Rwanda: new extradition by the Netherlands of a Rwandan suspected of genocide
Audio 01:08
At the office of the Genocide Fugitives Research Unit, in Kigali, here on May 22, 2020, a new red cross will be able to be drawn on the face of a suspected genocidaire wanted.
Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
The association of survivors of the Rwandan genocide, Ibuka welcomes the extradition by the Netherlands of Venant Rutunga.
The 72-year-old man landed in Kigali on Monday evening.
He was handed over to the Rwandan authorities where he is accused of having been part of the cadres who organized the massacre of Tutsis in the south of the country.
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In 1994, Venant Rutunga was regional director at Isar Rubona, an agricultural research institute near Butare. When the killings began, more than a thousand inhabitants took refuge in the grounds of the institute. Venant Rutunga is suspected of having brought in the Interahamwe soldiers and militiamen. Egide Nkuranga is interim president of Ibuka, a French NGO that works for the memory of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. For him, there is no doubt: Venant Rutunga played an active role in the implementation of the genocide in this part of the country.
Venant Rutunga is suspected of having brought in the Interahamwe soldiers and militiamen.
Egide Nkuranga is interim president of Ibuka.
For him, there is no doubt: Venant Rutunga played an active role in the implementation of the genocide in this part of the country.
“
He was among the leaders of Isar.
He was very, very busy
, he explains
.
He was a member of the people who actually carried out the genocide that was being prepared.
So he was really at the head of the operations of the genocide which was happening at the head of the country.
"
Refugee status refused
In 2000, Venant Rutunga applied for refugee status in the Netherlands, which he was denied, due to suspicions about his past.
Almost two decades later, in March 2019, the result of cooperation between Rwandan and Dutch justice, Venant Rutunga was arrested in a village near Utrecht.
After having exhausted all these remedies to avoid being sent back to Rwanda for trial, he becomes the third Rwandan suspected of genocide crimes to be extradited from the Netherlands.
As for the former director general of Isar Rubona Charles Ndereyehe, accused of having planned the 1994 massacres in this part of Rwanda, he was also arrested in the Netherlands in September 2020. Rwanda is awaiting his extradition.
► See also: Two Rwandans extradited from the Netherlands to Kigali
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Rwanda
Paul Kagame
Justice
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