Felicien Kabuga, a suspect in the Rwandan genocide, cannot be tried, according to judges at a United Nations war crimes court in The Hague.
Kabuga, who authorities estimate to be 88 but who asserts to be 90, had been hiding out and avoiding capture for decades. In May 2020, he was detained at his Paris residence before being transferred to The Hague, where he pleaded not guilty.
He was put on trial in September of last year, but at the beginning of his trial, he refused to show up in person or virtually. He is in a wheelchair at the court’s custody facility, where he has watched the proceedings on video. The court put the trial on hold in March this year over health concerns.
“The trial chamber finds Kabuga is no longer capable of meaningful participation in his trial,” a decision published on Wednesday by the court said.
The former businessman, who gained his money in the tea business, is one of the last people the tribunal investigating the 1994 genocide, in which Hutu fighters from the governing majority massacred more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates in 100 days, is looking for.
His radio station, Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM), is accused of broadcasting hate speech and supporting Hutu militias.
When Kabuga started a radio station that “broadcast genocidal propaganda across Rwanda” in September 2022, the UN prosecutor Rashid Rashid claimed in his opening statement that he did not need to pick up a microphone himself to call for the massacre of Tutsis.
The charges of genocide, according to the prosecution, included both killings and rapes and sexual assaults. They said that RTLM broadcasts urged Hutus to “taste” Tutsi women.
He was also charged with providing machetes to Hutu killing squads. Kabuga has refuted these allegations.
