Will the trial of Félicien Kabuga at the International Criminal Court (ICC) go to an end? According to the conclusions of experts mandated by the Mechanism of the United Nations Organization responsible for trying him since September 2022 in The Hague, the man, 89 years old according to him, is suffering from “dementia” of vascular origin and would be “unfit” to appear. According to a professor who examined him, Félicien Kabuga would suffer from memory problems, reasoning, communication and a deterioration of his condition. The ICC will have to decide on March 29 whether or not to drop the charges against this man accused of being “the financier of the genocide of the Tutsi”.
International justice accuses him of having notably delivered machetes by the thousands and directed the Radio-Television libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which broadcast messages encouraging the extermination of the Tutsi. “This trial comes almost three decades after the fact [the crimes of genocide are imprescriptible], deplores Alain Gauthier, president of the Collective for Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR). It’s much too late. For the victims, it is appalling. »
“A hundred people linked, directly or indirectly to the genocide of the Tutsi, currently live on French territory, further estimates Alain Gauthier. Justice is too slow. Some complaints were filed in the early 2000s and trials are still pending. Witnesses disappear, defendants die or become unfit to appear like Félicien Kabuga. It’s scandalous. You have to be mad to fight and still believe it. »
Félicien Kabuga was arrested in May 2020 in Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) by the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity (OCLCH) after a run of more than ‘a quarter century. Under more than twenty-five different identities, he is said to have stayed in Switzerland, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya and Germany before arriving in France, where he lived with a passport issued by the DRC. According to the revelations of Le Monde, he had been living in the Paris region for nearly twelve years at the time of his arrest.
In France, the first trial took place in 2014, twenty years after the genocide. Three men have so far been definitively sentenced: former captain of the presidential guard Pascal Simbikangwa to twenty-five years in prison and two former mayors, Octavien Ngenzi and Tito Barahira, to life imprisonment. Claude Muhayimana, a former hotel driver accused of having transported Interahamwe militiamen, appealed against his sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment in December 2021. Finally, in July 2022, Laurent Bucyibaruta, a 78-year-old former prefect, also is appealing his 20-year prison sentence for “complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity”.
Since its creation in 2001, the CPCR has launched thirty-five procedures in France. Among those prosecuted, some are accused of having played a key role in the genocide of the Tutsi, the toll of which amounted to one million deaths in the spring of 1994.
Agathe Habyarimana
The widow of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, who died on April 6, 1994 in the attack on his plane over Kigali airport, is often presented as one of the leaders of “Akazu”, the “little house” in Kinyarwanda. According to several experts, it is this hard core of Hutu extremists who planned and orchestrated the genocide.
Following a complaint filed in May 2007 by the SCRC, Agathe Habyarimana, née Kanziga, was prosecuted for “complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity”. Will his trial take place? In February 2022, the investigating judge in charge of the investigation put an end to her investigations, a prelude to a very probable dismissal since no indictment was pronounced against the former first lady. Rwandan.
In November 2020, Agathe Habyarimana was also heard as part of the investigation targeting Paul Barril, a former Elysée policeman who converted to the security of African heads of state in the 1990s. This judicial investigation originated in complaints filed in 2013 by the association Survie and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). The NGOs notably accuse the ex-mercenary of having signed in May 1994, at the height of the mass massacres, an arms contract worth 3 million dollars (2.78 million euros) with the then interim Rwandan government. that an arms embargo had been imposed by the UN. Before and during the genocide, Paul Barril was in contact with the Habyarimana family, in particular with two of his sons, married to two daughters of Félicien Kabuga.
Agathe Habyrimana was exfiltrated from Rwanda aboard the first plane of Operation “Amaryllis”, set up by France between April 8 and 14, 1994 to evacuate its nationals. She was then received in Paris “according to the directives” of François Mitterrand, as revealed by the Duclert report, established on the basis of state archives to know the role of France in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994. Receiving a month later a delegation from Doctors Without Borders (MSF), President Mitterrand would have dropped: “She has the devil in her body. If she could, she would continue to launch calls for massacre from French radio stations. After a few months in Paris, Agathe Habyarimana returned to Africa (DRC and Kenya) before returning to France in 1998. Aged 80 today, she lives in Essonne without any legal status since France refused in 2011 to extradite him to Rwanda, without ever granting him asylum.
Aloys Ntiwiragaba
When the genocide began in April 1994, Aloys Ntiwiragabo was at the head of military intelligence, the “G2”. The former colonel of the gendarmerie was the subject of arrest warrants from the ICTR because he allegedly, according to an order of August 1997, “himself gave orders to the soldiers of the Forces of the Rwandan army of exterminate all Tutsi and Hutu accomplices. A refugee in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) after the genocide, Aloys Ntiwiragabo then took part in the creation of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), of which he became major general during the Second Congo War in 1998. This armed group, known for its multiple abuses in the east of the country, is still active and was designated in 2012 “for sanctions” by the UN.
Aloys Ntiwiragabo would have arrived in France in 2006, escaping the various crackdowns of the ICTR. In 2015, the Nantes Administrative Court of Appeal refused to issue him a visa on the grounds that “if it is not established that he [had] personally participated [in the genocide], (…) he does not took no action to stop the killings nor resigned. »
After a long investigation, Mediapart tracked him down in the suburbs of Orléans in July 2020. A month later, a preliminary investigation was opened against him for “crimes against humanity” and Aloys Ntiwiragabo was placed under the status of assisted witness.
