One of the last fugitives charged over the Rwanda genocide to face justice, Félicien Kabuga refused to appear in court at the start of his trial on Thursday. “Twenty-eight years after the events, this trial is about holding Felicien Kabuga to account for his substantial and intentional role in that genocide,” prosecutor Rashid S Rashid told the UN tribunal.
A frail 87-year-old Rwandan accused of encouraging and bankrolling the country’s 1994 genocide goes on trial at a United Nations tribunal Thursday, nearly three decades after the 100-day massacre left 800,000 dead.
Félicien Kabuga is one of the last fugitives charged over the genocide to face justice, and the start of his trial marks a key day of reckoning for Rwandans who survived the killings or whose families were murdered.
Naphtal Ahishakiye, the executive secretary of a genocide survivors’ group known as Ibuka, said it’s never too late for justice to be delivered.
“Even with money and protection, one cannot escape a genocide crime,” Ahishakiye said in Rwanda ahead of Thursday’s trial at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague.
The mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority was triggered on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down and crashed in the capital Kigali, killing the leader who, like the majority of Rwandans, was an ethnic Hutu. Kabuga’s daughter married Habyarimana’s son.
The Tutsi minority was blamed for downing the plane. Bands of Hutu extremists began slaughtering Tutsis and their perceived supporters, with help from the army, police, and militias.
Kabuga’s 15-page indictment alleges that, as a wealthy businessman with close links to the Hutu political elite, he incited genocide through the broadcaster he helped establish and fund, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). He’s also accused of having paid for weapons, including machetes, used by militias to slaughter Tutsis and their perceived supporters.
The indictment says Kabuga and others at the radio station “operated RTLM in a manner that furthered hatred and violence against Tutsi and others perceived as ‘accomplices’ or ‘allies’ … and agreed to disseminate an anti-Tutsi message with the goal to eliminate the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.”
In some cases, the broadcaster provided locations of Tutsis so they could be hunted down and killed, according to the indictment.
“RTLM broadcasts glorified this violence, celebrating killings, praising killers and encouraging perpetrators to continue the violence at roadblocks and other locations,” the indictment says.
It also accuses him of arming and supporting Hutu extremist “Interahamwe” militias, including one unit known as “Kabuga’s Interahamwe.” (France24)