After almost three decades on the lam, Fulgence Kayishema, 62, was apprehended in South Africa on Wednesday.
Fulgence Kayishema, a former Rwandan police officer who had been on the run for years until being apprehended this week for his alleged part in the massacre of 2,000 Tutsis during the 1994 genocide, was charged before the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
In South Africa, Kayishema is accused with five offenses, including two counts of fraud for violating the Immigration Act and one for breaking the Refugees Act. According to Reuters, citing the court charge sheet, the fraud accusations are related to his asylum and refugee applications, in which he reportedly used a fictitious identity and claimed to be from Burundi.
During the court hearings, the suspect apparently didn’t submit a plea. The hearing has been postponed till June 2 and he has been remanded in jail. The National Prosecuting Authority spokesman, Eric Ntabazalila, reportedly said that the state was against bail.
After almost 30 years on the lam, Kayishema, 62, was apprehended on a grape estate in Paarl, close to Cape Town, on Wednesday in a combined operation by UN investigators and the South African police.
He was accused in 2001 for actively taking part in the planning and execution of the slaughter of refugees who were sheltering at the Nyange Catholic Church in Kivumu on April 15, 1994, according to the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which called him “one of the world’s most wanted genocide fugitives.” Through the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program, a $5 million reward was placed on his head.
The genocide, which took place between April and July 1994 for 100 days, resulted in the deaths of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Kayishema allegedly told reporters in court on Friday that he had no part in the incident. “What I can say is? We are sad to learn what was going on,” he reportedly said, according to Reuters.
He will be detained at Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town until a potential extradition to Rwanda is considered.
