Author: EDWARD QORRO
AfricaPress-Tanzania: IT is now official. Rwandan genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga will now be tried at International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) Arusha branch.
In its ruling delivered midweek here, MICT President, Judge Carmel Agius held that the Rwandan genocide mastermind will be tried in Arusha once he is transferred to the relevant branch of the Mechanism.
Rule 64(A) of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the Mechanism (“Rules”) provides that the President shall assign the case to a Trial Chamber upon transfer of an accused.
Once in Arusha, Mr Kabuga will face a panel of judges, composed of Judge Iain Bonomy, Judge Graciela Susana Gatti Santana and Judge Elizabeth Ibanda- Nahamya in case number MICT- 13-38-I.
Early last month, the Rwandan genocide suspect went before the French Supreme Court on Wednesday, requesting an appeal of the body’s decision to hand him over to international judges in Tanzania.
He was arrested in May 16 at his home in the Paris suburb of Asnieres-sur-Seine for his role as the alleged financier of the 1994 genocide that left over half a million to just over a million people killed.
Mr Kabuga was also a part of the inner circle of former President, Juvenal Habyarimana, whose assassination ignited the carnage.
In 1997, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda — based in Arusha, Tanzania — had charged Kabuga with seven counts of genocide and multiple other counts, as well as “persecution and extermination, all in connection with crimes committed during the 1994 genocide.”
A reward of 11bn/-($5 million) was placed on Kabuga’s head by the International Mechanism, the structure responsible for completing the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
In June, the Paris Appeal Court ruled on an extradition request that would hand over the accused to the UN Tribunal in Arusha. A fugitive for 26 years who had a warrant out for his arrest,
