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Rwanda Issues Warrant for Former Prime Minister
Rwanda delivered an international arrest warrant to the United States for former Prime Minister Pierre-Celestin Rwigema, who is wanted in connection with the 1994 genocide, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Rwigema, 47, was forced to resign from office in February 2000 after a parliamentary vote of no-confidence over allegations of corruption and mismanagement. He then fled to the United States and sought asylum, claiming persecution by the government.
"A warrant has been issued against him to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity," Rwanda's chief prosecutor Gerard Gahima said. There has been no response yet from U.S. authorities, he added.
Rwigema, from the mainly Hutu Democratic Republic Movement, became prime minister in the Tutsi-dominated government of national unity in 1995 under a 1993 power-sharing agreement.
He was a member of an opposition Hutu political party during the 1994 genocide, when the former extremist Hutu government ordered and orchestrated the massacres of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
But some genocide survivors say Rwigema, as the head of security in the Kigali neighborhood of Biryogo, did not do enough to prevent the killings. Other survivors and genocide convicts accused him of distributing weapons to Hutu Interahamwe militia, who carried out most of the carnage.
Rwigema purged his own party of Hutu extremists and political opponents of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the former Tutsi-led rebel movement that won power and ended the killings in July 1994. He later joined the government of national unity.
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