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THE HAGUE: Alleged Rwandan genocide financier Felicien Kabuga will go on trial in The Hague on Thursday, one of the last key suspects in the 1994 ethnic slaughter that devastated the small central African nation.
\nKabuga\u2019s trial will open at 0800 GMT before a UN tribunal, where he has been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the massacres 28 years ago of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
\nProsecutors and the defense are expected to make their opening statements on Thursday and Friday, with evidence in the case to start the following Wednesday.
\nKabuga\u2019s lawyers entered a not guilty plea to the charges at a first appearance in 2020.
\nOnce one of Rwanda\u2019s richest men, prosecutors say the octogenarian allegedly helped set up hate media that urged ethnic Hutus to \u201ckill Tutsi cockroaches\u201d and funded militia groups in 1994.
\nNow in his mid-80s, Kabuga was arrested in France in May 2020 after evading police in several countries for the last quarter of a century.
\nHe was then transferred to the UN\u2019s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, set up to complete the work of the now defunct Rwanda war crimes tribunal.
\nSaid to be in fragile health, Kabuga in August appeared before the judges in a wheelchair \u2014 and it was not known whether he\u2019ll be in court on Thursday as judges are permitting him to attend the hearings via a video link.
\nKabuga was originally scheduled to appear in court in Arusha, where the other arm of the IRMCT \u2014 also referred at as the MICT \u2014 resides, but judges had ruled he would remain in The Hague \u201cuntil otherwise decided.\u201d
\nIn June, the judges denied a defense objection, ruling Kabuga was indeed fit to stand trial.<\/p>\n
The UN says 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda in 1994 in a 100-day rampage that shocked the world.
\nAn ally of Rwanda\u2019s then-ruling party, Kabuga allegedly helped create the Interahamwe Hutu militia group and the Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), whose broadcasts incited people to murder.
\nThe radio station also identified the hiding places of Tutsis where they were later killed, prosecutors said in the indictment.
\nMore than 50 witnesses are expected to appear for the prosecution, which said they needed about 40 hours to wrap up their case.
\nProsecutors said Kabuga controlled and encouraged RTLM\u2019s content and defended the station when the minister of information criticized the broadcasts.
\nKabuga is also accused of \u201cdistributing machetes\u201d to genocidal groups, and ordering them to kill Tutsis.
\nLater fleeing Rwanda, Kabuga spent years on the run using a succession of false passports.
\nInvestigators say he was helped by a network of former Rwandan allies to evade justice.
\nFollowing his arrest in a small apartment near Paris, his lawyers argued that Kabuga, whose age is now given as 87 on the indictment, should face trial in France for health reasons.
\nBut France\u2019s top court ruled he should be moved to UN custody, in line with an arrest warrant issued in 1997.
\nKabuga is one of the last top wanted suspects for the Rwandan genocide to face justice.
\nOthers, including the man seen as the architect of the genocide, Augustin Bizimana, and former presidential guard commander Protais Mpiranya have both died.
\nVictims of the genocide have called for a swift trial for Kabuga saying \u201cif he dies before facing justice, he would have died under the presumption of innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE HAGUE: Alleged Rwandan genocide financier Felicien Kabuga will go on trial in The Hague on Thursday, one of the last key suspects in the 1994 ethnic slaughter that devastated the small central African nation. Kabuga\u2019s trial will open at 0800 GMT before a UN tribunal, where he has been charged with genocide and crimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182850"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182852,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182850\/revisions\/182852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}