Kabuga’s death was announced by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the U.N. court responsible for remaining cases from the now-closed Rwanda and Balkan war crimes tribunals. The court said the Rwandan genocide suspect died on Thursday in a hospital in The Hague while in custody, bringing an end to one of the last high-profile fugitives sought in connection with the 1994 killings.
The mechanism said Kabuga, who was in his 90s, had been suffering from dementia. It also said he had been stuck in legal limbo since 2023, when judges ruled he was not fit to stand trial. In the years before that ruling, Kabuga was arrested after years of evading international efforts to locate him.
Kabuga was accused of encouraging and financing the mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority, and he was among the last people charged in connection with the 1994 genocide. According to the AP report, prosecutors said at the start of his trial that Kabuga was an enthusiastic supporter of the slaughter who armed, trained and encouraged Hutu militias known as Interahamwe.
The AP report said the case unfolded decades after the genocide that began with the April 6, 1994 downing of a plane carrying then-President Juvénal Habyarimana. Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was killed when his plane crashed in Kigali. The downing was followed by killings in which Tutsis and those perceived as supporters were targeted, with help from the army, police and militias.
At trial, prosecutors described Kabuga as a wealthy businessman with close links to Rwanda’s Hutu political elite who incited genocide through a radio station he helped fund and establish. The AP report said the station, RTLM, provided locations of Tutsis so they could be hunted down and killed, according to the prosecution’s description when the trial opened.
When the trial opened, a genocide survivor and writer, Yolande Mukakasana, told The Associated Press that the case had come too late for many survivors who have died since the slaughter. Mukakasana, who lost her entire family in the genocide, said: “Men and women of Kabuga’s age were found in bed and murdered. Shame (upon) his sympathizers who cite his old age as a reason not to (stand) trial.”
Kabuga had remained at a U.N. detention center after the trial was halted, the AP report said, in part because authorities failed to find a country willing to take him. The AP report also said Kabuga did not want to return to Rwanda, which offered to take him, out of fear he would be mistreated.
In a statement carried by AP, Kabuga’s lawyer, Emmanuel Altit, said: “A man whom international judges had themselves recognised as unfit to stand trial died in prison, although his continued deprivation of liberty no longer served any judicial purpose.” The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals said it would “conduct an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Kabuga while in custody.”
The AP report described Kabuga’s arrest as coming after he was tracked for years; he was arrested near Paris in May 2020. The trial began nearly three decades after the 1994 genocide left about 800,000 people dead, and Kabuga pleaded not guilty to charges that included genocide and incitement to commit genocide.
Kabuga’s daughter was married to Habyarimana’s son, the AP report said, underscoring the close ties that investigators alleged existed between Kabuga and Rwanda’s political elite before the killings began.