Rwandan genocide 'kingpin' used 28 aliases

Wealthy Rwandan businessman Félicien Kabuga outwitted genocide prosecutors for more than 25 years by using 28 aliases and powerful connections across two continents. The 84-year-old had been on the run for so long that the international tribunal set up to bring to justice those responsible for the 1994 genocide had ceased to work. However, he was eventually hunted down in Paris last weekend thanks to an investigation relaunched by Serge Brammertz, a UN war crimes prosecutor. ‘We knew already a year ago that he was very likely to be in the UK, France or in Belgium and we concluded only two months ago that he was in France,’ the chief prosecutor for the UN's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals' told the BBC. He said one of the major reasons he was able to be on the run for so long was ‘the complicity of his children’. As previously reported in Legalbrief Today, two of his daughters were married to sons of Rwanda's former President Juvénal Habyarimana, whose death when his plane was shot down on 6 April 1994 triggered the genocide. Eric Emeraux, who heads a special French police unit fighting war crimes, said the coronavirus pandemic also helped as the lockdown in France paralysed many operations across parts of Europe, freeing up time to focus on the man accused of being the main financier of the genocide.

Kabuga last week appeared before a public prosecutor in Paris pending his planned extradition to The Hague. A report on the TRT World site notes that the prosecution is setting out the legal process before the case is passed to investigative judges who will decide whether to transfer Kabuga to a UN court handling alleged crimes against humanity. At least one French-based genocide victim support group said it was considering legal action to establish how Kabuga was able to go underground in France and what help he had received. ‘He was our Klaus Barbie, our (Adolf) Eichmann,’ said Etienne Nsanzimana, president of support group Ibuka France, in reference to the prominent Nazi war criminals.

In 1997, Kabuga was indicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on seven counts of genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, persecution and extermination. The tribunal formally closed in 2015 and its duties have since been taken over by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which also deals with cases left over from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Meanwhile, former Rwandan Defence Minister Augustin Bizimana, one of the top suspects wanted over the country's 1994 genocide, has died, the UN said Friday. It said ‘based on the conclusive identification of Bizimana's remains in a grave site in Pointe Noire in the Republic of the Congo,’ it appeared he died in 2000. Legalbrief reports that Bizimana held the position of Minister of Defence under Habyarimana. Following Habyarimana's assassination, he served in the interim government until mid-July 1994. Bizimana had been indicted by the tribunal in 1998. A TimesLIVE report notes that the 13 counts included genocide, murder, rape and torture, including the murder of former Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian UN peacekeepers. The announcement comes a week after the Paris arrest of Felicien Kabunga, one of the last alleged fugitives from the genocide. The UN tribunal for Rwanda, headquartered in Arusha, Tanzania, formally closed in 2015 and its duties were transferred to the MICT. It said the ‘confirmation of death’ was the result of an exhaustive probe by the prosecutor's office ‘combining advanced technology with extensive field operations, and involved exceptional cooperation with partner authorities in Rwanda, the Congo, the Netherlands and the US.’ In France, the head of an association of genocide victims said the news that Bizimana had died without being brought to book was a 'great disappointment'. 'The survivors' greatest wish is for the killers to face justice,' said Alain Gauthier, founder of an association called the Collective of Civilian Parties for Rwanda, which campaigns for the prosecution of genocide suspects.