WANTED: War criminals still at large

W A N T E D

Joseph Kony

Félicien Kabuga

A Rwandan businessman, accused of bankrolling and participating in the Rwandan genocide. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1998. Kabuga was expelled from Switzerland in 1994, and spent some time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo before sheltering in Kenya, where he is believed to be protected by senior figures in the former corrupt regime of President Daniel arap Moi. A reported attempt by US investigators to apprehend him in 2003 led to the murder of their Kenyan informant. In 2009 a Kenyan court froze his assets, and a legal appeal against the ruling bought by his wife was rejected in 2015.

Kabuga, 81, bankrolled RTLMC, the radio station that spewed hate against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda. The broadcasts helped to prepare the ground for the genocide in which 800,000 people were killed. He was also one of the country’s main importer of machetes, with which much of the slaughter was carried out.

Omar al-Bashir

Jesse B. Awalt/via Wikimedia Commons

The Sudanese president is the only sitting head of state with outstanding arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court. He was initially charged with seven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. In 2010, three counts of genocide were added. The accusations stem from the conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur. Al-Bashir is accused of masterminding a campaign, waged by Sudanese forces and Janjaweed militia, “to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity”. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 died in the government’s scorched-earth response to rebellion in Darfur by local groups challenging their marginalization.

Some legal experts argue the ethnic cleansing charges will be hard to prove, and the ICC may have overreached. But that is moot, as Al-Bashir does not appear about to be detained anytime soon. The African Union, League of Arab States, Non-Aligned Movement, and the governments of Russia and China are backing Al-Bashir. His international travel plans are only occasionally inconvenienced – most recently when he was hustled out of South Africa last year by the government when a local court demanded his arrest.

The ICC is still pursuing a number of indictments.  This interactive map shows ICC cases across the globe. Zoom in and out and click on each country for more details.