Rwandan man accused of killing in 1994 was sent back to Rwanda from Norway

A man from Rwanda who was arrested in Norway for crimes he reportedly committed during the 1994 genocide in the East African country has been sent back to Rwanda, a spokesman for Rwanda’s prosecutor’s office said on Friday.

In 2022, François Gasana was caught in Norway. He was a student during the genocide in which Hutu extremists killed more than a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

In March, Norwegian police said he would be sent back to Rwanda after a court said the conditions for his return had been met.

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, Faustin Nkusi, stated that he had arrived in Kigali and said that Gasana was charged with killing a child during the genocide and encouraging others to do the same.

“He is being charged with crimes of genocide,” Nkusi told reporters at Kigali’s airport after Gasana got there.

It wasn’t clear right away if Gasana had hired a lawyer, and he wasn’t allowed to talk to reporters.

Pictures that were shown in Rwandan media showed police officers walking Gasana off the plane that brought him from Norway.

In late 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up in Tanzania to try the people who planned the killing. It closed in 2015 after convicting 61 suspects.

Since then, other high-profile suspects have been caught around the world after years on the run, and Rwanda’s own court system has dealt with almost 2 million cases.