Kabuga tops Most Wanted in Africa list

Rwanda’s Felicien Kabuga has been listed the most wanted man in Africa and the sixth in the world according to a list released on Friday by Forbes.com. According to Forbes Magazine, a franchise which usually publishes the list of the world’s richest people, it was forced to do a listing of the top wanted people in the world after it became apparent that the criminals oversee huge business empires that have enabled them to carry on with their heinous activities and evade capture. Uganda’s warlord Joseph Kony follows closely at number two in Africa and number nine in the world. He is also the poorest of the top 10 most wanted fugitives whose ill-gotten fortunes run into billions of dollars. The International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) issued an arrest warrant for Kabuga in 1999 for his alleged role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. It is alleged that Kabuga was one of the key financiers and organizers of the genocide in which over a million people were brutally massacred within a period of three months. Kabuga was last located in Kenya where he was running a wide range of businesses. Late last year, in its attempts to cooperate in the arrest of Kabuga, Kenya had his bank accounts and some property in the country frozen in an attempt to weaken his financial muscle which was believed to be aiding his eluding arrest. The US put a bounty of five million dollars on Kabuga’s head. The question remains; will the current ranking of Kabuga as Africa’s number one fugitive and the sixth in the world be of any help in his location and final arrest? In particular, Forbes was driven in to doing so after the second most wanted man in the world, Mexico’s drug lord Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman made it to the list of the new billionaires in 2008, highlighting the challenge of capturing moneyed criminals. Forbes.com says it consulted with law enforcement agencies in the US and around the world to identify the 10. But it adds that coming up with the list was a difficult matter since every country has its own most wanted person. In the first ever listing to be done by the magazine, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden still tops the list of the most wanted international criminals, more than a decade since the international community began the largest manhunt for him. Ends