One of Rwanda's Most Wanted Genocide Suspects Arrested After 22 Years on Run

💭 Fulgence Kayishema, a former police officer accused of ordering the killing of some 2,000 Tutsis who were seeking refuge in a church during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has been arrested in South Africa, a UN war crimes tribunal and South African police said on Thursday.

Fulgence Kayishema was arrested on Wednesday in South Africa, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), which was set up by the United Nations, said.

Kayishema, who is believed to be in his early 60s, had assumed a false identity and gone by the name Donatien Nibashumba, South African police added.

He was captured in a joint operation by the tribunal’s fugitive tracking team and South African authorities following an investigation that had tracked him across several African countries, including Mozambique and Eswatini, since his indictment in 2001.

The United States had offered a $5 million (£4 million) reward for information leading to Kayishema’s arrest through its Rewards for Justice program. He was eventually captured at a vineyard in Paarl, a small town in a wine-making region about 30 miles east of Cape Town.

More than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda’s genocide, which took place over the course of three months in 1994.