UN TRIBUNAL URGED TO LIFT ACCOUNTS FREEZE ON KABUGA RELATIVES

A United Nations Tribunal has been requested to lift a freeze of accounts of two relatives of Felicien Kabuga, the alleged mastermind and financier of the Rwanda genocide in 1994.

A Counsel for the relatives Francois Ngirabatware and Catherine Mukakayange said Mr. Kabuga was neither the source of the blocked funds nor had he an interest in them.   

Peter Robinson, the Counsel for the duo, said in a  Motion for Order concerning the frozen accounts that there was no basis for denying them access to their funds now that Mr. Kabuga has been arrested.

The case was filed before the President of  the Arusha-based International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism) Judge Carmel Agius on their behalf by Robinson.

"There is no basis for the Mechanism or its predecessor the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to continue to block Francois Ngirabatwar's and Catherine Mukakanyange's access to their funds.

"They are not assets of Felicien Kabuga and he has no interest in them whatsoever", said Mr. Robinson in a suit submitted to the Tribunal last week.

He said Ngirabatware and his sister Catherine have  been deprived of access to their funds for almost two decades simply because he (Ngirabatware) was married to one of Mr.Kabuga's 13 children.

He prayed the Court to issue an order declaring that the Mechanism and its predecessor (ICTR) would no longer maintain interest in freezing the accounts of the two Rwanda nationals at a bank in Brussels.

Mr. Kabuga (now 87) was first indicted by the ICTR for his role in the Rwanda genocide in 1994 in which close to one million people were hacked to death. This was followed by three subsequent indictments.

He was arrested at Paris, France on May 16th, last year after being on the run for over 25 years and is currently incarcerated at the UN  Detention Unit in The Hague, Netherlands awaiting trial.

During the period when he (Kabuga) was a fugitive, the Prosecution requested that various financial institutions and states freeze assets that they believed could be used to assist Kabuga in evading arrest.

These include assets of Kabuga's family members which include Ngirabatware who is married to one of the 13 children of the fugitive who until his arrest was the most wanted suspect of the genocide.

At the request of the ICTR Prosecutor, their bank accounts at a bank in Brussels, Belgium were frozen on March 11th, 2003.

Their efforts to obtain access to the funds through the courts in Belgium were unsuccessful because the courts ruled that the Belgium government was obligated to cooperate with the ICTR.

The Prosecutor ruled that the funds should remain frozen as long as Kabuga was a fugitive.