Dementia against humanity

The court in The Hague recognized Felicien Kabugu, the former head of the “Radio of the Thousand Hills”, who called for a genocide in Rwanda

Felicien Kabuga, ex-president and one of the creators of “Free Radio and Television of a Thousand Hills”, responsible for calls for genocide in Rwanda, is recognized as “vascular dementia”. This is stated in the document adopted by the international residual mechanism for criminal tribunals (momut) in the Hague. This means that the 87-year-old (or 90-year-old, according to his defense) Kabuga, who is accused of crimes against humanity, will not be convicted. Nevertheless, the process over him will continue, and he will not be released. Kabuga, arrested only in May 2020 in a Parisian suburb, continues to stay in the UN prison in The Hague.

Despite the fact that, according to the judges, he “has very few chances to restore his physical form”, Felicien Kabuga will become the object of a special, unprecedented procedure, “which is as much as a lawsuit”, not being to them, since judges (their three) cannot pass the accusatory sentence to a person in a state of dementia.

Within the framework of this procedure, the prosecution will continue to submit and register its evidence in order to demonstrate Kabuga’s guilt in the committing genocide against the people of Tutsi. Kabuga will remain under medical supervision, as it was from the moment of his extradition to the Hague in October 2020. If he wishes, he will be able to attend future hearings in a video conference mode from his camera or personally.

The IBUKA Association, uniting people who survived the Rwandy genocide, called the decision of the judges "bad, stunning, disappointing."

When Kabugu was arrested, “we were happy and believed that justice would finally triumph,” AFP said to the Achishaki, the executive secretary of the association, who now demands to establish and punish everyone who, for more than 25 years, helped the financier and ideologue of the genocide to hide from arrest and court.

Recall that since 1994, when Kabuga, not without the help of the French military, left Rwanda, he ended up in Switzerland, and then, after refusing to provide asylum, left her freely, leaving traces in Zair, Kenya, Komorsky Islands, in Germany, Luxembourg ...

“We expect further proceedings to establish chains of accomplices in Felicien Kabuga. All those who helped his children prevent the accomplishment of justice, although they knew that he was wanted, should be held accountable, ”the IBUKA Association said on 06.06.2023.

“If international criminal justice cannot be destroyed by networks that protect those who committed these crimes, it will lose its restraining power and the ability to prevent crimes against humanity and genocide,” the association emphasized.

Also, noting that now, after the judges decided not to make him a sentence, guilty of Kabuga's genocide, "avoids two dishes at once: condemnation and anonymity."

Indeed, as a result of the arrest, he actually regained his real name: in the Paris suburb of Anier-Sur-Sun, he lived before the arrest (under the supervision of his children who replaced each other) with the passport of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, written out in the name of Antoine Tung. Now that Kabuga will die, his family (unlike thousands of families of the victims of the genocide) “will be able to bury him under his real name,” Ibuka was regretfully noted.

The victims of the genocide in Rwand in 1994 became, according to various estimates, from 700 thousand to 1 million people.

Read more about this tragedy, about the history of Kabuga and its RTLM radio stations (“Free Radio and Television of a Thousand Hills”) in the “New” material .