Felicia Caboga, a member of the secret group who conceived and brought about the most serious massacre in the second half of the 20th century, was caught in France after 26 years on the run

• Felician Kaboga // Photo: Reuters

On the way to historical justice? Felicia Caboga, the most wanted man in Rwanda and one of the most senior planners of the Rwandan genocide, in which nearly a million people were murdered in 1994, was arrested by the French police.

Kaboga, 84, was caught after living under a false identity in a suburb of the French capital Paris for nearly two decades. Kaboga is expected to face a tribunal in France and then move to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. 

Kaboga was arrested in a police raid at dawn on his residence in Asien Sur Seine west of Paris in an operation that, according to state law, included cooperation between the United States, Belgium, Rwanda and France. 

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Felician Kaboga was among Rwanda's wealthiest residents, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune in the country's largest tea industry and banking sector. Kaboga owned the RTLM radio station and the Kangora newspaper, two media that circulated venomous and murderous propaganda in the period leading up to the genocide and used the killers squad to locate their victims, members of the Tutsi minority group and their supporters among the majority group, the Hutu.

Kaboga was particularly close to the president in the pre-genocide period, Juvenile the Bairnima, and two of his daughters married the president's sons. Kaboga was also a member of Akazo, or the Kitchenette, a group of president's supporters whose members are considered the genocide architects. 

Kaboga used his money to import hundreds of thousands of Chata risks to Rwandan, the knives used by the popular militias that carried out the actual killings. Kaboga also funded the establishment of the Intahamwa militia, the country's largest militia of the Hutu extremists who carried out most of the massacres. 

After the defeat of the Hutu extremists in the civil war that took place during the genocide, Kaboga fled to Switzerland and then to the Congo and then Kenya, from where he apparently fled to France. Against Kaboga are indictments in the Criminal Court in The Hague of incitement to genocide, planning and participating in genocide and extermination and crimes against humanity.