Two Kenyan journalists who claim to have discovered that genocide fugitive, the Rwandan millionaire financier Felicien Kabuga, is continuing to find a safe haven in Kenya, have fled Nairobi following death threats.
One of them, whose escape has been facilitated by Amnesty International, is seeking asylum in Europe. The other recently returned to Kenya but the death threats continued and he is now in a neighbouring African country.
Kabuga was allegedly instrumental in financing the infrastructure of the genocide: he is accused of establishing the hate radio, RTLM, training and equipping the Interahamwe youth militia and in financial documents found in Kigali he is shown to have used his companies to import vast quantities of machetes from China. He is indicted on eleven counts including conspiracy to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and incitement to commit genocide; there is a US State Department Awards for Justice Programme bounty of US$5 million on his head.
Kabuga, who is aged 77, has been on the run since August 18, 1994 when the Swiss security services let him slip from their grasp. In June that year, as the genocide progressed, Kabuga was given a visa to enter Switzerland only to be later expelled. He is said to have escaped arrest in Kenyan four times. A joint task force of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and Kenyan investigators failed to apprehend him last year even as in New York, at the UN Security Council, the President of the ICTR, Khalida Rachid Khan, had confidently predicted that Kabuga would soon be in custody. Interpol is also interested in him.