\n The process to have Rwandan genocide suspect Fulgence Kayishema tried by a UN court was delayed on Wednesday, after a judge in South Africa, where the suspect was arrested, postponed a transfer hearing.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kayishema, who allegedly took part in one of the 1994 genocide's bloodiest episodes and was detained in May in a wine farm outside Cape Town after more than 20 years on the run, was not in court.\n<\/p>\n
\n In June, he applied for asylum in South Africa in a preventive bid to stall a possible request for him to stand trial abroad.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) -- the successor to the UN court that prosecuted scores of major suspects -- eventually asked Kayishema be handed over to its branch in Arusha, Tanzania.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the legal procedure, which is different from a typical extradition, was the cause of some confusion, leading to a postponement.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There is nothing for me to hear!\" Judge Robert Henney of Cape Town's High Court said angrily, after prosecutors failed to file an application to start the transfer process.\n<\/p>\n
\n The judge did not immediately set a new date for the next hearing.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This is not a criminal case nor a civil case. So, we are treading new terrain,\" Eric Ntabazalila, a spokesman for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), told journalists.\n<\/p>\n
\n A former police chief, the 62-year-old is accused of overseeing the slaughter of more than 2,000 men, women and children who had sought shelter in a church at the height of the sectarian violence that engulfed Rwanda three decades ago.\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered over 100 days at the hands of Hutu extremists.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kayishema, who used many aliases and false documents during 22 years on the run, is separately facing 54 fraud and immigration-related charges in South Africa.\n<\/p>\n
\n Friends and family members who sat in the mostly empty courtroom on Wednesday, said they think he is innocent.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We still believe strongly... that it is a (case of) mistaken identity,\" family friend Joseph Habinshuti, 53, told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n At a previous court appearance, Kayishema denied having anything to do with the massacre, telling a local journalist: \"There was a civil war in that time and people were killing each other... I didn't have any role.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The process to have Rwandan genocide suspect Fulgence Kayishema tried by a UN court was delayed on Wednesday, after a judge in South Africa, where the suspect was arrested, postponed a transfer hearing. Kayishema, who allegedly took part in one of the 1994 genocide's bloodiest episodes and was detained in May in a wine farm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-120889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n