The Director of Human Rights Watch in Central African region, Lewis Mudge, blames International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) of denying justice for genocide against the Tutsi’s victims, by suspending the trial of Félicien Kabuga for crimes committed in 1994.
Mudge laments that “Victims and their families have long waited to see Kabuga held to account for his alleged role in planning, ordering, and carrying out the genocide.” But judges said Kabuga is “unfit to participate meaningfully in his trial and is very unlikely to regain fitness in the future.”
The Director recalls that Kabuga had refused to attend hearings in person since the trial began in September 2022, and the proposal of the judges for an alternative legal procedure that resembles a trial as closely as possible but “without the possibility of conviction.”
He is accused of being a mastermind of genocide, having acted as chief financier of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which, during the genocide instructed people to set barriers and carry out searches, named persons to be targeted and pointed out areas to attack. He is also accused of aiding and abetting the Interahamwe, a militia attached to Rwanda’s then-ruling party, which hunted down and slaughtered ethnic Tutsi.
Kabuga, the prominent businessman in former Byumba province, has been tried by IRMCT on charges of: genocide incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and the crimes against humanity.
