Rwanda’s most wanted genocide suspect arrested after 22 years on the run

One of the world’s most wanted genocide fugitives, Fulgence Kayishema, has been arrested in South Africa after being on the run for 22 years, a special tribunal set up by the United Nations said Thursday.

 

 

According to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Kayishema was arrested Wednesday in Paarl, a small town in a wine-making region about 30 miles east of Cape Town, South Africa.

Kayishema, who is believed to be in his early 60s, had assumed a false identity and gone by the name Donatien Nibashumba.

According to CNN, the tribunal disclosed that he was captured in a joint operation by the tribunal’s fugitive tracking team and South African authorities.

 

 

The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Kayishema’s arrest through its Rewards for Justice program.

More than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda’s genocide, which took place over the course of three months in 1994 when members of the Hutu ethnic group turned on the minority Tutsis, slaughtering them.

The tribunal said Kayishema was indicted by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity for killings and other crimes and had been at large since 2001.

 

South African police said he would appear in a courtroom in Cape Town on Friday before likely being extradited to Rwanda.