Kabuga deemed unfit for trial

A UN court has ruled that ageing Rwandan genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga is unfit to stand trial.

The Hague-based International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals said it finds that “Félicien Kabuga is unfit to participate meaningfully in his trial and is very unlikely to regain fitness in the future”.

It has called for an “alternative” legal procedure that “resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction”.

The trial of Mr Kabuga, 90, was put on hold in March over health concerns.

He was arrested in Paris in 2020 after evading capture for 26 years.

He is accused of being the primary financier of the militia and political groups that perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

He went on trial in The Hague last September, accused of setting up hate media that urged ethnic Hutus to kill rival Tutsis and supplying death squads with machetes.

He denied the charges.

Source: BBC