Kabuga: Who's fooling who?

There was a time in the past when news circulated in Kenya that Felicien Kabuga, the most wanted Rwandan Genocide fugitive, had been arrested and detained at the Gigiri Police Station in Nairobi. Media reports said that Kabuga had been arrrested at an undisclosed location in Nairobi. At one time, Kenya’s new immigration minister had reportedly cancelled Kabuga’s Kenyan diplomatic passport. At another point, the editor of Norwegian-based African Press International told a Kenyan newspaper that he had interviewed Kabuga in an Oslo hotel room. Editor Sammy Kipterer Korir said that he’d been invited to the hotel by a friend from Sudan to meet Kabuga. The Kenyan government has in the past been labeled a stumbling block to efforts to apprehend Kabuga, a claim Nairobi has denied repeatedly. The fugitive has a whopping $5million (Frw2.8billion) bounty on his head. Kabuga was an influential businessman who used his wealth to help the Interahamwe, the violent Hutu militia who massacred nearly one million Tutsis in 1994. Kabuga reportedly purchased machetes, hoes and other agricultural tools for the Interahamwe, fully aware that they would be used to hack men, women and children to death. A Nairobi newspaper, The Standard, reported last week that the country’s parliament had allowed a ministry to investigate whether Kabuga resides in Kenya. Reports have been persistent that Kabuga had at one time resided and transacted business in Kenya. The columnist’s view is that one cannot independently tell whether Kabuga is in Kenya or Democratic Republic of Congo. But Nairobi has a task to clear the air about Kabuga. The 1998 indictment by International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda indicates Kabuga was the main supporter and financier of the Interahamwe militia, responsible for the 1994 Genocide. According to the ICTR agreement with regional member countries, there is an international obligation of all states to cooperate with the tribunal in bringing the genocide suspects to justice. Contact: Ssuuna2000@yahoo.co.uk