After 26-year-long manhunt, Rwanda genocide ‘financier’ goes to UN tribunal at The Hague

Felicien Kabuga allegedly imported hundreds of thousands of machetes into Rwanda in the run up to the 1994 genocide

 

A handout photo released on May 16, 2020, by the UN shows Felicien Kabuga, one of the last key fugitives wanted over the 1994 Rwandan genocide [AFP]

The man known as the ‘Eichmann of Africa’ faces his first pre-trial hearing in The Hague on Wednesday.

Felicien Kabuga used to be one of the richest men in Rwanda and is the suspected financier and mastermind of the country’s 1994 genocide. 

In May, French police tracked him down to a flat in the commune of Asnières-Sur-Seine outside Paris, ending a transcontinental 26-year-long manhunt for Africa’s most wanted man. 

Mr Kabuga is accused of several crimes against humanity - including genocide, complicity in genocide and incitement to commit genocide - for having helped create a militia group and using his radio company, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Colline (RTLMC), to incite people to murder. He denies the charges. 

He allegedly imported hundreds of thousands of machetes into Rwanda that were doled out to the Interahamwe, an extremist Hutu militia accused of overseeing much of the slaughter. As the genocide began, Interahamwe militiamen were transported from killing site to killing site in RTLMC's vehicles and were even given uniforms, investigators say.

Mr Kabuga's radio provided the soundtrack of the genocide, urging Hutus to hunt down and kill the Tutsi “inyenzi”, or cockroaches.

“The graves are only half full,” the station’s presenters were heard to warn. “We must complete the task.”

After spending most of this year in a French prison, Mr Kabuga was transferred to a detention centre in The Hague.

A French court initially ruled that he could be turned over to United Nations custody in Arusha, Tanzania, where the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda took place. However, Mr Kabuga’s lawyers successfully argued that he should stay in a detention centre in The Hague for now because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

His lawyers will be asked to update the tribunal on Wednesday on how their preparations for trial were proceeding, said Tanzanian Judge Iain Bonomy. Mr Kabuga could appear in a courtroom in The Hague or via videolink from his detention centre, he added.

Mr Kabuga — aged 84 according to the arrest warrant, even though he says he is 87 — has been on the run using false passports and identities for almost three decades. For some time, he was protected by powerful individuals in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

A Kenyan journalist, William Gichuki, tried to help the FBI track him down and came close to finding him in 2003. But Mr Gichuki was shot dead and his body was disfigured by acid before the FBI could act on the information.  

The UN says 800,000 people - mostly ethnic Tutsis - died during the Rwanda genocide, which lasted 100 days starting in April 1994.

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