Genocide in Rwanda: the underside of the hunt for Félicien Kabuga

Text by: Florence Morice Follow

On May 16, Félicien Kabuga, presumed to be the “financial architect” of the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, and wanted since 1997 by police around the world, was arrested in the Paris suburbs. French justice has since approved its surrender to a UN court. RFI has investigated the underside of this hunt, having ended one of the longest and most impressive cavals in contemporary history.

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6:20 this Saturday, May 16, in a residential area of ​​Asnières in the Hauts-de-Seine in the Parisian suburbs. An intervention platoon of the Republican Guard, an elite unit, is about to actuate the pneumatic cylinder which will blow up the lock on the door of a small apartment located on the third floor of an ordinary building, rue du Révérend Father Christian Gilbert. The day before, within the team that made this operation possible, many did not sleep. Will Félicien Kabuga be behind the door? A bunch of clues gleaned from the months of careful investigation suggests, but no formal evidence.

The door opens. And it is first Donatien Nshimyumuremyi, alias Nshima, the eldest son of the fugitive, who appears. He declines his identity and designates his father, Félicien Kabuga, still in bed in the next room. The octogenarian, nicknamed "  the elusive  " by dint of having, for more than two decades, foiled all the radars of international justice, attempts a final deception. He speaks Swahili, pretends not to understand the Kinyarwanda interpreter who accompanies the intervention team. He claims not to be Rwandan but Congolese from the DRC. And be called Antoine Tounga. Since the previous evening, the investigators have fortunately known that this name has made it the last alias used by the fugitive, the 29th in 26 years on the run.

Faced with the suspect's denial, the investigators also have a secret boot: a scar on the neck. It dates from an operation for a benign throat tumor in Germany in 2007. It is one of its distinctive signs. They know that. It is even described in the red notice of Interpol established in the name of Félicien Kabuga: “  8 to 9 centimeters, on the right side.  One of the gendarmes present spots him. Show it to him. Doubt is no longer allowed. It's him. He finally recognizes it. Two hours later, the analysis of the DNA sample taken in the apartment confirms it. Meanwhile, the old man, 87 years old according to him, agrees to follow the gendarmes, helped by his son. He has difficulty walking.

Code name of the operation, successful: "955", the number of the UN resolution that created the ICTR, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Led by the Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity (OCLCH) in constant contact with the General Prosecutor's Office in Paris, it marks the end of the race for one of the most wanted men in the world, priced 5 million dollars (4.6 million euros) since 2002 by the US State Department, tracked by five international prosecutors in twenty years, and one of the last "big fish" still on the run on the list of alleged culprits of the Rwanda genocide.

How did we get here ?

Back in July 2019. For a decade, the hunt for Félicien Kabuga has been skating. Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the “Mechanism”, the judicial body which took over from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), dissolved at the end of 2015, decides to beat the recall of the troops, and to change the method. "  Obviously, it was not the right one,  " analyzes the prosecutor appointed in 2016, who has since already partly renewed his team of investigators and above all increased his number of analysts. "  In the ten years of the mechanism's existence, none of the wanted fugitives has been caught ," he said. We had to move from a reactive investigation to a proactive investigation.  "

At the start of this summer, he is therefore organizing a huge meeting in The Hague. The idea: to associate more closely with the work of its team, the units specializing in the search for fugitives from several European countries, including three in particular: Belgium, Great Britain and France, the three countries where the majority of the 13 children reside, biological and adopted, by Félicien Kabuga. The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Germany are also associated. "  All the countries where Félicien Kabuga has family and financial ties, which are believed to help him hide,  " said the prosecutor.

Because over the years, dozens of informants have come to the Mechanism, claiming to have seen Félicien Kabuga in different African countries: Gabon, Burundi, Kenya, sometimes the same week, with no information to verify it. But the prosecutor has strong "  suspicions  " that the fugitive is in Europe. “  It was there that his track had been lost, in Germany, twelve years earlier. Given his age and his health, there was good reason to believe that he had stayed on this continent,  ”explains a source close to the file.

The first months of this new cooperation are mainly devoted to the exchange and analysis of information collected in the surveillance set up around a nucleus called "  his protection group  ", his family but not only. About fifteen people. In February 2020, on the basis of a "  tip  " provided by the Mechanism according to which "  a new support  " is in France in the process of "getting  closer to the Kabuga family  ", confides a source close to the file, the prosecution Paris Court of Appeal authorizes the opening of an investigation under the regime known as "74-2".

The pipe does nothing. But it is a turning point, because from now on the framework of the investigation allows French investigators "  to carry out independent work, and to widen their field of action, without being limited to specific requests from the Mechanism  ", explains this same source . And with reinforced means: searches, telephone call records, eavesdropping, geolocation of relatives of Félicien Kabuga suspected of helping him on the run.

