Captured fugitive denies financing Rwanda’s genocide

PARIS - The man accused of financing the Rwandan genocide has denied playing a role in the massacres. “All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them,” Félicien Kabuga told a French court during a bail hearing. The 84-year-old businessman was arrested earlier this month in a suburb in Paris after 26 years on the run. He is alleged to have backed and armed ethnic Hutu militias who slaughtered about 800, 000 people in 1994. Kabuga also founded and funded the notorious Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan broadcaster that actively encouraged people to search out and kill anyone who was from the Tutsi ethnic group. In 1997 he was indicted by The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on seven counts including with genocide and crimes against humanity. His lawyers argue that Kabuga, who was detained in a dawn raid on May 16 in the suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine where he had been living under a false identity, should be tried in France instead of being transferred. Kabuga’s denial in court, made in Kinyarwanda and translated by an interpreter, were his first public comments in more than a quarter of century. Police say during this time he used 28 aliases to evade capture. The court rejected a request to release Kabuga on the grounds of age and ill health as prosecutors said the octogenarian was a flight risk. It will rule on the extradition request on June. 3.