Fugitives 2012

As Rwanda celebrated 50 years as an independent Republic and marked the 18th anniversary of liberation day last week, fugitives from Rwandan and International justice were making headlines of their own. A sober reminder of the dark places this country has been in. On Thursday last week, genocidaire troubleshooter [his diploma in Human Rights notwithstanding], Thadee Kwitonda, was arrested in Kampala.Kwitonda has shown a certain appetite for living dangerously [or perhaps taunting his pursuers?] having spent some time at the ICTR as an investigator on the defence team of Arsene Shalom Ntahobali. To illustrate how brazen this is [on a lower crime scale], imagine a wanted carjacker confidently walking into a courtroom to sit at the defence table of an accused armed robber. He then disappeared for a few years and re-appeared in Kampala as a Belgian national named John Tumwesigye, probably on the run from the law in Belgium where he is wanted for crimes of genocide. Interestingly, when he was arrested, his Belgian passport had expired only three days earlier. How, he intended to travel out of Uganda with an invalid passport, is yet another unanswered question. Disappointingly, he is being deported to Belgium for violation of immigration laws in Uganda [the expired passport didn’t help] instead of Rwanda due to his newly-found Belgian nationality. It was not an ideal result; he should have been sent back to Rwanda, but at the very least, he will have to answer for his crimes of genocide. In the meantime, Felicien Kabuga is doing the old Nazi war criminal thing – using his money to buy freedom but without the imagination to hide in South America. The financier of mass murder lives, is in good health and still appears to be protected by some elements of the Kenyan military and intelligence services. At least according to an account given by The Nation yesterday. It makes for uncomfortable reading for the Kenyan government which has insisted that Kabuga is not on their territory. Of course it is entirely possible that a man who can finance a large part of a genocide, would find it relatively easy to bribe a few officials into protecting him. And, if the article is to be believed, killing for him. The paper claimed that a soldier protecting Kabuga went the way of a journalist who had tried to out him to the Americans, the express train to the grave. I have an idea. Someone should make a fancy youtube video and call on people to hunt down Kabuga. We could call it ‘FK2012’ and tell viewers that they do not need to buy any merchandise, find him and you could win $5,000,000. If you’re one of those violence desensitised viewers who is not moved by the fact that Kabuga financed extermination, you may be persuaded into action by good old profit motive. It’s a hard day when the idea of vigilantism seems appealing but it’s an affront to the very notion of justice that Kabuga is a free man in our very own region.