A UN court has found that an 88-year-old man who is accused of playing a significant role in financing the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is ineligible to stand trial.
Lawyers for Félicien Kabuga claimed he had dementia.
He managed to elude capture for 26 years, purportedly leaving Rwanda and traveling around East Africa, before being apprehended in Paris in 2020.
He is accused of funding ethnic Hutu militias that killed roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The accusations against him have been refuted. In a long-running effort to prosecute suspects in the Rwandan genocide, this is the first time a court has rendered such a decision.
Kabuga was “unfit to participate meaningfully in his trial and is very unlikely to regain fitness in the future,” according to judges at a UN war crimes court in The Hague.
The judges suggested a different course of action that “as closely resembles a trial as possible but without the possibility of a conviction.”
To check his health, the court had halted his trial in March. Although there is some debate over his exact age, court documents state that he is 88.
It is reported that Kabuga spent a significant portion of the income he amassed from the tea trade in the 1970s to purchase machetes for the Hutu death squads.
The affluent businessman is also charged with encouraging Hutus to kill Tutsis on his radio program, inciting the genocide through airing hate speech.
The United States had offered a reward of $5m (£4.1m) for information leading to his arrest. He was located by French detectives in a Paris apartment where he had been residing under an assumed name.