Top Rwandan genocide suspect denies any role

Suspected genocide kingpin Félicien Kabuga last week denied playing a role in the Rwandan massacres. 'All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them,' Kabuga told a French court during his bail hearing. As previously reported in Legalbrief Today, the 84-year-old businessman was arrested this month in a suburb in Paris after 26 years on the run. He is accused of backing and arming ethnic Hutu militias who slaughtered about 800 000 people in 1994. Kabuga founded and funded the notorious Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan broadcaster that actively encouraged people to search out and kill anyone who was from the Tutsi ethnic group. In 1997 he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on seven counts, including genocide and crimes against humanity.  BBC News reports that Kabuga's denial in court was his first public comment in more than a quarter of a century. A report on the EWN site notes that his lawyer Laurent Bayon told the court that his client was too elderly and sick to be transferred to The Hague and should be tried in France. 'This court is just saying 'go and get judged elsewhere but not here'. It wants to hand him over him without consideration for his age and health, which could have irreversible consequences,' he said.

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