The Belgian police have arrested three people on suspicion of involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the federal prosecutor reports Saturday. It concerns a Belgian and two Rwandans.
The suspects were arrested in Brussels and Hainaut. Two of them are in detention, the third suspect is under house arrest. The arrests took place in the context of several investigations by the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office.
One of the suspects is said to be Pierre Basabose – a former confidant of Juvénal Habyarimana, the then president of Rwanda.
The Rwandan genocide took place after the plane carrying President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was downed on April 6, 1994. The president was killed. Between 500,000 and one million members of the Rwandan Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu militias in the following months.
Nine people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda have already been convicted. One man was sentenced to 25 years in prison last May for multiple murders and attempted murders that were considered war crimes and part of genocide.
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