No closure for genocide victims as Kabuga dies before trial ends

Félicien Kabuga during his Initial Appearance at The Hague, November 11, 2020. [AFP]

The death of Félicien Kabuga last Saturday, the man long described as a key financier of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which close to a million people were killed, has reopened wounds for victims’ families, leaving them torn between unresolved grief and a sense of denied justice. He died while hospitalised in The Hague, the Netherlands, at the age of 91.

The announcement of his death by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) is unlikely to bring closure to victims’ families and instead marks a painful interruption to efforts to fully document his alleged role in the genocide. With his death, questions about the extent of the networks he built and the machinery of hate he was said to have financed may now remain partially unanswered.

An arrest warrant for Kabuga was issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on April 29, 2013. He was arrested in France on May 16, 2020 and transferred to the Hague branch of the Mechanism on October 26, 2020. His trial commenced on September 29, 2022, according to the IRMCT.

At the time of his death, Kabuga was awaiting a decision on provisional release to a State willing to accept him. Even before his death, concerns had emerged over his fitness to stand trial.

“Following the Appeals Chamber decision of August 7, 2023, the Trial Chamber issued a decision indefinitely staying the proceedings as Kabuga was considered unfit to stand trial, and ordered that he remain in detention at the United Nations Detention Unit, pending the resolution of the issue of his provisional release,” the statement read.

Kabuga became a wanted man following the death of then-Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana in a plane crash in April 1994. In the aftermath, Hutu militias launched what became a 100-day massacre, resulting in the deaths of between 800,000 and one million people, a killing rate described by the court as “four times greater than at the height of the Nazi Holocaust”.

He was accused of using wealth amassed in the 1970s and 1980s through tea trading to import machetes and other weapons from neighbouring countries, and of financing propaganda against Tutsi and moderate Hutu communities through Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM).

Court documents state: “The indictment alleges that Kabuga is liable for these crimes based on his participation in a joint criminal enterprise with others involved in RTLM’s operations, as well as aiding and abetting the criminal conduct of RTLM journalists, Interahamwe, and others whose crimes were assisted or instigated by RTLM broadcasts.” Before his arrest in Paris in 2020, Kabuga was likened to notorious fugitives who evaded capture for years.

His disappearance and long evasion of justice drew comparisons with figures such as Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’, who evaded capture for more than two decades before being arrested in Sudan in 1994.

Following the genocide, Kabuga is believed to have fled Rwanda, first to Switzerland and later, after pressure from authorities, to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite his movements across borders, he remained at large for decades.

Allegations also placed him in Kenya, where he was said to have had business links and possible political connections, claims that have long drawn scrutiny from international investigators and human rights groups. He became a fugitive whose reported sightings triggered global searches that repeatedly went cold.

The United States had placed a US$5 million bounty on his head, but efforts to apprehend him proved difficult. Kenyan security agencies were among those accused of failing to act decisively, with some officers allegedly suspected of being on his payroll, claims which Kenya has consistently denied.

A Kenyan journalist who reportedly attempted to expose Kabuga’s whereabouts was later found dead in his home under suspicious circumstances, with a charcoal stove nearby suggesting carbon monoxide poisoning. Kenya has continued to deny allegations of harbouring Kabuga, despite reports suggesting he had extensive business interests in the country.

The fact that Kabuga’s family has repeatedly sought legal redress in Kenya and at The Hague to unfreeze his assets has been cited as evidence of his financial footprint in the country. In April 2023, Anti-Corruption Court Judge Esther Maina upheld an earlier ruling by Justice Muga Apondi, who had declined a request by Kabuga’s family to unfreeze assets in Kilimani, Nairobi, including real estate known as Spanish Villas.

“During the period when Kabuga was a fugitive, the ICTR Prosecution froze the applicants’ bank accounts and assets. The applicants challenged the freezing of their assets in the courts of France, Belgium and Kenya,” said Peter Robinson, counsel for the family, in court filings.

However, those attempts were unsuccessful, as courts ruled that governments were obliged to cooperate with the ICTR and maintain the freeze while Kabuga remained a fugitive.

With Kabuga’s death, and many other key genocide suspects now elderly, there are growing fears that justice may remain incomplete, leaving crucial questions unresolved.