Rwanda Genocide Suspect Arrested in South Africa

Rwandan genocide suspect Fulgence Kayishema appears in the Cape Town Magistrates court in Cape Town, South Africa, May 26, 2023. © 2023 REUTERS-Nic Bothma via HRW

In better-late-than-never news, fugitive from justice Fulgence Kayishema has been arrested.

Kayishema is accused of orchestrating the massacre of some 2,000 people at a church during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. After decades on the run, he was arrested by South African police in the town of Paarl, not far from Cape Town, in cooperation with the Office of the Prosecutor’s Fugitive Tracking Team at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).

The IRMCT took over from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which the UN Security Council set up in 1994 in response to the genocide. Orchestrated by ethnic Hutu political and military extremists, the genocide claimed more than half a million lives and destroyed approximately three quarters of Rwanda’s Tutsi population in just three months.

Before it closed at the end of 2015, the ICTR had indicted 93 people, convicted and sentenced 61, and acquitted 14. The IRMCT was tasked with arresting and prosecuting nine remaining tribunal-indicted fugitives.

It’s not immediately clear if Kayishema will now be heading to trial in The Hague or in Arusha, Tanzania, where many international Rwanda genocide-related trials have been held – or even if it may be in Rwanda itself. If it’s in Rwanda, there would be serious concerns he can get a fair trial there, given frequent failures of the courts there to be independent of political influence.

He should be given a fair and speedy trial, even if that means it doesn’t take place in Rwanda.

In any case, the arrest of Kayishema is hopeful news for the survivors of the genocide, particularly those most affected by this church massacre, who have waited too long to see justice done.

It also perhaps offers a positive sign that South Africa will support international justice efforts generally and the arrest of fugitives specifically.

As we mentioned here in this newsletter two days ago, South Africa will host the BRICS summit in August, and it’s possible that a high-profile international fugitive may attend: Vladimir Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes against children. – Human Rights Watch