Felicien Kabuga, a suspect in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, has died in custody at age 93, the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) announced. The court said it has ordered an inquiry into the circumstances of his death.
Kabuga was accused of encouraging and financing the massacres that took place between April and June 1994, when Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus over roughly 100 days. The killings were triggered after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994. Kabuga had been a close ally of Habyarimana and his party.
For more than two decades Kabuga remained on the run, using false passports and relying on a network of supporters. An arrest warrant was issued in 2013 and a $5 million bounty was offered. He was arrested in France in 2020 and extradited to The Hague, where his trial began in 2022.
Prosecutors charged Kabuga with genocide, incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, persecution, extermination and murder. They accused him of being a driving force behind the extremist radio station Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which broadcast calls for violence against Tutsis. Kabuga pleaded not guilty.
During the proceedings, judges ruled him unfit to stand trial because of dementia. That decision angered many genocide survivors in Rwanda, who felt his alleged role warranted a full trial and the maximum sentence. Kabuga was also deemed too ill to be returned to Rwanda; with no country willing to accept him, he remained at the UN detention center in The Hague.
The IRMCT said it would investigate how he died. Further details about the inquiry and the cause of death have not been released.