Wednesday’s hearing to send Fulgence Kayishema to a UN court for trial as a suspect in the Rwandan genocide was postponed by a judge in South Africa, where the suspect was detained.
Kayishema, who was apprehended in May in a wine vineyard outside of Cape Town after spending more than 20 years on the run and is accused of taking part in one of the 1994 genocide’s worst moments, was not present in court.
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suspect in the Rwandan genocide
He applied for refuge in South Africa in June in an effort to prevent a request that he be tried elsewhere.
In the end, Kayishema was requested to be handed over to the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), the successor of the UN court that tried a number of prominent accused.
However, the legal process, which is distinct from a conventional extradition, caused some uncertainty and resulted in a postponement.
“There is nothing to hear,” you say. Prosecutors failed to submit an application to begin the transfer process, which led Judge Robert Henney of Cape Town’s High Court to remark sharply.
Fulgence Kayishema, a wanted suspect in the Rwandan genocide, is back in court and may request bail.
The next hearing date was not immediately established by the judge.
“Neither a criminal nor a civil case exist in this instance. Therefore, Eric Ntabazalila, a spokesman for South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), told journalists, “We are walking uncharted ground.
The 62-year-old man, a former police chief, is charged with ordering the killing of almost 2,000 men, women, and children who had taken refuge in a church at the height of the sectarian conflict that gripped Rwanda three decades ago.
Over the course of 100 days, Hutu fanatics massacred almost 800,000 people, the majority of whom were of the Tutsi ethnicity.
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In South Africa, Kayishema Kayishema is separately charged with 54 counts of fraud and immigration-related offenses after using numerous names and fake documents for 22 years while evading capture.
They believe he is innocent, according to friends and family who were present in the largely empty courtroom on Wednesday.
Family friend Joseph Habinshuti, 53, told AFP, “We still strongly believe that it is a (case of) mistaken identity.”
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In a prior court appearance, Kayishema vehemently denied any involvement in the murders, telling a local reporter: “At that time, there was a civil war, and people were killing each other… No one assigned me a role.
Agence France-Presse, str/ub/gw
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