Security forces step up hunt for Kabuga

Security agencies have renewed the hunt for Rwanda genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga.

There are new leads indicating Kabuga, a wealthy businessman accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, could be hiding in Kenya.

Last month, US ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp said Kabuga was still in Kenya despite the government’s declarations to the contrary.

“We have intelligence indicating Kabuga is in Kenya,” Mr Rapp said while in Arusha, where he had gone to discuss the matter with officials of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Kabuga is the most wanted of 11 genocide suspects sought by the ICTR, with a $5 million or Sh390 million bounty on his head. He has been on the run for years since being indicted for his role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that claimed more than 800,000 lives.

The government has repeatedly denied claims that Kabuga, whose bank accounts have been frozen, is in Kenya, protected by powerful people in the former Moi government.

Powerful people

The Nation has learnt that international and local investigators have found new leads, which they are using to track down the fugitive believed to have been the main financier of the genocide.

Efforts to get a comment from police spokesman Erick Kiraithe were unsuccessful, even as the ICTR maintains that Kabuga is in Kenya so long as Kenyan authorities are unable to say when Kabuga left, through which border post and to what destination.

Kabuga, 75, was expelled from Switzerland in 1994, and spent some time in DR Congo before seeking refuge in Kenya, where he has dodged several attempts to arrest him.

In 1998, an ICTR team raided a Nairobi house allegedly rented from a nephew of the former president and found a note indicating that the fugitive, who escaped arrest, had been tipped off by police.

Kabuga was co-founder and chairman of the Fonds de Défense Nationale, through which he is accused of funding the interim Rwandan government to execute the genocide.

He is said to have given logistical support to the Interahamwe militia by providing weapons and uniforms as well as transport.

Last week, local and international security agents are said to have keenly followed the burial of a Rwandese national suspected to be related to the fugitive.