Félicien Kabuga, one of the main accused of the Rwandan genocide still on the run, was arrested near Paris according to the French public prosecutor’s office.
The Rwandan businessman Félicien Kabuga, considered as the financier of the 1994 genocide and actively sought by international justice for twenty-five years, was arrested on Saturday morning in the Paris region, announced the Paris public prosecutor’s office in a press release.
“84 years old, he lived under a false identity in an apartment in Asnières-sur-Seine, thanks to a well-established mechanics and with the complicity of his children“, said the prosecution.
Félicien Kabuga should be handed over to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, to be tried for crimes against humanity, he said after a judicial procedure before the Paris Court of Appeal. added.
His arrest shows that “those responsible for genocide may be held accountable even twenty-six years after their crimes“, said the prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Courts (MTPI), Serge Brammertz, in a press release.
Who is Félicien Kabuga?
Mr. Kabuga, who resided in Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) under a false identity, is notably accused of having created the Interahamwe militias, main armed arms of the 1994 genocide which killed 800,000 people according to the UN . He is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Mechanism, the structure responsible for completing the work of the international tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR).
In March 2019, Le Monde painted a portrait of Félicien Kabuga by describing it as “one of the most wanted fugitives on the planet. ”
In the list of data sheets distributed by Interpol, its “red notice” presents him as having been born on July 19, 1935. Rather small (1.67 m), short hair, brown eyes, he speaks French, German, English and, of course, his mother tongue, Kinyarwanda. His supposed crimes, according to this same sheet? “Genocide, complicity, incitement and conspiracy to commit genocide, crime against humanity”.
Félicien Kabuga is the last “big fish” in the Tutsi genocide that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) had failed to arrest: he has been escaping international justice for twenty-five years and the Americans, ready to offer 5 million dollars (4.4 million euros) for any information likely to lead to its capture.
Links with the President Habyarimana
In 1994, Félicien Kabuga, a daughter of whom was married to a son of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, belonged to the latter’s inner circle, whose assassination on April 6, 1994, would trigger genocide.
He chaired the Radio Television Libre des mille-Collines (RTLM), which broadcast calls for the murder of Tutsi, and the National Defense Fund (FDN), which collected “funds“intended to finance the logistics and the weapons of the Hutu Interahamwe militiamen, according to the indictment of the ICTR.
He is also accused of having “ordered the employees of his company (…) to import an impressive number of machetes to Rwanda in 1993“, before having them distributed in April 1994 to the Interahamwe.
Refugee in Switzerland in July 1994 before being expelled, Félicien Kabuga then temporarily joined Kinshasa. He was reported in July 1997 in Nairobi, where he escaped an operation to arrest him, then another in 2003, according to the specialized NGO TRIAL.
He must now be quickly presented to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office for his imprisonment and then to the Paris public prosecutor’s office in the coming days.
An extradition procedure will follow before the investigative chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, which will decide to hand it over to the International Mechanism in The Hague for trial.
–
