French court agrees to extradite Rwandan genocide

The Rwandan genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga, considered an important lender, must be extradited to an international court. A court in Paris has decided that.

Félicien Kabuga was on the run from justice for 25 years but was arrested in mid-May near Paris.

Kabuga will be extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal Residual Mechanism (IRMCT), the court that continues the work of the former Rwanda Tribunal.

The Belgian Serge Brammertz is the prosecutor.

Kabuga is being charged with genocide and incitement to commit genocide. He is accused of financing and arming ethnic Hutu militias that massacred at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994 within a hundred days.

He denies the allegations. Laurent Bayon, one of the lawyers at Kabuga, subsequently announced that he would go to the French Supreme Court. That has two months to make a decision.

It is still unclear where the trial will take place. Shortly after Kabuga’s arrest, Brammertz championed a lawsuit in Arusha, Tanzania, where the Rwanda Tribunal was also located.

He did add that Kabuga will initially be locked up in The Hague because the corona crisis makes it difficult to fly over the eighties to Tanzania.