Alleged Moneyman Behind Rwanda’s Genocide Faces Justice
So should those who helped him hide for a quarter century.
But who helped Kabuga hide?
Photographer: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty Images
A French court will decide today whether Felicien Kabuga, one of Africa’s most wanted men, should be handed over to a United Nations tribunal where the former businessman is charged with bankrolling the 1994 Rwandan genocide. His lawyers want him tried in France, where Kabuga was arrested last month, 26 years after he fled Rwanda. Many survivors of the genocide would like to see him in a dock in Kigali.
At one level, the location of the trial may be moot. Kabuga, who denies the charges against him, is a frail 84 years old. Since the legal proceedings may take years, he will likely have died long before final sentencing. Families of the 800,000 victims of the genocide may feel that justice, delayed for the better part of three decades in this instance, has effectively been denied.