Mbarushimana loses extradition appeal

A Rwandan man who faces Genocide charges yesterday lost his appeal against extradition from Denmark.The Copenhagen Court of Appeal upheld a lower court’s November ruling that found a justice ministry decision to extradite Emmanuel Mbarushimana legal.A schoolteacher, 50-year-old Mbarushimana, referred to in court documents as ‘A’, failed to prove that he would not receive a fair trial in Rwanda, the court said in a statement.“The extradition of ‘A’ would not represent an infringement of the minimum standard outlined by the European Convention on Human Rights,” the court added.The suspect, who claims he is innocent, has lived in Denmark for the past 12 years and has a wife and four children in the Scandinavian country.The Head of the Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit, John Bosco Siboyintore, welcomed the decision. The first instance court in November last year took a decision to extradite him and he immediately appealed against the ruling, his appeal has been rejected today. We will have to wait and see if he appeals again to the Supreme Court,” Siboyintore told The New Times.In 2008 and February 2012, Rwandan authorities asked Copenhagen to either extradite Mbarushimana or prosecute him.The Danish authorities decided to prosecute him, but discovered they could not press charges for genocide under Danish law. Instead they indicted him for murder.The Danish law has since changed to allow acts of genocide committed abroad to be prosecuted in Denmark, but the law cannot be applied retroactively.According to the Danish murder indictment, Mbarushimana gave orders to kill hundreds of ethnic Tutsi during the 1994 Genocide.He has fought both the extradition request from Rwanda and the Danish indictment.The Danish murder case has been postponed until June 2013, pending the outcome of the extradition case.Since he is now expected to be extradited, that case will likely not go ahead but it will ultimately be up to the prosecution to decide.If he is extradited, he will be the second Genocide suspect to be sent to Rwanda from Scandinavian countries after Charles Bandora, who lost battles against his extradition from Norway. He arrived in Kigali this month. More than one million people were killed in the Genocide.

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Mbarushimana loses extradition appeal