Genocide suspects denied entry
2009-05-08 20:12
Luanda - Angolan authorities this week denied entry to 19 people suspected of taking part in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, an independent weekly reported on Friday.
According to Novo Jornal, the suspects were stopped at two separate points of Angola's northern border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
"These people arrived in DRC where they managed to get hold of documents and they then tried to enter Angola pretending to be Congolese," a source from Angola's border police told Novo Jornal.
They were reported to be carrying false Congolese passports and were among 250 people arrested by the border police.
According to the newspaper source, the group were handed over to the Congolese authorities.
Some 800 000 Rwandans, mostly minority Tutsis, were killed in the country's 1994 ethnic clashes.
Angola, which endured nearly 30 years of civil war which ended in 2002, takes pride in its tight borders and rigid immigration checks.
The state media carries nearly daily tallies of the number of "foreigners" who have been deported or refused entry.
- AFP