A red cross is seen drawn on the face of Felicien Kabuga, one of the
last key suspects in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, on a wanted
poster at the Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit office in Kigali, Rwanda,
on May 19, 2020. PHOTO | SIMON WOHLFAHRT | AFP
The arrest of Felicien Kabuga—believed to be one of the
masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, and also considered
its financier—is a big win for international justice, but an even bigger
relief for the genocide survivors who had waited for 26 years to see
him brought to justice.
On January 11, 1994, Gen Romeo
Dallaire, the then Canadian commander of UNAMIR in Rwanda, received
information that in one of Kabuga’s warehouses in Gikondo, were
stockpiles of weapons.
During his trial, one of the
leaders of the interahamwe, Jean Pierre Turatsinze, said the weapons had
been estimated to kill 1,000 Tutsis every 20 minutes, if put in the
hands of interahamwe.
In February 1994, a
representative of Chillington, a British tool manufacturing company,
which among other things makes machetes, was reported by the Sunday Times saying that the company sold more machetes in one month than it had sold throughout 1993.
Applications
for import licenses examined by Human Rights Watch between January 1993
and March 1994 show that 581 tonnes of machetes were imported into
Rwanda.
These machetes, at a cost of Rwf95 million were
paid for by Mr Kabuga, according to Jean Damascene Bizimana, the
executive secretary of the National Commission for the fight against
genocide, (CNLG).
But who is Felicien Kabuga?
Mr Kabuga was born in Mukarange, then Byumba prefecture, currently Gicumbi district, in 1935.
According
to his childhood friend, Theresphore Mukimbiri, Mr Kabuga was born into
a poor family, and the only early schooling they both got was catechism
from the Catholic church.
Mr Mukimbiri says the
family’s fortune changed after Mr Kabuga met some Indian traders who
were setting up business at the Rushaki market centre. And it is these
Indians who introduced him to the world of business.
Around
that time, his brother left him a bicycle, which he used to peddle
general merchandise, like cigarettes and second-hand clothes. He bought
and sold goods in Rushaki, before moving into tea trade, and much later
relocated to Kigali after establishing his business.
Jean
Nzarubara, who was a businessman in Kigali before the genocide and used
to meet Mr Kabuga in meetings that brought together business owners,
describes him as “a mild man, with few words.”
“We knew
him as a rich businessman from Byumba dealing in tea and wheat
processing. He came to Kigali in the 1970s and took over. There was even
talk that linked his wealth to witchcraft, but that’s perhaps because
people were not used to such dramatic growth in wealth,” he says.
It
is not clear when, but Kabuga’s business ties extended to the region
and to Kenya in particular, where he is believed to have invested in
real estate and transport.
Rwandan genocide scholar and
researcher Tom Ndahiro says that Mr Kabuga took advantage of the goods
vacuum left by the liberation struggles in Uganda in the 1980s, and
supplied the Ugandan market, building his wealth on that trade.
But
it is also said that he benefited from being part of president Juvenal
Habyarimana’s inner circle (known as the Akazu), and enjoyed favours
that came with proximity to power.
During Habyarimana’s
rule, political and financial power in Rwanda was consolidated in a
tight circle, the core of which was the extended family of the
president. Kabuga was a prominent member of this group.
His two daughters were married to Habyarimana’s two sons, cementing the ties and intensifying his influence and power.
This
extended Mr Kabuga’s tentacles to militia such as the infamous
interahamwe (an extremist Hutu militia), armed civilians and
administrative officials and was viewed as being the leader of those who
held extremist Hutu views.
He is alleged to have
planned and financed the genocide using his wealth and the infamous
‘’hate radio’’ Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines and Kangura newspaper.
In
1997, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha
charged Kabuga with seven counts of genocide, including, complicity in
genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to
commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against
humanity.
According to Mr Kabuga’s ICTR charge sheet,
he is alleged to have operated RTLM in a manner to further ethnic hatred
of the Tutsi through disseminating messages with a goal to commit
genocide.
In 1993, at an RTLM fundraising meeting, Mr
Kabuga is said to have publicly defined the purpose of the radio
station, as ‘’defence of Hutu power.’’
Kabuga is also
alleged to have instructed, assisted and supervised members of the
interahamwe who participated in the killing of Tutsis in Kigali’s areas
of Kimironko, Kigali, Kibuye and Gisenyi prefecture.
It
is reported that immediately after the genocide, he fled to
Switzerland, where he unsuccessfully applied for asylum. He also lived
in some European countries before settling in Kenya, where he is alleged
to have received protection through the political connections he had
there.
He went off the radar for years but when his
wife Josephine died in 2017, Mr Ndahiro says, Kabuga sent a message
which was read at the requiem mass. This reminded the world that he was
still alive.
The $5 million bounty the US put on his
head had not yielded any leads, but this funeral message alerted law
enforcement, who started trailing him.
French
intelligence agents trailed his children, leading them to an apartment
in a Paris suburb of Asnieres-Sur-Seine, ending a several-year manhunt,
spanning several countries.
Reports show that the
coronavirus lockdown slowed down things in Europe, and many on-going
investigations were put on hold, giving ample time for law enforcement
to focus on Kabuga’s file, which led to his eventual arrest.
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