It has been 14 years since the Genocide Fugitives Tracking Unit (GFTU) was created as a unit in the National Public Prosecution Authority. Its mandate was to track people responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, so they can face justice. The initial act by the unit was to work the sources and come up with indictments of all the fugitives and where they were. The list, which was progressively improved and it ended up with 1,146 fugitives scattered in at least 33 countries on different continents. The team contacted all the host countries and handed them the indictments with an option of arresting these mass murders and either extradite them to Rwanda for trial or domestically try them. Fast-forward to 2021, only 46 of these fugitives have been arrested and processed through courts, as announced last week by the head GFTU during a training of parliamentarians on the convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This means that 1,100 indicted fugitives are still at large. Besides these, there are others who were tried and convicted in absentia by Rwandan courts, especially the semi-traditional courts, Gacaca, who have never been found to serve their sentences. Among the reasons why the small number of arrests as stated by prosecutors is the use of political cover by these fugitives to continue evading justice. They claim to be in opposition politics and therefore an attempt to bring them to book is seen as an attack on political opponents. Some of those countries are in cahoots with the fugitives for different reasons and are covering for them to ensure they remain out of reach of the long arm of justice. It is a travesty of justice that countries allow these mass murders to use politics to evade accountability for the crimes they committed in Rwanda. It is even more disturbing that majority of these fugitives are in Africa, more so within the Great Lakes Region. It is imperative that these countries play their role as prescribed under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to bring the fugitives to book. Much as the crime of Genocide is imprescriptible in nature and therefore not bound by the statute of limitation, the time is running out and therefore they are growing old and may therefore not live long enough to have their day in court.
