Felicien Kabuga, alleged financier of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, was declared “unfit” to stand trial on Wednesday by a UN tribunal based in The Hague. There will therefore be no trial against him.
A UN tribunal based in The Hague on Wednesday (June 7) declared that Felicien Kabuga, an alleged financier of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, aged 88, was unfit to stand trial and therefore there would be no trial. .
The court “concluded that Felicien Kabuga is unfit to participate meaningfully in his trial and that it is very unlikely that he will regain his physical form in the future”, the court said in a statement, seeking an alternative “which resembles a trial as much as possible, but without the possibility of conviction”.
The UN judges had already announced the suspension of the trial in March, the time to decide if Mr. Kabuga was in good enough health to remain in the dock.
Arrested in 2020 near Paris after 25 years on the run, Mr. Kabuga is notably accused of having participated in the creation of the Hutu Interahamwe militias, the armed wing of the Hutu genocidal regime.
At the start of Mr. Kabuga’s trial in September 2022, prosecutors accused him of playing a key role in the genocide, including delivering machetes en masse and running the infamous Free Mille Hills Radio Television. (RTLM), which broadcast calls for the murder of Tutsi.
The businessman refused to appear in court or remotely at the start of his trial and later took part via videoconference, in a wheelchair, from the United Nations detention center in The Hague.
He pleaded not guilty to charges that he had been involved with the radical Hutu radio station urging the killing of Tutsi “cockroaches” during the 1994 massacre in which 800,000 people died.
He also denied supplying machetes or otherwise supporting Hutu Interahamwe militias.
With AFP
Source: France 24
