The lawyer for Félicien Kabuga – one of the world’s most wanted men for his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide – wants him to be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) rather than at a UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania.
The comment by Emmanuel Altit, Kabuga’s lawyer, comes a day after Court of Cassation in Paris, France backed a decision to send him to East Africa.
Altit said sending Kabuga to the Tanzanian court could be a “violation of his rights” “considering the global pandemic, his health and age”.
Mr Kabuga is alleged to have funnelled money to militia groups as chairman of the national defence fund. In May, he described these accusations as “lies”.
France’s extradition law says that Mr Kabuga now needs to be transferred within one month.
Mr Alit for his part says he will ask the court in Arusha to send the case to The Hague, Netherlands.
Kabuga was arrested in his home outside Paris after 26 years on the run. He has lived under a false name all this time. He outwitted prosecutors of the Rwandan genocide tribunal for more than two-and-a-half decades by using 28 aliases and powerful connections across two continents to evade capture.
The 84-year-old has been on the run for so long that the international tribunal set up to bring to justice those responsible for the 1994 genocide had ceased to work.
Kabuga, born in 1933 or 1935, was a wealthy businessman at the time of the atrocities in which more than 800,000 people were killed in the Hutu-Tutsi Rwandan Genocide.
