He is considered the "financier of the Rwandan genocide" and one of the main defendants still wanted by international justice. Félicien Kabuga was arrested Saturday morning near Paris, announced the Paris public prosecutor's office and the gendarmerie in a joint statement.
Aged 84, Félicien Kabuga, who resided in Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) under a false identity, is notably accused of having created the Interahamwe militias, the main armed arms of the 1994 genocide which caused 800,000 dead according to the UN.
President of the radio television free of the thousand hills
He is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Mechanism, the structure responsible for completing the work of the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). According to a statement from the French authorities, he was one of the "most wanted fugitives in the world".
His arrest shows that "those responsible for genocide can be held to account, even twenty-six years after their crimes," said the prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Courts (MTPI), Serge Brammertz, in a statement.
In 1994, Félicien Kabuga - whose daughter was married to a son of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana - belonged to the latter's inner circle, whose assassination on April 6, 1994, would trigger the genocide. He chaired the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille-Collines (RTLM), which broadcast calls for the murder of Tutsis, as well as the National Defense Fund (FDN), which collected "funds" intended to finance the logistics and weapons of Hutu militiamen. Interahamwe, according to the indictment of the ICTR.
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He is also accused of having "ordered the employees of his company [...] to import an impressive number of machetes to Rwanda in 1993", before having them distributed in April 1994 to the Interahamwe.
Soon an extradition?
Refugee in Switzerland in July 1994 before being expelled, Félicien Kabuga then temporarily joined Kinshasa. He was reported in July 1997 in Nairobi, where he escaped an operation to arrest him, then another in 2003, according to the specialized NGO TRIAL.
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He must now be quickly presented to the Nanterre prosecution for his imprisonment and then to the Paris public prosecutor's office in the coming days.
An extradition procedure will follow before the investigative chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, which will decide on its surrender to the International Mechanism in The Hague for trial.