Global Crackdown on Rwanda Genocide Suspects Intensifies

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Rwanda Genocide Source News24 AFP
Rwanda Genocide Source News24 AFP
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By EADM Correspondent and Agencies

In Summary: “They could run but could not hide. The long arm of the law is finally catching up with them. However long it will take, those genociders will be brought to justice just as the Nazi agents are still being picked up in their advanced ages,” a Rwandan national living in the USA told EADM Wednesday.

 Dallas, Texas—A global crackdown on Rwandan genocide perpetuators and suspects has intensified with a life sentence handed to a former Mayor of a town in Rwanda and the deportation from Zambia to Rwanda of two men suspected to have played key roles in the genocide that left nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in the small Central African country in 1994.

In the state high court in Frankfurt, Germany,  a former mayor of Muvumba,  Onesphore Rwabukombe, 58, was sentenced to life in jail for his active role in orchestrating a church massacre on April 11, 1994 of  at least 450 "and probably far more" Tutsis hiding in a church in Kiziguro in northeastern Rwanda,  , international news agencies reported Tuesday.

Meanwhile, authorities in Zambia deported to Kigali two Rwandan refugees suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide, their lawyer told AFP in the Zambian capital, Lusaka over the weekend. The two men are Egibe Rwasibo, who works as a medical officer at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, and businessman Innocent Habumugisha who operates shops in the capital city.

The national news agency DPA reported that while sentencing the former mayor, the presiding judge Josef Bill said: "It was an unimaginable bloodbath in which the accused gave orders while standing ankle-deep in blood."

Rwabukombe and other local leaders "organized, commanded and executed" the April 11 church massacre of Tutsis hiding in a church in Kiziguro in northeastern Rwanda, agencies quoted the court judgement. Rwabukombe has lived in Germany since 2002 and had applied for political asylum but was arrested in 2011 on an Interpol warrant, AFP reported.

A Rwandan national living in the USA told EADM on condition of anonymity Wednesday that: “They could run but could not hide. The long arm of the law is finally catching up with them. However long it will take, those genociders will be brought to justice just as the Nazi agents are still being picked up in their advanced ages.”

During the massacre, the court said that Rwabukombe helped bring more killers to the church and oversaw the transport of corpses to a nearby pit, AFP reported. The crime was the first of its kind related to the 1994 Rwanda genocide to be prosecuted in Germany according to AFP. However, in late September, two leaders of the Rwandan Hutu rebels were sentenced to 13 and eight years in prison in Germany for orchestrating massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo, AFP reported.

Meanwhile, AFP reported that Zambia's Immigration Department spokesman Namati Nshinka confirmed the expulsion but denied it was linked to the genocide. "Yes, it is true that the two were deported. The reason is that their continued stay here was a danger to good order and peace. It's nothing to do with genocide," AFP reported. Their lawyer, Dickson Jere said he was to challenge the deportation of the duo that has lived in Lusaka since 1997.

Source:  AFP 

Image Source: News24 AFP 

 

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