Top Rwanda Genocide Suspect Arrested
By VOA News
06 October 2009
One of the most wanted suspects from the 1994 Rwandan genocide has been arrested in Uganda.
Ugandan police say Idelphonse Nizeyimana, a former Rwandan army captain and intelligence officer, was arrested Monday at a hotel outside the capital, Kampala.
He is being transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania, to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Prosecutors accuse Nizeyimana of helping to organize the genocide in Rwanda's Butare province.
A 2000 indictment says soldiers acting under his orders took part in the massacres of ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates. It says he also set up special units to kill the symbolic queen of Rwanda and Tutsi intellectuals.
The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
Ugandan police say Nizeyimana entered the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo on October 1 using a forged travel document. They say the international police agency Interpol assisted in his arrest.
This is the second high-profile arrest of a Rwandan genocide suspect in the last two months.
In August, Congolese troops captured Gregorie Ndahimana, a Rwandan mayor linked to the massacre of more than 1,000 ethnic Tutsis who had sought refuge in a church.
Hutu extremists killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus during the 1994 genocide.
The ICTR was set up to prosecute those who organized the killings. The court has convicted about 40 people so far, while about 30 suspects are either being tried or awaiting trial.
The arrest of Nizeyimana leaves another 11 ICTR suspects at large.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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