Félicien Kabuga, a suspect in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has died in custody, a United Nations court said Saturday. He was 93 years old.
The court, the United Nations International Remedial Mechanism Criminal Tribunal (IRMCT), said it had ordered an investigation into the circumstances of his death.
Who was Felician Kabuga?
Kabuga was once one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.
He was accused of encouraging and funding massacres between April and June 1994, in which Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus in 100 days.
The genocide began after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over the capital Kigali on April 6, 1994, killing the Hutu leader.
Kabuga was a close ally of Habyarimana and his political party.
absconding for decades
Kabuga avoided arrest for more than two decades after the genocide by using a false passport and with the assistance of a network of former Rwandan associates.
An arrest warrant was issued for him in 2013, and a reward of $5 million (€4.3 million) was announced.
He was eventually arrested in France in 2020 and extradited to The Hague.
His trial begins in 2022. Kabuga was charged with genocide, incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, as well as persecution, extermination and murder.
Prosecutors accused Kabuga, once one of Rwanda’s richest men, of being the driving force behind Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which urged ethnic Hutus to kill Tutsis.
He pleaded not guilty.
Why was he deemed unfit to stand trial?
However, Kabuga was later declared unfit to stand trial due to dementia.
The verdict angered many survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, who felt that his crimes deserved the maximum punishment.
Kabuga was deemed too ill to return to Rwanda.
With no country willing to accept him, Kabuga remained at the United Nations Center in The Hague.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico