Rwandan Genocide Suspect Appears In Court Holding Bible After 22 Years On The Run

CONSTANTIA, South Africa — CAPE TOWN On Friday, a man who is a prime suspect in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda entered a trial in South Africa while holding a Bible and another book with the words “Jesus First” written on the cover.

Police inspector Fulgence Kayishema is accused of planning and executing the massacre of almost 2,000 individuals, including children, who sought safety in a church during the earliest days of the genocide.

He had eluded capture for nearly 30 years before his arrest on Wednesday in a wine-producing village some 30 miles east of Cape Village. He was 61 years old, according to South African authorities.

During his brief appearance at the Cape Town Magistrates Court, Kayishema, wearing glasses and a blue winter jacket with a hood, acknowledged his name when asked by a judge. Before the hearing began, he displayed the religious texts for the media and other observers in the courtroom, and he sat through much of the proceedings with his hands clenched in his lap.

In 2001, a tribunal investigating the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide in which over 800,000 people were killed when members of the ethnic Hutu group turned on the minority Tutsis and other Hutus trying to protect them accused him of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The judge ordered that Kayishema remains in detention until the next hearing on Friday at the same courthouse. He will be tried for genocide and other crimes in Rwanda after being deported there.

A tribunal investigating the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide in which over 800,000 people.

The five allegations filed against him by South African prosecutors on Friday all stem from him providing false information on immigration documents 23 years ago to enter and remain in South Africa.

Prosecutors claim that in January of 2000, Kayishema lied to South African authorities by claiming to be a refugee from Burundi under the alias Fulgence Dende-Minani. Prosecutors claim that although he was given refuge in 2004, that status lapsed in 2006. For 17 years, he had reportedly remained in his native South Africa.

His trial on those allegations in South Africa before his extradition to face genocide accusations was uncertain.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the United Nations to investigate the genocide and bring criminals to justice, indicted Kayishema for the crimes in Rwanda more than 20 years ago. Kayishema’s arrest was announced on Thursday by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which has taken over the operations of the original tribunal.

It stated that he was “one of the most wanted suspects” related to the genocide in Rwanda.

Prosecutors in South Africa claim he fled Rwanda at least a year before he was indicted for the murder of two thousand Tutsi refugees.

Kayishema was a leader in the party that attempted to torch the church in the first place. When that failed, he and others allegedly used a bulldozer to destroy the structure, murdering anybody inside.

According to the accusation, he also transferred the victims to a mass grave over the next two days.

Eventually, he was followed to Paarl, a famous old town in South Africa’s Western Cape province, where one of the country’s most prestigious rugby-playing schools is located.

Authorities from Rwanda, South Africa, Mozambique, Eswatini, Britain, Canada, and the United States helped the genocide tribunal’s fugitive tracking team and Interpol locate Kayishema, the tribunal said.

SOURCE – (AP)