In January, Aloys Ntiwiragabo filed a lawsuit for “public insult” against Liberation journalist Maria Malagardis who tweeted after the Mediapart investigation: “An African Nazi in France? Anyone gonna react? “. The journalist was acquitted at first instance by the 17th chamber of the Paris court, the justice finding in particular that her “comment had not exceeded the permissible limits of freedom of expression”. Aloys Ntiwirgabo appealed.
Philippe Manier
Philippe Hategekimana, naturalized French in 2005 under the name of Philippe Manier, will be tried at the Paris Assize Court from May 10 to June 30. The former chief warrant officer of the gendarmerie of Nyanza, in the prefecture of Butare, in the south of Rwanda, is suspected of the murder of Tutsi, including that of a bourgmestre who resisted the execution of the genocide in his commune. According to the judges’ order, Philippe Manier, who disputes the facts, is also suspected of having “ordered the erection of barriers” and of having encouraged “the civilians present to kill the Tutsi”.
Aged 65, the one who was nicknamed “Biguma” in 1994, had left Rwanda after the genocide. He had arrived five years later in France, where he had obtained refugee status under a false identity. Resident in the Rennes region (Ille-et-Vilaine), he had converted to a security guard. He then left France for Yaoundé, Cameroon, where he was arrested in March 2018 and extradited a year later. He was indicted in February 2019.
Sosthenes Munyemana
The complaint filed against Sosthène Munyemana, living in France since September 1994, by Survie and FIDH dates back to October 18, 1995. It was finally twenty-eight years later, from November 13 to December 22, 2023, that his trial took place before the Assize Court of Paris. According to elements of the referral order, the Rwandan doctor is suspected of having “voluntarily supported the interim government by signing a motion of support on April 16, 1994, ten days after the start of the genocide” and contributed to setting up “barriers” and “rounds” during the massacres.
Sosthène Munyemana, who worked in the early 2000s as an emergency doctor in a hospital in Villeneuve-sur-Lot (Lot-et-Garonne), was refused asylum in 2008 because of suspicions weighing on him .
Laurent Bucybaruta
On Tuesday, July 12, 2022, at first instance, the Paris Assize Court sentenced Laurent Bucyibaruta, prefect during the genocide, to twenty years in prison. While the 78-year-old former senior official was acquitted as a perpetrator of genocide, he was found guilty of “complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity”, including the school massacres of Murambi and the parishes of Cyanika and Kaduha, on April 21, 1994. In the whole of his prefecture of Gikongoro, located in the south-west of Rwanda, 125,000 Tutsi were exterminated in the spring of 1994.
Laurent Bucyibaruta’s long legal journey began with a complaint filed in January 2000 by FIDH and Survie. A few weeks later, Laurent Bucyibaruta was arrested and imprisoned in the Health Prison. He was released in December 2000, but was placed under judicial supervision.
In 2007, the ICTR issued an international arrest warrant against him. Laurent Bucyibaruta was then arrested by the judicial police of Reims at his home, in the department of Aube, but, considering that the arrest warrant was not valid, he was released again. In August 2007, the ICTR issued a second arrest warrant before, finally, relinquishing jurisdiction in favor of the French courts, which would conduct their investigations for eleven years. Laurent Bucyibaruta, who was released after three months of detention for health reasons, appealed against his sentence.
Laurent Website
Historical companion of President Juvénal Habyarimana, with whom he took power in July 1973, Laurent Serubuga was Deputy Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces until 1992. A note from the General Directorate of External Security ( DGSE), written in September 1994 and revealed by Mediapart in 2019, presents him, along with Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, as an “extremist of the regime” and one of the “main sponsors of the attack of April 6, 1994”, this which he always disputed.
“This operation would have been premeditated for a long time by Hutu extremists, writes the DGSE about the attack against the plane of July 6, 1994, in which President Juvénal Habyarimana was killed and which served as a trigger to genocide. The assassination of moderate opposition ministers and Tutsi, less than half an hour after the explosion of the presidential Falcon, would confirm the high degree of preparation of this operation. »
Théoneste Bagosora, who died in 2021 after being sentenced to thirty-five years in prison by the ICTR, and Laurent Serubuga “have long considered themselves the legitimate heirs of the regime, writes the DGSE. Their retirement, pronounced in 1992 by President Habyarimana, when they hoped to obtain the rank of general, was the source of heavy resentment. According to the association Survie, which lodged a complaint in 2001, Laurent Serubuga is accused of “having been one of the actors in the planning of the genocide, in particular of having organized ‘civilian self-defense’ “. The investigation has been closed since May 2017.
Eugène Rwamucyo
After a complaint filed by the SCRC in 2007, Eugène Rwamucyo, 63, was returned in October 2020 to the assizes for his participation in the genocide of the Tutsi. The former Rwandan doctor, who claims his innocence, is accused of having participated in meetings of genocidal leaders in Butare, in the south of Rwanda in 1994, and he is also suspected of having directed the burial operations of civilians.
Doctor at the Maubeuge hospital (North), he was suspended in October 2009 and then dismissed when the management of the establishment learned that he was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda. He was arrested six months later in the Paris region when he had just attended the funeral of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, co-founder of RTLM. The date of his trial at the assizes has not been set.
