Arrested Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga has told a French court that the international charges against him are lies, affirming his innocence at the resumed hearing on Wednesday.
Asked if he understood the charges made against him by a United Nations tribunal, Kabuga dismissed the chargesheet as full of “lies”.
“All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them”, Kabuga told the court through an interpreter.
Kabuga, who was arrested near Paris earlier this month after more than two decades on the run, is accused of financing and arming the ethnic Hutu militia that slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
France has not disclosed when and how Kabuga who had a $5m US reward on his head, entered France.
“Since 1994, Felicien Kabuga, accused of being a financier of Rwandan genocide, had stayed in Germany, Belgium, Congo-Kinshasa, Kenya, or Switzerland,” a French justice ministry statement said.
His ability to hide to evade an international manhunt for more than 20 years has raised questions over whether he had accomplices in foreign countries.
“It is difficult to imagine he could have escaped into French territory without the help of accomplices in such places,” Patrick Baudoin of the International Federation for Human Rights said.
The International Federation for Human Rights has supported survivors in the prosecution of other Rwandan genocide suspects living in France.