South African police last week ùfinally arrested genocide mastermind Fulgence Kayishema who has been on the run for the past 29 years, having fled the country after committing the Genocide against the Tutsi. He is specifically responsible for atrocities in the former Kibuye Prefecture, which is now part of Western Province. For the past five years, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (IRMICT) has maintained that Kayishema was living in South Africa and that they had not received any help from the host country towards apprehending him. ALSO READ: ICTR hands over Kayishema’s files Kayishema, a head of the judicial police in what was then called Kavumu Commune in Kibuye during the Genocide, has lived in South Africa since 1999 using different identities and nationalities including at some point disguising as a Burundian asylum seeker. All this time, he banked on his connections with a well-established network of genocide fugitives and agents of a genocide militia FDLR that is well anchored in southern Africa sub-region to avoid capture, despite an arrest warrant by a UN court. ALSO READ: Why is Malawi Shielding Genocide Fugitives? He also features on the Reward for Justice programme under the US State Department which put a $5 million bounty on his head for information that could lead to his capture. The fact that he was successfully protected by this network which also closely operates with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a terror group that operates in the DR Congo, does not come as a surprise. For decades, different countries in this sub-region have harboured these genocidaires, despite the indictments against them that have been issued by the government of Rwanda through the National Public Prosecution Authority. This then serves as a reminder to our fellow African countries in southern Africa that it is not too late for them to act on the dozens of indictments that are gathering dust in offices of their judicial organs. As fellow Africans they must set the pace for countries on other continents with regards to bringing to book these fugitives who are responsible for the death of over a million people in 1994. Needless to say is the fact that keeping these people in their communities where they continue to mobilise funds and other resources for the FDLR, which was founded by the same perpetrators of the Genocide against the Tutsi, pauses great danger to them. Finally, the IRMICT should now work with the authorities in South Africa to ensure Kayishema is within reasonable time transferred to Rwanda to face trial, after his file was handed to Rwanda by the ICTR, the mechanism’s precursor as part of its completion strategy. Survivors, especially the few who managed to escape the massacre at Nyange Catholic Church where Kayishema commandeered the death of over 2000 Tutsis, cannot wait to finally see justice being served.
