Fugitive Captured!

Taken from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/africa/07rwanda.html?_r=2&hp

October 7, 2009
Rwandan Fugitive Is Captured in Uganda

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — One of the most wanted fugitives from Rwanda’s genocide, an intelligence officer accused of organizing the slaughter of civilians, including a ceremonial queen, was arrested in Uganda this week, Ugandan and Rwandan officials said Tuesday.

The fugitive, Idelphonse Nizeyimana, had been on the run for years. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2000 and charged with crimes against humanity and offenses related to genocide for orchestrating massacres of civilians, including whole families. He had been an intelligence officer in the former Rwandan Army and was the second in command of an elite military school in Rwanda before the country exploded in genocide in 1994.

More recently, Mr. Nizeyimana was a top commander of a rebel army of former Rwandan soldiers hiding out in the forests of eastern Congo, Rwandan officials said. That force, the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, or FDLR, has been blamed for some of the most atrocious attacks in eastern Congo and is widely seen as a threat to regional peace.

Eric Kayiranga, a Rwandan police spokesman, said Mr. Nizeyimana was arrested in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, on Monday, though he did not have many details about the capture. According to the BBC, Mr. Nizeyimana was trying to travel to Kenya from Congo and was caught in Uganda with false papers.

“This guy was causing terror in Congo, and he was a threat to the region,” Mr. Kayiranga said. “His arrest is a success.”

The most notorious accusation against Mr. Nizeyimana was that he ordered a squad of soldiers to kidnap and execute a ceremonial Tutsi queen who was believed to be in her 80s at the beginning of the genocide in 1994. Local Rwandan courts have already convicted and punished several other men who were part of that killing.

Officials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is located in Arusha, Tanzania, said Mr. Nizeyimana would be extradited from Uganda to the tribunal, where he would stand trial. Already 47 of the genocide’s ringleaders, “the big fish,” as they are called in Tanzania, have been prosecuted at the tribunal, with all but a handful found guilty.

According to tribunal officials, Mr. Nizeyimana was one of the top four genocide suspects still on the run.