UN court hears case of alleged Rwandan genocide financier stranded in legal limbo

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — United Nations judges and lawyers met on Thursday to discuss the fate of a man accused of bankrolling genocide in Rwanda who remains stranded in legal limbo two years after judges ruled that he was not fit to stand trial.

The case of Félicien Kabuga, who is about 90 years old and has dementia, echoes those of several men who have been ordered released from an international court but effectively have nowhere to go.

Kabuga was one of the last fugitives charged in connection with the 1994 Rwanda genocide. After years of evading international efforts to track him down, Kabuga was arrested near Paris in May 2020.

In 2023 the court halted his trial after medical experts concluded his dementia would prevent him from taking part.

Authorities have so far failed to find a country willing to take him in. Kabuga does not want to return to Rwanda — which has offered to take him — out of fear he will be mistreated.

Kabuga’s transfer to Rwanda is “absolutely not possible,” his lawyer Emmanuel Altit told a nearly empty courtroom at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals — a court that deals with remaining cases from the now-closed U.N. tribunals for Rwanda and the Balkan wars.

His trial began nearly three decades after the 100-day massacre left some 800,000 dead. He has pleaded not guilty to charges including genocide and incitement to commit genocide.

Judge Iain Bonomy noted that Kabuga’s “expedited release,” now two years on, was hamstrung by an “unwillingness by certain European states” to take him in.

According to Altit, sending Kabuga to Rwanda would condemn him to be “imprisoned” at best, or at worst, to “disappear.” “Rwanda is not a democratic country,” Altit said during an earlier hearing. Rwanda did not reply to a request for comment.

Others who have been left in limbo include a former government minister from the Central African Republic, who sat in a hotel at the International Criminal Court for 43 days after prosecutors there dropped some 20 charges against him, citing lack of evidence. He was eventually able to seek asylum in an undisclosed country.

Ivorian political leader Charles Blé Goudé, who was acquitted by the ICC in 2019, remained “confined to a closed location, at exorbitant costs” afterward, according to court filings, until 2022 when the political situation in his home country changed and he could return.

Meanwhile, five Rwandan men have been stuck in the West African nation of Niger since their transfer from the court in 2021.

“There is no ability for these courts to release people without the cooperation of states who do not want to cooperate,” said Lucy Gaynor, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who focuses on international criminal trials.

An agreement struck between Niger and Tanzania, where the Rwanda tribunal was located, led to the transfer of eight men — all either acquitted or having finished their sentences — into a house in the capital Niamey. Three have since died.

Niger, however, will not give the remaining men legal status, leaving them unable to work, travel or leave the house without a police escort.

“Realistically, we are out of options,” lawyer Peter Robinson, who represents François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, a former Rwandan army major who is stuck in Niger, told the AP.

Like Kabuga, Nzuwonemeye does not feel safe returning to Rwanda. “I believe that I could face prosecution for the crimes for which I was acquitted,” he wrote in a letter to the tribunal from last year.

Rights groups and others say the Rwandan President Paul Kagame has created a climate of fear and critics accuse the government of forcing opponents to flee, jailing or making them disappear.

Courts in Germany and the Netherlands have refused to extradite genocide suspects to Rwanda over concerns that they wouldn’t receive a fair trial.