The alleged financier of the Rwandan genocide, Felicien Kabuga, is on trial in The Hague on Thursday, one of the last prime suspects in the 1994 ethnic slaughter that shocked the world.
The 87-year-old Kabuga, once one of Rwanda’s richest men, is accused of creating hate media, calling on ethnic Hutu to “kill Tutsi cockroaches” and supplying machetes to death squads.
After decades on the run, Kabuga was arrested in France in 2020 and brought before a UN court to face charges of killing 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The trial begins at 8:00 GMT before the UN’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which is pursuing cases left over from a war crimes tribunal for Rwanda.
Prosecutors and defense will make their opening statements Thursday and Friday, with evidence scheduled to begin Oct. 5.
Kabuga’s lawyers pleaded not guilty in a first appearance in 2020 and have repeatedly tried but failed to have the trial dropped on health grounds.
A frail Kabuga appeared before judges in a wheelchair in August, but it was not known if he will appear in court on Thursday, as judges said he could attend the hearings via video link.
More than a quarter century after the genocide that devastated Rwanda, the process in the small Central African nation is being closely watched, including in Kabuga’s home village of Nyange.
“We look forward to his trial. It’s been a long time coming,” Anastase Kamizinkunze, the district head of IBUKA, the umbrella organization for genocide survivors, told AFP.
According to the United Nations, 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in a 100-day rampage in 1994.
– ‘Distributed Machetes’ –
Kabuga, an ally of Rwanda’s then-ruling party, allegedly helped found the Hutu militia group Interahamwe and Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), whose programs incited people to murder.
The radio station also identified the hiding places of Tutsis where they were later killed, prosecutors said in the indictment.
Kabuga is also said to have “distributed” machetes to genocidal groups and ordered them to kill Tutsis.
More than 50 witnesses are expected to appear for prosecutors, who said it took them about 40 hours to complete their case.
After fleeing Rwanda, Kabuga spent more than 20 years evading an arrest warrant issued in 1997 by using a series of false passports.
According to investigators, he was helped by a network of former Rwandan allies to evade justice in several countries before finally being arrested in a small apartment in Paris.
His lawyers argued he should be tried in France on health grounds, but France’s top court ruled he should be placed in UN custody.
With 62 people convicted so far, Kabuga is one of the last prime suspects in the Rwandan genocide to be brought to justice.
Others, including the man seen as the architect of the genocide, Augustin Bizimana, and former commander of the Presidential Guard, Protais Mpiranya, have both died.
Victims have called for a speedy trial for Kabuga, saying, “If he dies before he faces justice, he would have died presumed innocent.”
But in Nyange, many residents still speak fondly of the man who rose from a humble farming background to lead an empire of coffee, tea and real estate.
“He paid us well,” said Alphonsine Musengimana, 35, who worked on the Kabuga tea plantations as a child.
