UN helps deliver fugitive Rwandan genocide indictee to criminal court

2003 poster of fugitives wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

22 September 2009 – A high-level Rwandan rebel indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1994 genocide in the tiny Central African country has been handed over to the court after being arrested in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Grégoire Ndahimana, a high-level figure in the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), was arrested in eastern DRC by the Congolese Army on 10 August 2009, and handed over by the Congolese Government to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Sunday in a transfer facilitated by the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.

Mr. Ndahimana was one of 13 fugitives still at large out of the 81 people indicted by the ICTR for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda in 1994, when an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates were killed by Hutu militants, mainly by machete, during a period of less than 100 days.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the fugitive’s transfer, his spokesperson said in a statement.