The decision by the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague that genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga is “unfit to stand trial” due to deteriorating health conditions was shocking to Rwandans.

 

Survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi were especially shocked that the main genocide financer will not be held responsible for the crimes of genocide against the Tutsi. Kabuga, who earlier had a $5 million bounty on his head, was one of the most wanted genocide suspect. To be released without trial is abrogation of justice.

 

It is as if someone, behind the scenes, prepared a script with details of how the most wanted genocide suspect would be dramatically arrested after almost three decades on the run, and how his release would later be played out so that he is not judged for having played a key role in planning and financing the genocide against the Tutsi.

 

Kabuga is not the first suspect to be deemed “not fit to stand trial” in criminal justice either genuinely or by faking illness. For a person who has been on the run for close to three decades and changing identity, after capture, faking illness would be the expected last resort to evade justice. 

 

The case of Kabuga resembles that of Vincent Gigante, popularly known as “The Oddfather” in New York and American history, as one of the most dangerous mafia bosses who feigned insanity for more than three decades to avoid jail.  

 

Gigante wandered around Greenwich Village in his pajamas and bathrobe, talking to parking meters, and urinating in the street. Psychologists and other mental health professionals falsely attested to Gigante’s condition, claiming that he had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals more than two dozen times between 1969 and 1995.

 

Gillian Mezey, a professor of forensic psychiatry at St George's University Hospitals in the UK, said that  Kabuga is not fit to plead, understand evidence, and meaningfully participate in a court hearing.

 

Vincent was a rich man whose criminal enterprise brought in around $100 million a year.

 

He bribed his way into feigning madness.

 

Kabuga was also a wealthy businessman man who used his money to finance genocide and bribed his way to evade arrest, and when it came, it played out like a movie script.

 

 Kabuga’s arrest in 2020 in a Paris Suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine on the third floor in an apartment where he lived under a false identity mimicked a scene of a Holly Wood movie. French authorities dramatised his arrest; making it look like he had outwitted UN prosecutors for decades by using 28 aliases and powerful connections across two continents, as well as his children, to evade capture.

 

Kabuga is known to have at least five children, with two of his daughters married to sons of the genocidal regime’s president, Juvenal Habyarimana. In just 100 days, in 1994, Habyarimana’s regime, aided by genocide ideologues like Kabuga, massacred more than one million Tutsi in Rwanda.

 

When he was arrested, it was hard to believe that for so many years, one of the most wanted fugitives in the world managed to live in subterfuge and evade law enforcement across Europe.

 

Security experts opine that it is hard to believe that the arrest of Kabuga happened as a surprise to French authorities. Similarly, Kabuga’s release is cloudy and as suspect as his arrest.  

 

The trial of facts is a process that takes the place of a criminal trial, with a hearing to determine whether an accused committed the crimes for which an indictment is issued. Although the trial of facts does not result in a conviction, in the case of Kabuga, it would be important to determine his role and responsibility in financing and supporting the genocide against the Tutsi. Otherwise, his release without determining responsibility leaves Kabuga an innocent man, hence setting a dangerous precedent regarding providing justice for the victims of the genocide against the Tutsi.

 

There is enough evidence, for example, to prove that Kabuga was the driving force and main shareholder of the hate radio - Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which urged Interahamwe militia to hunt and kill the Tutsi with machetes.

 

This is a provable fact whether Kabuga is dead or alive and, therefore, his incapacity to stand trial cannot stop the court from making a conclusion on the matter based on available facts and evidence.

 

The court has documents showing the names of shareholders in RTLM and the amount of shares they held. These are facts that can be proved beyond reasonable doubt and do not require Kabuga to make a personal plea. Another fact that can be looked at relates to the motive of Kabuga declining to face trial to address charges against him, but decides to hide for decades under false identity. Why would he evade justice and change his identity knowing that he is innocent?

 

The determination of these facts by the court would provide relief and justice to millions of Rwandans, who believe that if Kabuga did not sponsor RTLM and use his wealth to bankroll genocide, the victims of the genocide against the Tutsi would not have reached more than one million people. Radio RTLM amplified the hate and hunt for the Tutsi to be killed.   

 

For the Appeals Chambers’ judges in The Hague to reject a request by prosecutors for a “trial of facts,” which provides an alternative procedure, is simply an abrogation of justice.

 

It is a conspiracy to shield genocide suspects at the expense of justice for genocide survivors.