Rwandan suspect of genocide Kabuga, 93, dies while being held
Felicien Kabuga, a suspect in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, has passed away while in custody, according to a statement from a U.N. court on Saturday. He had reached the age of 93.
Kabuga was apprehended in France in 2020 following over twenty years of evasion and was subsequently extradited to the Hague. He was subsequently determined to be unfit to stand trial due to dementia and was also considered too ill to return to Rwanda.
With no nation prepared to take him in, Kabuga stayed at the U.N. detention center in The Hague. The court announced that it had mandated an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.
The former businessman and radio station owner was one of the last fugitives pursued in connection with the genocide, during which Hutu extremists murdered over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a span of 100 days.
Prosecutors charged Kabuga with inciting hate speech via his broadcaster, Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, and with providing assistance to armed ethnic Hutu militias.
The court that declared his death, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, manages the ongoing cases from the previous U.N. tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
