Pierre Kayondo, a former Rwandan prefect suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide, was charged and detained in Paris on Tuesday, AFP learned on Saturday from a source close to the case.
He has been under investigation in France since the end of 2021 after a complaint was filed by a collective of victims who claimed he lived in Le Havre, in the northwest of the country.
According to a judicial source, Mr. Kayondo was charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, complicity in crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit these crimes.
AFP
According to another source familiar with the case, he was arrested on Tuesday by gendarmes from the Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes on the basis of an arrest warrant from the investigating judge.
Mr Kayondo was subsequently remanded in custody.
This Rwandan politician was the subject of a complaint filed in September 2021 against the creation of a civil party by the Collective Civil Parties of Rwanda (CPCR), which led to the rapid initiation of a judicial investigation.
In its complaint, the CPCR confirmed that Pierre Kayondo, “former prefect of Kibuye and former deputy” in Gitarama Prefecture, “actively participated in organizing the exterminations in Ruhango and Tambwe in Gitarama Prefecture by encouraging the establishment of Interahamwe- Militia groups were enabled by providing weapons and attending meetings.
For Alain Gauthier, the emblematic president of the CPCR, Pierre Kayondo, whose age he estimates to be around 70 years old, was “close to figures convicted of genocide,” including Colonel Aloys Simba and Ephrem Nkezabera, nicknamed “Banker of the genocide”.
AFP
Interviewed by AFP on Saturday, Alain Gauthier and his wife Dafroza, co-founders of the CPCR, said they were pleased that their “complaint was followed by the opening of an investigation and that the judiciary was interested in Mr Kayondo. That’s good”.
According to the United Nations, the genocide claimed more than 800,000 lives, mostly Tutsi, who were exterminated between April and July 1994.