RWANDAN GENOCIDE: Suspect, Kabuga, rejects transfer to UN tribunal

The suspected financier of the Rwandan genocide, Felicien Kabuga, has kicked against the transfer of his case from France to a UN tribunal based in Tanzania, his lawyers said in a statement.

MyNigeria reported that Kabuga was arrested on Saturday near Paris after 26 years on the run.

He was accused of financing the Rwandan Genocide that led to the killing of about 800,000 people, during the clash between Rwanda’s two main ethnic groups, the Hutus and Tutsis, who have historically had an antagonistic relationship fought a civil war in the early 1990s.

Kabuga, who is a Hutu businessman, is accused of funding the militias that massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and their moderate Hutu allies over a span of 100 days in 1994.

The suspect, who was indicted in 1997 on seven criminal counts including genocide and incitement to commit genocide, said that he has the right to be presumed innocent.

The 84-year-old is due to appear before judges at a Paris court who will decide whether to hand him to the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.

The lawyers said they would seek a postponement at the opening of the hearing.

France’s public prosecutor’s office comment that Kabuga was one of the leading perpetrators of the slaughter before any trial had begun was unacceptable, the lawyers said.

Kabuga is Rwanda’s most wanted man and had a 5 dollars million bounty on his head.

Under French law, an eight-day postponement to hearing will be automatically granted.

(Reuters/NAN)