Rwanda has issued an international arrest warrant against Aloys Ntiwiragabo, a former head of Rwandan military intelligence who is suspected of playing a key role in planning and supervising the genocide in the African country in 1994, after Mediapart revealed he has been living with his wife in France for what appears to be the past 14 years.
Between April 7th and July 15th 1994, about 800,000 people, mostly from the minority Tutsi population but also moderates among Rwanda’s majority Hutu ethnic group, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists at the climax of a four-year civil war in the small east-central African state. The massacres ended after the military victory of the Tutsi-led rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, when many of the perpetrators of the genocide fled the country. Aloys Ntiwiragabo was among those who left for neighbouring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or RDC).
Ntiwiragabo, now aged 72, is one of 11 architects of the mass slaughter who were identified by the now-disbanded United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which was established in November 1994. Following the confirmation in May this year of the death of Augustin Bizimana, the Rwandan defence minister in the Hutu-led interim government that led the genocide, Ntiwiragabo is one of the two among the 11 cited by the UN tribunal who remain at large.
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Mediapart first reported in July how Ntiwiragabo has been living, apparently since 2006, with his wife in an apartment in a suburb of the town of Orléans, about 130 kilometres south of Paris. That immediately prompted the action by the Rwandan prosecution services that has now led to the issuing of the international arrest warrant, and also the opening last month of a preliminary investigation into possible proceedings against Ntiwiragabo by the anti-terrorist branch of the French prosecution services.
French officials have confirmed to Mediapart that Ntiwiragabo was sent acknowledgement of his request for asylum in France in February of this year. What his status was before that date remains unexplained.
According to a judicial source cited by news agency AFP, no formal complaint had been made against Ntiwiragabo in France, and at the time that Mediapart traced him to Orléans he was not actively sought by Interpol, nor by the French or Rwandan justice systems.
Following Mediapart’s first revelations in July of Ntiwiragabo’s presence in France, his lawyer Benjamin Chouai, speaking to Radio France Internationale, also insisted the Rwandan was not at the time the object of any arrest warrant. “Our client firmly contests each line of the supposed investigation published by the Mediapart website,” he said. “It’s not really, in fact, an investigation since, as everyone knows, our client isn’t hiding himself, [and] has for years not concealed his identity.”
The ICTR, which was dissolved in December 2015, eventually dropped plans to prosecute Ntiwiragabo, apparently because of a limited time frame for his case to be finalised. Meanwhile, since fleeing Rwanda in 1994, he had appeared in several African countries, including Kenya, Sudan and the former Zaire, where he served in the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu-led rebel group which committed innumerable atrocities documented by the UN and by human rights NGOs.
“We have issued an international arrest warrant against Aloys Ntiwiragabo, suspected of genocide,” senior Rwandan public prosecutor Aimable Havugiyaremye confirmed in an announcement to the press on Tuesday. “We have investigated his case and we are working with the French unit in charge of fighting war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Speaking to Mediapart from the Rwandan capital Kigali, Havugiyaremye said: “It was a relief to learn that he is in France and has been identified.”
Sources close to the case have confirmed to Mediapart that Rwanda has submitted documents to the French authorities by diplomatic channels to obtain Ntiwiragabo’s arrest and subsequent extradition.
Until Mediapart identified his presence in France, Ntiwiragabo was widely believed to be still living in Africa. But following Mediapart’s report in July, Rwandan magistrates spent several weeks combing their archived information on him, and questioned potential witnesses with direct knowledge of his actions, including survivors of the genocide, former intelligence staff and also former members of the FDLR.
“We reconstituted his case file, then we continued our investigations and [now] we have concluded them,” senior Rwandan prosecutor Aimable Havugiyaremye told Mediapart. “We have brought 25 witnesses together, a number we consider sufficient to establish prosecution proceedings.”
It was on August 11th that Rwanda officially notified the French justice ministry of the formal proceedings it has now launched against Ntiwiragabo for his arrest and extradition.
Kigali has also asked Interpol to issue a “red notice” for Ntiwiragabo’s arrest, which if accepted will be sent out to police forces worldwide.
Contacted by Mediapart, the French justice ministry declined to confirm that it had received the Rwandan request for Ntiwiragabo’s arrest, saying it could not “comment on this ongoing case”. The anti-terrorist branch of the French public prosecution services did not reply to questions submitted to it by Mediapart.
Meanwhile, the Rwandan authorities have made no official comment on Mediapart’s investigations.
Under a law passed in France on May 22nd 1996, anyone “suspected of being responsible for acts of genocide or of other serious violations of international humanitarian law” in Rwanda or neighbouring countries in 1994 “can be prosecuted and tried by French courts under French law, if they are found in France”. While numerous suspects of the genocide in Rwanda have found sanctuary in France, only three have been sentenced by French courts. The cases against two others were dropped, yet two more successfully went into hiding to escape prosecution, and one other died before eventual proceedings could be brought. There are 22 other ongoing cases, including one which was opened in 1995.
Commenting on the move for the arrest and extradition of Ntiwiragabo, Alain Gauthier, president of the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda, a French association dedicated to tracking down Rwandan genocide suspects, voiced concern that it may become similarly delayed. “I hope above all that this case doesn’t take too long and that he will be arrested,” he told Mediapart.
But adding to his fears is the fact that until now France, unlike Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, has systematically refused the extradition to Rwanda of wanted suspects of the genocide.
“We have every means to be able to try Aloys Ntiwiragabo,” Rwandan prosecutor Aimable Havugiyaremye told Mediapart. “Genocide suspects have already been sent by a number of countries to stand trial here in Rwanda. The countries which extradited them are satisfied.”
In May, French police arrested Félicien Kabuga, 84, who is accused of funding the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Kabuga, who had been on the run for 25 years and was living under a false identity in the Paris suburb of Asnières, was indicted by the ICTR in 1997 for crimes of genocide. He is currently appealing against a ruling that he can be transferred to the UN-founded International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, whose branch in Arusha, Tanzania, has taken over the tasks of the now-disbanded ICTR.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.