decided on April 21 to reduce the number of Observation Mission United Nations (MINUAR) for security reasons.
On July 4, the FPR took control of Kigali, ending the genocide, which led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Hutus to neighboring Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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