RWANDANS WANT PROPERTY OWNED BY KABUGA SEIZED

BY GRACE MACHA IN ARUSHA

With uncertainty hanging over the trial of Felicien Kabuga in The Hague on health grounds, a case has been filed to freeze his properties.

The immovable assets owned by the alleged mastermind of the 1994 genocide include land and buildings in his home country. 

An umbrella organisation of the genocide survivors called Ibuka is seeking the freeze of his properties worth millions of dollars.

The lawsuit was filed on June 8th at the intermediate court in Kigali and involves various properties including land and buildings.

Although the exact value of his Rwanda-based properties remains unclear, they are believed to be worth $ 50million at the time of his arrest in Paris in 2020.

The litigants not only want the freeze of the property but to prevent its sale or transfer while the justice process unfolds for the ailing Kabuga.

The 90 year old Kabuga is currently detained in The Hague, Netherlands, where he faces trial by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (the Mechanism) for his role in the genocide against the Tutsi.

The former businessman before and during the genocide, is charged with seven counts, including genocide, complicity in genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide.

Other charges include attempt to commit genocide, and conspiracy to commit genocide as well as persecution and extermination; both being crimes against humanity.

Reports from Rwanda and the Arusha-based Mechanism had it that the litigants have been requested to present specific documents from the National Land Authority on Kabuga's alleged properties.

These documents are vital in demonstrating the relationship between Kabuga and the properties Ibuka wants to be frozen.

Sources in France have it that at the time of his arrest in May 2020, Kabuga owned a tea plantation, a mill,warehouses and apartments, among other properties.

Some of the properties were in Kenya where he spent quite some years while on the run. One of them is said to be the Spanish Villas in Nairobi’s upmarket suburb. 

Further reports had it that he also owned properties in Switzerland and Paris where at different times he sought refuge from being arrested.

On 6 June 2023, the Trial Chamber of the UN Tribunal in The Hague (the Mechanism) found, by majority, that Mr. Kabuga is not fit to stand trial due to his poor health.

The Trial Chamber decided, by majority, to continue the proceedings against Mr. Kabuga in accordance with an “alternative finding procedure that resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction”. 

Mr. Kabuga was not only the alleged masterminds of the Rwanda genocide in which nearly a million people were hacked to death in 1994 following the killing of President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6th, 1994.

He was also the alleged financier of the killings which shocked the world and led to one of the largest influx of refugees from Rwanda to Tanzania, the DRC Congo and other countries.

After the mass killings came to a halt with the RPF government taking over, he fled Rwanda but was later indicted and had a $ 5millin bounty on his head.