A French court on Wednesday, June 3, ruled that suspected genocide mastermind Félicien Kabuga be transferred, from France to the custody of the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (RMICT), for trial. The ruling came after the request for bail by the former businessman was turned down by a French court on May 27. Kabuga last appeared in court on Wednesday, May 27, a week after his lawyers were granted more time to prepare their case. On Wednesday, Richard Gisagara, a Rwandan lawyer based in France who is following up on the case, told The New Times that: The court rejected all of his (Kabugas) pleas. The court (Paris Court of Appeal) then ruled that he be handed over to the Mechanism. I think he is now going to appeal to another court, the Cour de Cassation. Just last week, William Sekule, the duty judge at the Arusha branch of the Mechanism ruled that Kabuga will be transferred to Arusha, Tanzania once conditions allow. The Mechanism’s prosecutor had filed an urgent motion seeking the temporary transfer of Kabuga to The Hague citing the ongoing Covid-19 crisis which has temporarily halted air travel. However, Sekule ruled that there was no need for the temporary transfer even before the suspect exhausts the ongoing process on extradition in French courts. Kabuga has opposed his extradition and wants to be tried but in France. Earlier, Gisagara noted that the judicial proceedings in France could take a few months before a decision is made. After his interrogation by prosecution last month, Kabuga also made his first court appearance in the Paris Court of Appeal, on May 20. He was indicted by the now-defunct United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in 1997. He was indicted on seven counts of genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, persecution and extermination, all in relation to crimes committed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, in Rwanda.
