Search and capture of Grégoire Ndahimana
Mr.Ndahimana was among the thirteen war criminals from the Rwanda genocide thought to be at large. He was considered a Category 1 suspect by the ICTR-International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.This rank is reserved for the perceived masterminds of the 1994 genocide. The US Department of State issued Rewards for Justice Poster in May 2008 stating that part of a $5 million USD reward will be paid for information leading to his capture.
Ndahimana was captured by an UN-backed joint Rwandan-Congolese task force on August 2009. Ndahimana had been hiding amongst, and fighting alongside, FDLR rebels. The FDLR, or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, is a group with a large component of Hutus who took part in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The Rwandan-Congolese task force arrested Ndahimana in a village in North Kivu after catching him by surprise while he was coming to look for some food within the local population. The arrest was announced on the following day.Ndahimana had been in hiding for 15 years, and, according to Rwanda’s justice minister Tharcisse Karugarama, was considered by the government to be one of the big ones.Ndahimana's trial is to take place in Arusha Tanzania, where the ICTR is based.
Grégoire Ndahimana who is the former mayor of Kivuma, Rwanda was born in1952. He was indicted by ICTR for alleged war crimes , Ndahimana was one of the key figures in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, and had up to 6,000 Tutsi killed. He will stand trial in Arusha, Tanzania, where the ICTR currently holds its courts.
His Role in Rwandan Genocide
Ndahimana was the mayor of Kivuma which is his birth town in Rwanda and it is here that he perpetrated the hunting down and killing of Tutsi people. The ICTR had already indicted him of conspiring to kill up to 2,000 Tutsi civilians by ordering the bulldozing of a local church housing them.[1] Ndahimana is reported to have conspired with Athanase Seromba who was a Catholic priest convicted by the ICTR in 2008 of the same massacre. Most the 6,000 Tutsis who had been living in Ndahimana's town, Kivuma, while he was the mayor were killed in the genocide.
According to eyewitness reports, Ndahimana and the local police including various government officials started massing Tutsi refugees in the parish of Nyange on 10 April 1994. About 2,000 refugees were inside this church were they met their death. Ndahimana met with other leaders in the local area including the parish priest, Athanase Seromba, on April 15, 1994 and the decision to bulldoze the church was made. This sounds familiar to Kenyans when we remember what happened at Eldoret in December, 2007 at the height of post election violence. The only difference is that the masterminds of the violence in Kenya are in the present coalition government.
