It’s a win against genocide

The long search for fugitive Felicien Kabuga, the suspected key financier of the 11994 Genocide against the Tutsi, in which 800,000 innocent people were slaughtered in Rwanda, has finally ended with his capture in a most unlikely location.

While fingers have been pointed at Kenya for years, with top government officials suspected of hiding him, Kabuga has all along been ensconced in Paris. This is the last place the international search for the suspect could have zeroed in.

But Kabuga can now have his day in court. When he appears before the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) at The Hague, the Netherlands, the world will know whether he really incited ethnic hate and finance the genocide, including by import the machetes that the Interahamwe militia, whom he is alleged to have funded, used to slash to death people whose only crime was belonging to minority community. Some of his fellow Hutus were also butchered for simply refusing to be drawn into the callous crime and also sheltering victims.

The big lesson from this is that the long arm of the law always finally wraps its fingers around the culprit. It also confirms that you can run but you cannot hide.

It has taken exactly 26 years to bring to book the suspected mastermind of one of the worst massacres in history. It is a vote of confidence in the international co-operation to defeat perpetrators of heinous crimes.
Kabuga’s capture is a triumph also for Kenya, whose image had been soiled for allegedly conniving to enable criminals to escape justice. It’s also an opportunity for the family of a journalist who was killed as he tried to help apprehend the fugitive, to finally see justice done. It is also a closure of sorts for a Kenyan who suffered for a mere resemblance.