The war crimes tribunal for Rwanda has accounted for the last remaining fugitives indicted for genocide, bringing to an end the court’s 29-year mission to deliver justice for the 1994 slaughter that killed more than 800,000 Rwandans.
The historic moment passed without drama, not with an arrest or the exhumation of a body, but in a video conference on 30 April between the tribunal’s prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, and the two leaders of its fugitive tracking team, dedicated to resolving the cold cases left in the wake of the genocide.
At some point in that conversation, the three agreed they had finally accumulated enough evidence to satisfy the court that the last two suspects they had been tracking were long dead and were lying in unmarked graves in different corners of central Africa.
Those two final names crossed off the tribunal’s list of 92 indictees were Charles Sikubwabo and a restaurateur known by just one name, Ryandikayo. They were influential local organisers in Rwanda’s Kibuye prefecture, leading mobs of the murderous Interahamwe Hutu militia responsible for the mass killing of Tutsis. Both had been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Read more…