A few weeks later, thanks to information provided by Great Britain, the investigation accelerated. The British inform France that one of Félicien Kabuga's daughters residing in London, Séraphine Uwimana, according to our information, periodically commutes between Great Britain and Belgium, transiting through France. French investigators are responsible for monitoring it. A week later, the British changed their mind. Meanwhile, a more detailed analysis of the roaming traces on Séraphine Uwimana's telephone records reveals that she not only transits through France, but actually spends more time there than in Belgium. French investigators, helped by those from the Mechanism, discover that during his stays in France, his mobile phone regularly connects to a mobile phone relay antenna located in Asnières, in the Haut-de-Seine. The Kabuga family have no known apartments. What is she doing there?

Just confined, in telework, to a France that has been stopped since March 17 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the investigator who supervises the investigation takes advantage of this suspended time to fully dive into the analysis of data arriving from all sides: fadettes (eavesdropping), telephone records of relatives of the fugitives, in particular. They make it possible to establish a map of their movements. And to arrive at this observation: over a year, almost all the children of the alleged genocidal also activate this same telephone relay antenna in Asnières, where Séraphine Uwimana was spotted. This observation sharpens the suspicion of French investigators? What if Félicien Kabuga was there?

At the end of March, via a request to the tax service, the team of investigators learned that an apartment, until then unknown, had been rented in Asnières "  for several years  " in the name of Habumukiza, surname of one of the sons of Félicien Kabuga in a residence on the third floor of rue du Révérend Père Christian Gilbert. A major discovery. But that still does not provide proof of a possible presence of Félicien Kabuga in this apartment.

In the process, the bank statements of the family of the fugitive, obtained on requisition, in turn begin to speak. We find there the trace of a "  payment of 10,000 dollars  " for the benefit of the Beaujon hospital, located in Clichy still in the Haut-de-Seine, not far from Asnières. It dates from the summer of 2019, and is issued by Bernadette Uwamariya, another daughter of the fugitive, considered as the chief of the Kabuga clan in Paris, widow of Jean-Pierre Habyarimana, one of the sons of the former Rwandan president of the same name. Félicien Kabuga, who we know is old and sick, could he have been operated on? The investigators decide to continue this trail.

In the meantime, over the next few days, concern escalates. We are very early May. Telephone surveillance of Félicien Kabuga's children reveals more and more frequent comings and goings of family members around the apartment. An activity considered "  abnormal  " by some. What is going on ? Félicien Kabuga is he dead? Are we preparing for its exfiltration? In the minds of investigators, questions are jostling. In a confined France, with almost deserted streets, closed shops, it is impossible to organize a hideout without running the risk of being spotted. Investigators work from a distance. Some are beginning to advocate for early intervention, lest it escape them. Others advocate patience. The team still has no evidence that the octogenarian is in this apartment.

Perhaps they remember that three years earlier, during the funeral of Félicien Kabuga's widow one day in February 2017 in Waterloo, Belgian police, convinced that he would be there, had attempted an operation. Failure. Was it only there?

25 years on the run

Reassuring element: during this period, a wiretapping allows us to hear one of these girls talking about Félicien Kabuga "  alive  ". A stroke of luck because the clan carefully avoids mentioning the name of the patriarch in his telephone conversations. “  To cover 25 years on the run, you have to be well organized. They had time to get started  , ”said a source familiar with the matter. The fact remains that "  in two months, it is the first time that an element allows us to have the certainty that it is still alive  ".

Another discovery on May 11 put investigators on alert. Donatien, the eldest of his sons, a Belgian resident and supposed to be watched there by the local police, has visibly escaped their vigilance. He is actually in France… in Asnières. Definitely. What if he had come to take care of his father during a pandemic? The assumption is considered credible. "  For what reason other than a sick girlfriend or relative, would a man remain confined several hundred kilometers from his home in the midst of a health crisis  ?" ", Questions a source close to the investigation.

The story accelerates again on May 15. That day, according to sources close to the file, the investigators learned that the man operated on in the summer of 2019 at the Beaujon hospital for colon surgery is an octogenarian, of African origin. Her name ? Antoine Tounga, according to the photocopy of the Congo-Kinshasa passport provided to the hospital. An unknown name to the battalion. They immediately launched a comparative analysis between the DNA found by investigators at the Baujeon hospital and another dating from 2007, provided by the German police, which it had taken before losing its trace. The result falls. Bingo. It "matches". Félicien Kabuga and Antoine Tounga are one.

A new battle that begins

In an emergency, and while telephone surveillance once again reveals a particularly intense activity that worries, a decision is made to advance the date of the operation which will, they hope, arrest Félicien Kabuga. It will be triggered the next morning. It takes place not in one apartment but in four simultaneously. That of Asnières but also the three other apartments known to the family in the Paris region, including the apartment on rue Baudricourt in Paris, still owned today by Félicien Kabuga. “  We wanted to be prepared for any eventuality, we had no evidence of its presence. It was not a question of missing it.  "

Thus ends, at dawn, in France the runaway of Félicien Kabuga, betrayed by the telephone surveillance of those who during these years have worked so hard to protect him: his children. That day, for the clan, a new battle begins, judicial that one.

► (Re) listen: Rwanda, in the footsteps of Félicien Kabuga

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