• Kabuga had been pursued by international justice for 25 years, the ministry said in a statement.
• Kabuga is Rwanda’s most-wanted man and the United States has put a $5 million bounty on his head.
Image: US STATE DEPARTMENT
Rwandan genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga was arrested on Saturday in the Paris region, the French Justice Ministry said.
Kabuga, 84, who was living under a false identity in a flat in Asnieres-Sur-Seine, near Paris, had been pursued by international justice for 25 years, the ministry said in a statement.
French gendarmes arrested him at 0530 GMT on Saturday, the ministry said.
Kabuga is Rwanda’s most-wanted man and the United States has put a $5 million bounty on his head.
A Hutu businessman, he is accused of funding the militias that massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus over a span of 100 days in 1994.
The arrest paves the way for bringing the fugitive in front of the Paris Appeal Court and later to the International Court in The Hague.
Two other Rwandan genocide suspects, Augustin Bizimana and Protais Mpiranya, are still being pursued by international justice.
“The arrest of Félicien Kabuga today is a reminder that those responsible for genocide can be brought to account, even twenty-six years after their crimes,” IRMCT’s Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in a statement immediately after the arrest.
He added the arrest was the result of cooperation between law enforcement agencies in France and other countries including the US, Rwanda, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and others.
Kabuga was responsible for making purchases of large quantities of machetes, hoes, and other agricultural implements in the knowledge that they would be used as weapons of murder during the genocide, according to a UN news website.
Rwanda’s justice minister, Johnston Busingye, told Reuters that a statement on the arrest would be issued but did not specify when.
Kabuga, who controlled many of Rwanda’s tea and coffee plantations and factories, was part-owner of Radio Television Milles Collines which ran a radio station that fanned ethnic hatred against Rwanda’s Tutsis, told Hutus where Tutsis were to be found and offered advice on how to kill them.
He is accused of being a main financier of the genocide, paying for the militias that carried out the massacres.
His arrest “is an important step towards justice for hundreds of thousands of genocide victims...survivors can hope to see justice and suspects cannot expect to escape accountability,” Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kampala; George Obulutsa in Nairobi; Editing by Frances Kerry and Ros Russell