Félicien Kabuga will eventually have to be transferred to The Hague rather than Arusha. This is the decision taken on Wednesday by a judge of the UN mechanism responsible for the latest cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He was arrested on May 16 in the suburbs of Paris and prosecuted for genocide and crimes against humanity.
as reported from The Hague, Stephanie Maupas
For the British judge today, it is impossible to ensure that Félicien Kabuga could withstand the 11 hours by plane to Arusha. He therefore ordered a transfer to The Hague, a few hours’ drive from Paris, where the medical services of the registry will first be able to assess his state of health and say whether he is fit to be prosecuted in Tanzania.
After 87 years, Félicien Kabuga spoke in his own words about his health problems as soon as he was arrested in mid-May in the suburbs of Paris. Several sources show that he underwent surgery at the end of September.
Go to the Scheveningen prison
The mechanism in The Hague has not indicated when the former businessman will be transferred to the Netherlands. But French justice still has eight days to hand it over to the mechanism. A period of one month running since the decision of the Cassation Court on 30 September confirming the validity of the arrest warrant taken against him.
Félicien Kabuga will therefore join the Scheveningen prison, where he will be quarantined for ten days. The same prison that previously housed several Rwandans prosecuted by the ICTR, including former Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, who had pleaded guilty to genocide.
►Read also: Investigation – Genocide in Rwanda: the underside of the hunt for Félicien Kabuga
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