PARIS, France
France's top appeals court ruled Wednesday that alleged Rwandan genocide financier Felicien Kabuga should be transferred to a UN tribunal in Tanzania to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Kabuga, arrested near
Paris in May after 25 years on the run, had asked to face justice in
France. But the Court of Cassation ruled there was no legal or medical obstacle
to executing an international warrant for Kabuga's transfer to the Arusha-based
tribunal.
He will be tried for his alleged role in the
1994 Rwanda genocide of some 800,000 people by Hutu extremists targeting minority
Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Once one of Rwanda's richest men, Kabuga is
alleged to have funnelled money to militia groups as chairman of the national
defence fund.
He is also accused of setting up the
Interahamwe militia that carried out massacres as well as the Radio-Television
Libre des Mille Collines whose broadcasts incited people to murder.
In June, a French court ruled Kabuga should
stand trial at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) based
in Arusha, Tanzania. The MICT took over the duties of the UN's International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) when it formally closed in 2015.
Kabuga's lawyers appealed that decision, citing
their client's frail health and fears the UN tribunal would be biased.
At a hearing before the Cour de Cassation,
France's highest appeals court for criminal cases, Kabuga's lawyer Louis Bore
also claimed his client would not receive proper medical treatment in Tanzania
for conditions including diabetes, high blood pressure and leukoaraiosis -- an
incurable illness that erodes physical and cognitive abilities.
But the judges disagreed, and France now has
one month to hand Kabuga, who says he is 87, over to the MICT.
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