RWANDA - Felicien Kabuga, 84, is a Rwandan businessman, who made the bulk of his fortune in the 1970s in the tea trade. He is also the founder and primary funder of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) and stands accused of using twenty different aliases to evade capture. After evading apprehension for 28-years, he was finally arrested by French police on 16 May 2020, in a suburb of Paris.

Ntarama Genocide Memorial, Ntarama, Rwanda, Photo by Bradford Duplisea

Kabuga was the richest man in Rwanda before the 1994 genocide when the Hutus slaughtered approximately 800,000 Tutsis between July and April of that year. RTLM was a leading news outlet for Rwanda, but a significant propaganda arm for the Hutu militia, Interahamwe. Daily programming included anti-Tutsi content, songs, and speeches, including the broadcast of the names of people who were killed earlier in the day.

Indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1997, Kabuga evaded capture by frequently moving between several East African countries, including Kenya, where it is believed that the government harbored him as a fugitive for many years. During this time, he continued to do business in the country, held a Kenyan passport, and investigators charge that Kenyan government officials actively aided and abetted the fugitive. Kenya has repeatedly denied these allegations.

Efforts to locate Kabuga and bring him to justice were abandoned when the Tribunal closed in 2015. However, Serge Brammertz, a United Nations’ war crimes prosecutor, leading the division responsible for adjudicating outstanding war crimes from Uganda, ordered the search restarted last year after learning that Kabuga may be hiding in Europe. Authorities located Kabuga in his French apartment based on information obtained by surveilling his children.

The diplomatic relationship between France and Rwanda – a former French colony, has been extremely complicated since the days of the genocide. Rwandans accuse the French of complicity in the genocide since the French government was an ally of Hutu leader, Juvenal Habyarimana, (whose death was the final catalyst for the genocide), before the massacres.

Rwanda charges that the French initially supplied arms to militias, and UN peacekeepers from France often helped known killers escape capture and prosecution. Twenty-six years after the genocide, archived records about Rwanda and the genocide are still classified in France, despite numerous calls for the documents to be made public. Rwandans also accuse the French of harboring génocidaires, including Kabuga, since 1994. Six charged génocidaires by the Tribunal remain fugitives who are possibly being harbored by France.

Kabuga has denied alleged involvement in the genocide during a bail hearing in a French court at the end of May. On 3 June 2020, a French court ruled that he be extradited to Tanzania, the home of the UN Tribunal. His lawyers argue that Kabuga will not receive a fair trial at the Tribunal, especially one held in East Africa. Rwandans prefer that he be tried in his home country for war crimes, but there is no extradition treaty between Rwanda and France at this time. Kabuga’s legal team will appeal the decision to France’s highest court, which they hope will be successful due to their assertion that his ailing health makes him unable to travel.