Top Rwanda Genocide Suspect Arrested

One of the most wanted suspects in the 1994 genocide was arrested in Uganda this week and extradited to Tanzania to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The head of intelligence and military operations at Rwanda's elite military training school during the genocide, Idelphonse Nizeyimana was indicted by the ICTR in 2000 and charged with crimes against humanity, as well as complicity in genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. The indictment charged that:

From late 1990 until July 1994, military personnel, members of the government, political leaders, civil servants and other personalities conspired among themselves and with others to work out a plan with the intent to exterminate the civilian Tutsi population... In executing the plan, they organized, ordered and participated in the massacres perpetrated against the Tutsi population and moderate Hutus. Idelphonse Nizeyimana elaborated, adhered to and executed this plan.

Nizeyimana was also specifically accused of establishing "secret units of extremist elements" to help carry out the genocide.

Hiding out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the genocide, Nizeyimana served as a top commander in the FDLR, a rebel army comprised of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide and responsible for countless atrocities across eastern Congo.

To learn more about the FDLR and its impact on the Congo, visit World is Witness.