Philippe Hategekimana, alias Biguma, a Genocide fugitive who has been living in Yaoundé, Cameroon has been arrested.
Philippe Hategekimana, alias Biguma, a Genocide fugitive who has been living in Yaoundé, Cameroon has been arrested on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by French authorities, it has emerged.
Since his naturalisation as a French citizen, Hategekimana has been living under the name Philippe Manier, according to media reports.
An investigation was opened against him in Paris in September 2015 after a complaint was filed by a pressure group accusing him of having participated in massacres at Nyamure Hill in south of Rwanda massacre during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
A former chief warrant officer in the current Nyanza District Southern Province, Hategekimana is believed to have organised and participated in several massacres in April 1994, such as the assassination of the area’s bourgmestre (mayor) and several large-scale massacres committed in the former Butare prefecture.
After the Genocide, Philippe Hategekimana fled and domiciled in the French northwestern city of Rennes but sources in France suggest he later went into hiding in Cameroon where he was arrested.
The development comes just two days before the start of the 24th commemoration of the Genocide, which claimed more than a million lives in a space of 100 days.