Rwanda has issued an international arrest warrant against Aloys Ntiwiragabo, head of military intelligence during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, against whom a preliminary investigation for "crimes against humanity" was recently opened in France where he could reside. "We have issued an international arrest warrant against Aloys Ntiwiragabo, suspected of genocide" and that a French media claims to have found in France, Rwandan Attorney General Aimable Havugiyaremye told reporters on Tuesday. "We have investigated his case and we are working with the French unit responsible for combating war crimes and crimes against humanity," he added.
Has Aloys Ntiwiragabo passed through Orléans?
The investigation in France was opened at the end of July following an article from the online media Mediapart claiming to have found this man, aged 72, near Orléans (center). Aloys Ntiwiragabo has in the past been the subject of arrest warrants from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which have been lifted for several years, according to a French judicial source. The "crimes against humanity" pole of the Paris court had sought to hear him as a witness in 2012 in an investigation and had requested the Rwandan authorities. The latter, according to this judicial source, replied that Aloys Ntiwiragabo was a refugee in an African country.
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Aloys Ntiwiragabo appears in indictments of the ICTR dating from 1998, targeting people suspected of being among the main responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Aloys Ntiwiragabo is mentioned as being part of a group of eleven officials who, "from the end of 1990 until July 1994 (...) agreed among themselves and with others to develop a plan with the intention of to exterminate the civilian Tutsi population and to eliminate members of the opposition and thus maintain power ".
What role is he accused of having played in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994?
The genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994, at the instigation of the extremist Hutu regime then in power, left around 800,000 dead between April and July 1994, mainly among the Tutsi minority, but also among moderate Hutus, according to the UN. In another 2002 act targeting four of these eleven people, Aloys Ntiwiragabo is described as having "updated" "lists of people identified as the enemy" - the Tutsi - and their "accomplices" - members of the opposition - in order to "execute" them.
On May 16, the arrest near Paris, after a 25-year run, of the Rwandan genocide "financier", Félicien Kabuga, shed a harsh light on the former presence and the late tracking of suspected genocidaires in France, who remained until the end, the ally of the last Hutu regime in Rwanda. The Paris Court of Appeal issued a favorable opinion in early June for the surrender of Félicien Kabuga to international justice, but he appealed to the Supreme Court. The hearing is scheduled for September 2.