Major Suspect in '94 Rwanda Genocide Is Caught

By WILL CONNORS, The Wall Street Journal

OCTOBER 7, 2009

One of the most-wanted suspects accused of instigating genocide in Rwanda was arrested by police in Uganda, officials there told reporters Tuesday, marking a significant victory in efforts to bring alleged perpetrators of the violence to justice.

Idelphonse Nizeyimana was arrested in Kampala, the capital, this week and will be transported to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in neighboring Tanzania, the Associated Press reported, citing government officials.

[Nizeyimana] Associated Press

An undated photo provided by the U.S. shows Idelphonse Nizeyimana.

Mr. Nizeyimana was indicted by the United Nations-backed tribunal in 2000, charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.

Mr. Nizeyimana was the head of ethnic Hutu intelligence and military operations during the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. He is accused of organizing hit squads against Tutsis, including the traditional Tutsi queen, and of participating in at least one killing.

Officials in Uganda said they believe Mr. Nizeyimana entered the country from the Congo using fake travel documents, the AP reported.

Ugandan police officials and the attorney general couldn't be reached to comment. A representative of the court in Tanzania didn't answer phone calls seeking comment.

In the spring of 1994, after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down, roving gangs of ethnic Hutus began attacking ethnic minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Gruesome violence spread through Rwanda for the next 100 days and would eventually claim at least 800,000 lives.

Many of the alleged killers, including Mr. Nizeyimana, fled to neighboring countries in the aftermath of the fighting.

Another high-level fugitive from the genocide, Gregoire Ndahimana, a former mayor, was captured in August and appeared before the tribunal last week. He had been in hiding in Congo.

Mr. Nizeyimana is accused of instigating much of the violence in the southern Bature province, including coordinating militias, setting up roadblocks to allow killings to take place unimpeded, ordering the killing of two priests, and ordering soldiers to kidnap refugees from a convent, among them 25 children who were never seen again.

He is also accused of being behind the killing of Queen Gicanda, a Tutsi matriarch thought to be in her 80s, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

In 2002 the U.S. State Department, under the Rewards for Justice Program, named Mr. Nizeyimana as one of the ringleaders of the violence and offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

The State Department had no comment on the reports of Mr. Nizeyimana's arrest, and a department spokeswoman said it was government policy not to comment on rewards.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12