One of four remaining fugitives accused of ordering the killing of about 2,000 Tutsis who were seeking refuge in a church during the 1994 genocide has been arrested in South Africa, the United Nations tribunal for war crimes committed in Rwanda said on Thursday.
Reuters reports that the former police officer, Fulgence Kayishema had been on the run since 2001 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) indicted him in 2001 over an incident in which more than 2,000 Tutsi men, women and children were burned inside a Catholic church.
Kayishema was arrested in Paarl, South Africa, on Wednesday, the UN court which has been trying the genocide suspects announced.
In a statement, The Hague-based tribunal, also known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT), described Fulgence Kayishema as “one of the world’s most wanted genocide fugitives”.
It said an international operation involving many countries had made it possible to arrest the man, who had used a number of aliases and false documents.
According to the indictment, Fulgence Kayishema directly participated in the planning and execution of a massacre of refugees hiding at the Nyange church in Kivumu, Kibuye prefecture, on 15 April 1994.
It says Kayishema and others tried to burn the church down with the refugees inside. When this failed, they bulldozed it, burying and killing all those hiding there, with their corpses buried in mass graves.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNEÂ
and then