RWANDAN GENOCIDE SUSPECT ARRESTED IN FRANCE

    Paris, 6 Ramadan 1434/14 July 2013 (MINA) – A former Rwandan colonel, Laurent Serubuga wanted for involvement in the 1994 genocide in the East African country has been arrested in France.

     Serubuga was arrested near the northern French city of Cambrai on Thursday under an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda, lawyer Thierry Massis said on Saturday, Press TV quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

    A hearing for the 75-year-old has been scheduled for next Thursday, but it might be postponed to a later date, Massis added.

    During the Rwandan genocide, which occurred from April to July 1994, Serubuga was a deputy chief of staff of the army.

      The head of the Rwandan victims’ group CPCR, Alain Gauthier, said the arrest was “excellent news.”

    “Colonel Serubuga had as much responsibility in the genocide as colonel (Theoneste) Bagosora,” Gauthier stated.

      In 2011, Bagosora, described as the mastermind of the genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

    On July 9, Dutch police also detained a suspected Rwandan Hutu militia leader after a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of being involved in the Rwandan genocide was issued. However, he has not yet been identified by name.

    Officials said that he was suspected of involvement in a massacre that left 2,000 Rwandans dead near the Ecole Technique Officielle (ETO) school in Kigali on April 11, 1994.

     On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down. Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the plane crash.

      The Rwandan genocide, in which about 800,000 to one million people, mainly Tutsis, were killed, began after the crash, when Hutus were incited to commit acts of ethnic violence against Tutsis.

      All of the details of the double assassination have never come out and investigations continue to this day.

      The genocide of 1994 lasted approximately 100 days and hence is called the “100 Days of Hell.” (T/P09/E1).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).