Former priest arrested in Cameroon at ICTR's behest

A former Rwandan priest, Hormisdas Nsengimana, was arrested by Cameroonian police in Yaounde, Cameroon, on Thursday 21 March on the basis of an arrest warrant submitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) last week.

A statement from ICTR said Nsengimana, a former priest and Rector of Christ-Roi College in Nyanza, Nyabisundi commune, in the southern Butare prefecture of Rwanda, is charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity for murder and extermination.

Nsengimana is alleged to have played a leading role in a group of killers called Les Dragons (or Escadron de la mort), a group which reputedly played a crucial role in the killing of Tutsis in Butare prefecture, the statement said.

Meanwhile, a former organiser of the youth movement in Ngoma commune, Butare prefecture, Joseph Nzabirinda, was on Wednesday transferred to the United Nations Detention Facility in Arusha, northern Tanzania, from Brussels, Belgium. He was arrested on 21 December 2001 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Tribunal, the ICTR statement said.

Nzabirinda is also accused of involvement in the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. The indictment against him contains four counts charging him with genocide, or, in the alternative, complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity for extermination and rape.

He is alleged to have carried out those crimes in Ngoma commune together with the then mayor, Joseph Kanyabashi, who is currently on trial before the Tribunal in the so-called "Butare" case. Nzabirinda is alleged to have raped several Tutsi girls in the Sahera sector of Ngoma commune, the ICTR stated.

Nzabirinda worked for the ICTR as defence investigator for the defence team of Sylvain Nsabimana, a former prefect of Butare, who is on trial at the Arusha-based tribunal with five other accused.

The ICTR said it terminated Nzabirinda's contract last year when investigations established that he had presented false identity documents in order to obtain approval for employment as a defence investigator. These investigators for the defence are not staff members of the Tribunal, the statement noted.