Genocide in Rwanda: the road to a trial for Félicien Kabuga will be long

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The Paris Court of Appeal yesterday gave the green light to a transfer of Félicien Kabuga to the MTPIR, the mechanism which succeeded the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It therefore confirms the validity of the warrant issued against this man, prosecuted for his alleged role as financier of the 1994 genocide. This is an important first step which has been taken. But the defense has not said its last word. And the road to a transfer, and even more so a possible trial is still long.

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In the immediate future nothing changes for Félicien Kabuga. He remains detained in France at the Health prison. Because, above all, his defense has ten days to file an appeal with the Court of Cassation to try to annul the decision on Wednesday  of a transfer of Félicien Kabuga before the MTPIR.

This is what his lawyers are going to do. They announced it. Upon receipt of the file, the Court of Cassation will have two months to decide. And it is only then, and again if the decision to hand over Félicien Kabuga to the international mechanism is confirmed, that the countdown to the transfer will be launched.

A long judicial process

France will then have a month to organize it ... So we are at the start of a long process. By way of comparison, the experience of the tribunal on Rwanda, the ancestor of the Mechanism, has shown that it took on average three to eight months between the arrest and transfer of a fugitive, and an average year before the opening of a trial.

This is one of the reasons which pushed a Mechanism judge last week to refuse to modify the arrest warrant of Félicien Kabuga as requested by the prosecutor Serge Brammertz. The latter wanted him to be able to transit first through The Hague before going to Arusha, where the trial will be held anyway, invoking the travel constraints linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

But the judge considered that the question was premature, and that it would always be possible to reconsider it in due time.

►  Read also: Reactions and expectations after the announcement of the transfer of Kabuga to international justice

Félicien Kabuga, 84, considered to be the "financier" of the genocide in Rwanda which killed at least 800,000 people in 1994 according to the UN, was arrested in the morning of this Saturday May 16 near Paris. He has been actively sought by international justice for 25 years. 

►  Also read : Genocide in Rwanda: the underside of the hunt for Félicien Kabuga

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