Rwandan genocide suspect Kabuga, 93, dies in UN custody

The United Nations court announced that Felicien Kabuga, a suspect in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, died in custody.

He was 93 years old.

Kabuga was arrested in France and extradited to The Hague in 2020 after being on the run for more than two decades.

He was ruled unfit to stand trial in 2023 due to dementia and was also deemed too ill to return to Rwanda.

With no country willing to accept him, Kabuga remained in the UN detention center in The Hague.

The court said it had ordered an investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death.

The court said Kabuga died while being hospitalized in The Hague.

The former businessman and radio station owner was among the latest fugitives wanted for the genocide in which Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

Prosecutors accused Kabuga of promoting hate speech and helping arm ethnic Hutu militias through his broadcaster Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines.

The court that announced his death, the International Criminal Tribunals Mechanism, is hearing the remaining cases of the former UN tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

The Rwandan genocide was triggered on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying then-president Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down and crashed in the capital Kigali, killing the leader, who, like the majority of Rwandans, was an ethnic Hutu.

Kabuga’s daughter married Habyarimana’s son.

with AP