Félicien Kabuga, who is suspected of war crimes in Rwanda, will not be convicted. This is evident from a Wednesday by the International Criminal Court published decision. The tribunal rules that Kabuga, now 89 years old, would be unfit to stand trial, leaving only a streamlined legal process against him. It is not yet clear what exactly that procedure entails.
The court now rules that Kabuga is no longer able to participate meaningfully in his trial. According to the tribunal, it is “unlikely that he will be back in shape in the future”. Instead of stopping the trial, the judges are opting for an “alternative finding procedure that is as close as possible to a trial, but without the possibility of a conviction,” their decision reads on the website.
The former businessman is charged with genocide, incitement and conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Kabuga, once one of Rwanda’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, is said to have used his fortune and networks to create massacres. He is said to have been associated with the Interahamwe, a militia affiliated with the ruling party that hunted down and slaughtered Tutsi men, women and children. In addition, as the big man behind the radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, he would have incited people to search houses and indicated areas to be attacked.
Between April and July 1994, Hutu political and military extremists orchestrated the murder of about three-quarters of Rwanda’s Tutsi population. Between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans died in 100 days. Kabuga was arrested in the French capital Paris in 2020 after twenty years on the run and would be one of the last suspects to be prosecuted for his part in the 1994 genocide.
Read also: Main suspect of the Rwandan genocide lived inconspicuously in a Parisian suburb