\n When Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga was arrested at his home on the outskirts of Paris in mid-May, it marked an abrupt end to a quarter of a century on the run.\n<\/p>\n
\n Without the coronavirus pandemic, which forced his children out of the shadows to help the octogenarian, the man with a five-million-dollar bounty on his head might never have been found.\n<\/p>\n
\n At dawn on May 16, French police entered a modern five-storey apartment block in the eastern Paris suburb of Asnieres-sur-Seine.\n<\/p>\n
\n On the third floor, they broke down the door and burst in to find one of the suspect's sons, Donatien Nshimyumuremyi.\n<\/p>\n
\n Next to him was an elderly man with a scar on his neck -- an identifiable feature of Felicien Kabuga.\n<\/p>\n
\n A DNA test confirmed they had detained the man accused of financing the 1994 genocide during which 800,000 people were slaughtered over 100 days.\n<\/p>\n
\n The businessman had been living in France under a false name for at least four years, said a source close to the case who asked not to be named.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kabuga, who officials say is 84 but proclaims to be 87, was taken to hospital several times between 2016 and 2019.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was treated under the name Antoine Tounga, assisted by his daughter who served as his interpreter.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Children's help -\n<\/p>\n
\n Kabuga's children helped him repeatedly during his time on the run, but it is through them that French, Belgian and British police eventually tracked him down.\n<\/p>\n
\n European police forces lost his trace in 2007, when they failed to arrest him in Germany where he was treated for a throat tumour.\n<\/p>\n
\n When Kabuga's wife Josephine Mukazitoni died ten years later in Belgium, investigators closely watched the funeral.\n<\/p>\n
\n But he didn't show up.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Several times we had leads about his presence in France. We tried to arrest him in Paris on Christmas Eve a couple of years ago, but without any success,\" a police source who used to work on the case told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n But in March 2020, the French police received another lead.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to their British colleagues, Kabuga's daughter, who lives in London, was in touch with him and regularly visited a Parisian suburb.\n<\/p>\n
\n Using the daughter's GPS location, the police tracked her movements between the UK and France at the height of the coronavirus pandemic when much of Europe was in lockdown.\n<\/p>\n
\n Several weeks later, the suspect's flat was identified through the matching of the daughter's GPS data with that of her brothers and sisters who also regularly visited.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"His dependency and the lockdown forced his children to reveal themselves,\" said a person with knowledge of the case, who requested anonymity.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Protection money -\n<\/p>\n
\n Kabuga's children weren't his only helpers. Once one of Rwanda's richest men, his fortune appears to have helped him buy his protection.\n<\/p>\n
\n The organization Rwandan Community of France (CRF) has asked prosecutors to open an investigation to identify those who assisted him whilst he was on the run.\n<\/p>\n
\n His flight from justice began in July 1994, when he reached Switzerland. Deported to the Democratic Republic of Congo, known then as Zaire, he moved on to Kenya.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kabuga was indicted in 1997 by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on seven counts, including genocide.\n<\/p>\n
\n Between 1997 and 2006, he avoided at least three arrest attempts.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2002, the American government published a photograph of Kabuga in the Kenyan press, offering a five-million-dollar reward for any information leading to his arrest.\n<\/p>\n
\n After Kabuga's treatment in a German hospital in 2007, the US believed he had returned to Kenya.\n<\/p>\n
\n Relations between the two countries turned sour as the US accused Kenya of refusing to cooperate.\n<\/p>\n
\n But it now appears possible that Kabuga never returned to Africa after his operation in Germany.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kabuga is expected to stand trial at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in Tanzania, after a French appeals court gave its green light for his extradition on Wednesday.\n<\/p>\n
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When Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga was arrested at his home on the outskirts of Paris in mid-May, it marked an abrupt end to a quarter of a century on the run. Without the coronavirus pandemic, which forced his children out of the shadows to help the octogenarian, the man with a five-million-dollar bounty on […]<\/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-44481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n