JURIST - Paper Chase: France high court rejects transfer of Rwanda war crimes suspect to ICTR

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of France [official website, in French] Wednesday overturned a November 2007 ruling by the Court of Appeal of Paris that approved the transfer [JURIST report] of Rwandan genocide suspect Dominique Ntawukuriryayo [ICTR case materials] to the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [official website], finding that the lower court had committed several procedural errors. The case will now be sent back to a lower court for review. Ntawukuriryayo was arrested in France [JURIST report] in October 2007 and charged [indictment, PDF] with genocide, complicity in genocide and direct and public incitement to genocide. AFP has more.

The charges against Ntawukuriryayo stem principally from his alleged involvement in the Kabuye Hill massacre that occurred over five days in late April 1994, during which as many as 25,000 Tutsi refugees were killed. Then sub-prefect for the Gisagara region, Ntawukuriryayo allegedly promised protection to Tutsis and ordered them to move to Kabuye Hill; instead they were surrounded and shot by gendarmes and communal policemen. Approximately 800,000 people died in the following three months of the Rwandan genocide [BBC backgrounder].

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