Credit: U.S. Department of State /  Rwanda Genocide fugitive,  Félicien Kabuga, was arrested May 16, 2020 near Paris. 

By Gary Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

A French appeals court ruled Wednesday that alleged Rwandan genocide financier Félicien Kabuga should be transferred to a UN tribunal in Tanzania to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.  Last June, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that the 86-year-old’s health   is not an obstacle to extradition to  the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) , which took over any ongoing cases after the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was wound down in 2015.  French police arrested Kabuga  May 16  in a Paris suburb. The 86-year-old was one of the most wanted suspects in the Rwandan holocaust. Kabuga  was living under a false identity in a flat in Asnières-Sur-Seine, near the centre of Paris, had been pursued by authorities for 25 years before his detention, according to the French justice ministry. The U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda indicted Kabuga  in 1997 for genocide, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.  According to the U.S. State Department, Kabuga is alleged to be the main financier and backer of the political and militia groups that committed the Rwandan.  Kabuga was co-founder and chairman of the Fonds de Défense Nationale (FDN).  Through this organization, Kabuga is alleged to have provided funds to the interim Rwandan government for the purposes of executing the 1994 genocide.  Lawyers for  Kabuga, who is currently detained at the Maison d’arrêt de la Santé in Paris, had requested that the proceedings continue in France.  Kabuga’s lawyers appealed the Paris Court’s decision in the form of a cassation appeal that was ruled upon today in France’s top appeals court.  In a statement,  France’s Cour de Cassation said it “considers that the investigating chamber was able to consider correctly that there was no legal or medical obstacle to the execution of the arrest warrant transfer order to the United Nations detention centre in Arusha, Tanzania.”

Genocide survivors, ideally want Kabuga to be prosecuted in Rwanda.

As Many as 800,000 People, Mostly of the Tutsi minority, Were Murdered In The  Genocide 

In October 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in Tanzania, was established as an extension of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, the first international tribunal since the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-46, and the first with the mandate to prosecute the crime of genocide.

In 1995, the ICTR began indicting and trying a number of higher-ranking people for their role in the Rwandan genocide; the process was made more difficult because the whereabouts of many suspects were unknown.

The trials continued over the next decade and a half, including the 2008 conviction of three former senior Rwandan defense and military officials for organizing the genocide.

Human skulls at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial  /  During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority.