On Wednesday, the Paris Court of Appeals decided to transfer Felicien Kabuga to Arusha, Tanzania for trial over his role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Kabuga will be handed over to the International Mechanism, a United Nations body responsible for the trial of Rwandans accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the civil war in Rwanda.
Kabuga was arrested in Asnieres-sur-Seine outside of Paris on 16 May in the Hautes-de-Seine department. A 26-year-old refugee who had developed a false identity on the street, the 84-year-old is known as the Rwandan genocide financier. The Mechanism issued an arrest warrant in his name, with a reward of $5 million.
During the spring and summer of 1994, the Rwandan government’s mass slaughter of rebel Tutsi and Hutu forces, known as the Rwandan genocide, spawned a civil war that killed between 500,000 and 1 million.
In 1997, Kabuga was indicted on seven separate counts by a tribunal, one of which was genocide.
The ICTR, which assumed the responsibilities of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda when it closed in 2015, is based in The Hague but has a branch in Arusha.
In a letter dated June 2 Laurent Bayon, one of Kabuga ‘s lawyers, had asked the Mechanism’s prosecutors to excuse themselves from the case and leave it to French jurisdiction. The accused’s lawyers will now appeal to the Court of Cassation, and the judges have two months to uphold.
Kabuga would have to be transferred to Arusha for trial within 30 days.
If Kabuga’s travel is prohibited by the coronavirus pandemic, then he may be tried in The Hague , The Netherlands.
Kabuga had expressed his preference in France for the trial. His lawyers claimed that the ill health and advanced age of their client would have prevented his being moved to another country.
