On the run for decades, a fugitive from the genocide in Rwanda is finally caught
For more than 20 years, Fulgence Kayishema, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives of the Rwandan genocide, evaded authorities who say he orchestrated the murder of more than 2,000 Tutsis in the massacre.
He remained at large, hiding among refugees in different countries and disguising himself under various aliases.
This week, the police finally caught up with him in South Africa.
Mr Kayishema, 61, was arrested on Wednesday at a grape farm outside Cape Town, authorities said. It took a multinational team, including South African police and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, to cast a wide net to catch him.
Kayishema has been one of the tribunal’s most wanted fugitives since his indictment in 2001. Serge Brammertz, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor. According to the indictment, Mr. Kayishema was the Superintendent of Police in 1994, overseeing and participating in the days-long massacre of civilians.
“Not only was he organizing and planning, but he was involved himself,” said Mr. Brammertz.
Mr. Kayishema faces multiple charges of genocide and will now be extradited to Tanzania where he will be tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
As the killings began to spread across Rwanda in April 1994, more than 2,000 women, children and elderly Tutsi citizens took refuge in Nyange Parish Church in Kivumu township, west of the capital Kigali. The Catholic Church was soon surrounded by Hutu Interahamwe militias. Instead of intervening, police officers helped the killers with Mr. Kayishema at the helm, prosecutors say.
When the machete killing went on too long, Mr Kayishema allegedly bought gasoline that he and others poured on the church before throwing grenades through the windows, prosecutors said. He and his henchmen drove a bulldozer over the church and crushed all the survivors. He then supervised the digging of mass graves on the church grounds, the indictment said.
“He really abused his position to actually prepare and commit those massive crimes,” Brammertz said.
In the aftermath of the genocide, Mr Kayishema went into hiding, living in camps among the vulnerable and displaced while manipulating the asylum process in several countries, prosecutors said. He fled Rwanda in 1994 and crossed over to the Democratic Republic of Congo with his family. He then left for neighboring Tanzania, where he assumed the identity of a Burundian asylum seeker and moved between two camps.
A few years later, he and his family continued to travel along the east coast of Africa, seeking asylum in Mozambique and finally arriving in 1998 in the kingdom of Eswatini. building a new life for decades.
To evade authorities, he created several aliases, mixing up passports and visas of at least four identities known to authorities, including a Malawian national. It was so effective that he was granted asylum in two different countries, South Africa and Eswatini, in the same year. At the time of his arrest, he was known as Donatien Nibasunba, a Burundian citizen.
A network of Rwandan exiles is believed to have facilitated his movements, particularly members of the now-disbanded Rwanda Defense Force and of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an armed group accused of atrocities. In Cape Town, Mr. Kayishema worked as a security guard in a shopping center parking lot. The company he worked for was owned by one of these groups, Mr. Brammertz said.
But this network would also prove its downfall. Investigators used phone records, financial statements and cross-border travel to narrow their search. By “shaking the tree” of his close associates and persons of interest, authorities were able to track the fugitive to a modest one-bedroom home, where he lived as a laborer on a grape farm in Paarl, a small vineyard town outside Cape Town. said Mr. Brammertz.
The operation came about in recent days after years of, as Mr Brammertz has said, a slow response from South Africa and Eswatini.
In one case, South African authorities said they could not act because Mr Kayishema had been granted refugee status, according to Mr Brammertz. Report 2020 to the UN Security Council. Another time, Mr. Kayishema’s data just disappeared.
However, in the past 10 months, South African authorities have assigned a team of 20 to the case. They were part of the coalition that tracked him down and detained him. South African police officials say the fugitive will be charged with breaching South African immigration laws.
Mr Kayishema was one of several men charged on charges related to the massacre. Others have been captured, while at least two are believed to have died. The priest of the church, Athanase Seromba, is serving a life sentence for his role in the massacre, while a pharmacist named Gaspard Kanyarukiga is 30 years of service. Félicien Kabuga, a wealthy businessman who had been on the run for 23 years, has been on trial since last year. Mr. Kabuga is accused of inciting genocide through his radio station and supplying weapons and financial support to the Interahamwe militias.
“It is very likely that this will be the last major arrest of a fugitive by us,” Brammertz said.