France-based group sues another genocide fugitive

KIGALI - The Paris-based umbrella organisation - “Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda” (CPCR), which advocates for the rights of the 1994 Genocide survivors, has sued another genocide fugitive living in France. Reports from Rouen, Northern France, indicate that Dr. Charles Twagira, a Rwandan working in France, has been accused of having been behind several massacres during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

KIGALI - The Paris-based umbrella organisation - "Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda” (CPCR), which advocates for the rights of the 1994 Genocide survivors, has sued another genocide fugitive living in France.

Reports from Rouen, Northern France, indicate that Dr. Charles Twagira, a Rwandan working in France, has been accused of having been behind several massacres during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The case against Twagira was filed by the CPCR on Friday, just two days before Rwanda and France made public their plans to start working on a path towards reinstating relations after a three-year thaw.

Recently, Eugene Rwamucyo, another suspected genocide-fugitive working as doctor in a hospital in northern France was suspended from his job but is said now to be roaming free in neighbouring Belgium.

Twagira who is accused of various counts of "Genocide, Complicity in Genocide and Complicity in crimes against humanity,” works at a hospital in the city of Rouen and was recently naturalised as a French citizen.

During the Genocide, Twagira worked as a regional health director in former Kibuye, western Rwanda, where he allegedly ordered the killing of tens of thousands of people, especially in the hospital that he managed.

Meanwhile, the CPCR said it was waiting anxiously to see what happens to former First Lady Agatha Kanziga Habyarimana after French courts recently threw out her appeal for asylum.

The group fears that if extradited to another country, she might escape justice.

The former First Lady, is accused of having been among the key architects of the 1994 Genocide, having been a core member of an extremist cell – ‘Akazu’.

Ends