Rwanda genocide fugitive lived incognito in Paris
Rwanda genocide fugitive lived incognito in Paris
Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga, who is accused of funding militias that massacred about 800,000 people, was arrested on Saturday near Paris after 26 years on the run, the French justice ministry said.
Libby Hogan reports.
Rwanda genocide fugitive lived incognito in Paris
He was an unassuming man who lived in a quiet suburb in Paris.
The 84-year-old never spoke to neighbours and would only venture out of his apartment occasionally.
But on Saturday (May 17) neighbours were shocked to know that the man living next door was actually Rwanda's most-wanted genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga.
Jean-Yves Breneol lived in Kabuga's block.
"From time to time, I would see this man (Felicien Kabuga) going out, maybe once a day, alone or with someone.
He wouldn't say a word, nothing." Kabuga was on the run for 26 years accused of funding one of the world's most infamous massacres.
A UN tribunal says he helped funnel money to militias that slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsis and their moderate Hutu allies.
Kabuga was a Hutu businessman, controlling many tea and coffee plantations and factories and part-owner of the infamous Radio Television Milles Collines in Rwanda.
Their anti-Tutsi broadcasts told Hutus where Tutsis were to be found and offered advice on how to kill them.
The tribunal also says he imported huge numbers of machetes, a grim trademark of the 1994 genocide.
Kabuga had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and was living under a false identity.
Neighbor Jean-Guillaume says he had no idea a man accused of genocide lived next door.
"For sure, what happened was shocking.
He was an old man, very old, he was sick.
And when we look back at what could have happened 25 years ago, of what he was accused of, certainly it's very shocking." Kabuga's arrest paves the way for him to appear before the Paris Appeal Court and later given over to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda based in Tanzania and the Hague.