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Man held on genocide charge
19/02/2008 21:14 - (SA)
Arusha - A former Rwandan government minister wanted for his alleged role in the country's 1994 genocide has been arrested in Tanzania, the international court trying key suspects announced on Tuesday.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said that Callixte Nzabonimana had been arrested at Kigoma in Tanzania and was expected on Tuesday at its own detention centre in the east African country.
Nzabonimana, 55, was youth minister in the mainly Hutu government during the killings of April-July 2004 and was sought by the ICTR for genocide, complicity to genocide and direct and public incitement to genocide.
A member of the presidential party at the time, the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), Nzabonimana is accused of taking part in a plan to eliminate Rwanda's Tutsi minority and opposition Hutus.
The ICTR, which was formed late in 1994 to try key suspects in the genocide of about 800 000 people, itself sits in the Tanzanian town of Arusha. It has convicted 30 people and acquitted five suspects.
The Attorney General of the Republic of Rwanda, Martin Ngoga, welcomed the arrest.
"It is a positive gesture on the part of Tanzanian judicial authorities who played a role in tracking down the alleged war criminal," Ngoga said, pointing out that the Rwandan justice system had also issued an arrest warrant against him.
News of the arrest came on the day President George W. Bush visited Rwanda and paid tribute to the memories of the 800 000 victims slaughtered in the genocide.
The US president, who toured a memorial in the Rwandan capital Kigali to the killings, said: "It's a moving place that can't help but shake your emotions to their very foundation."
"It reminds me that we must not let these kinds of actions take place, and that the people of Rwanda need help to reconcile and move forward after a brutal period," he said, with US First Lady Laura Bush at his side.
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