May 2020. Rwanda Genocide Trial

May 2020. The man accused of financing the Rwandan genocide has denied playing a role in the massacres. “All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them,” Félicien Kabuga told a French court during a bail hearing. The 84-year-old businessman was arrested earlier this month in a suburb in Paris after 26 years on the run. He is alleged to have backed and armed ethnic Hutu militias who slaughtered about 800,000 people in 1994. Over 100 days they targeted members of the minority Tutsi community and their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin. Mr Kabuga also founded and funded the notorious Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), a Rwandan broadcaster that actively encouraged people to search out and kill anyone who was from the Tutsi ethnic group. In 1997 he was indicted by The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) for Rwanda on seven counts including with genocide and crimes against humanity. The UN tribunal wound up its operations in 2015 and its duties were transferred to a body at The Hague that handles outstanding war crimes cases and is pressing for Mr Kabuga’s extradition.

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