Rwandan genocide suspect’s 23-year run ends

PARIS — One of the mostwanted fugitives of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, accused of financing the slaughter of as many as 1 million people, mostly Tutsis, was arrested in a Paris suburb early Saturday, the French police said, ending a decadeslong international hunt.

The fugitive, Félicien Kabuga, 84, had been on the run for 23 years since he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on multiple charges of genocide, ranging from importing machetes and hoes knowing they would be used for murder to running the radio station used to fan hatred of Rwanda’s Tutsi population.

He was captured at 7 a.m. at a home rented by a relative in Asniéres-sur-Seine, outside Paris, where he had been staying under a false identity, officials said. His capture, after a search that stretched across continents, is considered the most important arrest by an international tribunal since the apprehension in 2011 of Gen. Ratko Mladic. Kabuga, a millionaire businessman, is accused of being the main financier and logistical backer of the political and militia groups that committed the genocide.

During a bloody rampage against the Tutsi minority that lasted four months, Hutu soldiers and militia gunmen killed between 800,000 and 1 million men, women and children, according to the tribunal.

Believed to have been one of the richest and most powerful men in Rwanda before the genocide, Kabuga is charged with using his fortune to fund and organize the notorious Interahamwe militia, which carried out the brunt of the slaughter, often by hacking people to death.