His 22-year run has ended. Fulgence Kayishema, suspected of having played a major role in the genocide in Rwanda and arrested this week in South Africa, was placed in pre-trial detention on Friday 26 May, before a forthcoming extradition.
The 62-year-old was, until his arrest on Wednesday, one of the last four fugitives wanted for their role in the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, by Hutu extremists. He appeared impassive in the dock, prayer book in hand.
When questioned at the entrance to the hearing by a journalist, he denied having participated in the genocide. "I played no role," he said, in what he called a "civil war at the time."
Stocky, bald figure, round eyes behind thin glasses, the sexagenarian, framed by armed officers wearing bulletproof vests, admitted to being the man wanted by international justice. Past master in the borrowing of false identities, according to investigators, he recently used the name of Donatien Nibashumba.
A "loyal support network"
The vagueness still reigns over his escape but according to the South African prosecutor's office, he started a family and applied for asylum in 2000 and refugee status in 2004, still under an assumed name and pretending to be Burundian.
Finally unmasked and spotted in a farm in Paarl, about sixty kilometers from Cape Town, he was arrested with the help of Interpol, UN prosecutors announced Thursday.
"A powerful message showing that those suspected of having committed such crimes cannot escape justice," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Fulgence Kayishema was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Mechanism (MICT) charged since 2015 with completing the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) set up by the UN after the genocide.
He would have benefited, to cover his tracks, from a "network of loyal supporters", including members of his family but also ex-Rwandan Armed Forces, according to MICT.
A trial before an international tribunal
The accused was remanded in custody in a maximum security prison in Cape Town. The issue of his extradition was not discussed during his brief appearance.
According to the Ministry of Justice contacted by AFP, he should be extradited without delay to be tried by an international court, in The Hague or Arusha in Tanzania.
Fulgence Kayishema was a judicial police inspector during the genocide in Rwanda and "one of the most wanted fugitives in the world for genocide", according to international justice.
He "directly participated in the planning and execution" of the massacre of more than 2,000 Tutsi refugees in the church of Nyange, in the commune of Kivumu (northeast), "including by obtaining and distributing gasoline to burn the church with the refugees inside," according to UN prosecutors.
The former fugitive is charged by international justice with genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
With AFP
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