Rwandan Fugitive Accused Of Killing 2 000 In Church Arrested
Rwandan fugitive Ukiliho Kayishema Fulgence has been captured in South Africa.
Kayishema, who was one of four remaining fugitives from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, was arrested in South Africa on Wednesday.
He is expected to face trial in Rwanda.
BBC reported that the former police inspector, who was born in 1961, was charged in 2001 over the killing of more than 2 000 Tutsi men, women and children inside a Catholic church where they had sought refuge.
According to the indictment by UN prosecutors, Kayishema directly participated in the planning and execution of a massacre of refugees hiding at the Nyange church in Kivumu, Kibuye prefecture, on 15 April 1994.
Kayishema, born in 1961, and others allegedly tried to burn the church down with the refugees inside.
When this failed, they bulldozed it, burying and killing all those hiding there.
The corpses of the victims were then buried in mass graves.
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), which is based in The Hague, welcomed Kayishema’s arrest.
Kayishema was arrested by a South African elite police unit at a grape farm in Paarl, in Western Cape province.
He had been living under the false name of Donatien Nibashumba.
Kayishema made a first appearance in the Cape Town Magistrates Court on Friday.
The charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity have been brought against him.
South African NPA spokesperson, Eric Ntabazalila, outside court said Kayishema also faces a charge of fraud. He said:
In January 2000, when he applied for asylum, he gave the wrong name indicating that he was from Burundi and then the one relating to the second charge of fraud, it’s when he was applying for refugee status in 2004 and he used the same names and claimed that he’s from Burundi.
Some 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the Rwandan genocide.
More: Pindula News
