Trial of elderly Rwanda genocide suspect opening at UN court

By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A frail 87-year-old Rwandan accused of encouraging and bankrolling his country’s 1994 genocide is going on trial at a UN tribunal. The 100-day massacre left 800,000 dead. Félicien Kabuga is one of the last fugitives charged in the genocide to face justice. Thursday’s start of his trial marks a key day of reckoning for Rwandans who survived the killings or whose families were murdered. The mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority was ignited on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying the country’s president was shot down, killing the leader who, like the majority of Rwandans, was an ethnic Hutu. Kabuga has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces a maximum life sentence.