Belgium arrests three Rwandans in connection with 1994 genocide

Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday it had arrested three people of Rwandan origin who were charged with serious violations of international law linked to the 1994 genocide.

The arrests come as survivors of the genocide have demanded an acceleration in the pace of international justice, and Belgium, the former colonial power in Burundi and Congo as well as Rwanda, seeks to do more to come to terms with its past.

Militants from Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic majority killed about 800 000 minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates in 100 days during the genocide in 1994.

Belgium’s prosecutor said the trio were arrested following police searches in Brussels and the Belgian province of Hainaut on September 29-30.

“The investigations are conducted by the federal police of Brussels and concern serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda during the 1994 Tutsi genocide, in Kigali, in the Gikondo and Kacyiru sectors,” the prosecutor said in a statement.

The prosecutor’s office did not identify the suspects or specify what role they were accused of playing in the killings.

On October 1 survivors of the Rwanda genocide said a special UN tribunal in Tanzania should quickly try elderly tycoon Felicien Kabuga on charges of financing the genocide.

Last June, France’s top civil court ruled Kabuga could be handed over to a UN tribunal for trial.