French police has arrested Rwanda’s most-wanted genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga, on Saturday.
In a statement on Saturday morning, France Justice Ministry said Kabuga, 84, who was living under a false identity in a flat in Asnieres-Sur-Seine, near Paris, had been pursued by judicial authorities for 25 years.
The United States had placed a $5 million bounty on him over crimes allegedly committed during the 1994 genocide.
The businessman, once one of Rwanda’s richest men, was accused of financing the notorious Interahamwe militias that massacred about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus over a span of 100 days in 1994 genocide.
The statement from the ministry said Kabuga had been hiding with the complicity of his children.
He also helped create the equally notorious Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines that incited people to carry out murder using its broadcast platform.
It added that Kabuga had spent time in Germany, Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Switzerland.
A top UN prosecutor welcomed the arrest, saying it showed that other suspects would be brought to justice for crimes in the 1994 genocide.
Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague said;
The arrest of Felicien Kabuga today is a reminder that those responsible for genocide can be brought to account, even 26 years after their crimes.
His son-in-law was arrested in Germany in 2007.
Kabuga was indicted by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1997 on seven-counts of genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, persecution, and extermination.
All in relation to crimes committed during 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Kabuga is expected to stand trial in front of the Paris Appeal Court and later to the International Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
