Felicien Kabuga, the most wanted genocide suspect arrested in France last weekend, lived and operated businesses in Nairobi upto a decade ago.
Following the arrest and subsequent interest the Rwandese’s arrest has created, a mechanic employed at a petrol station on Jogoo Road, Nairobi, positively identified Kabuga as the owner of a vehicle he serviced.
Kabuga, a wealthy Rwandan, has been on the run since the 1994 genocide and was said to have settled in Kenya to escape an international arrest warrant. It is unclear when he may have left the country, but from the interview with our source, a male foreigner known locally as Bosco was Kabuga’s confidante.
“He was a regular visitor at the service station where he would meet up with Bosco, with whom they would spend time together,” our source confirmed after being shown the photos of the octogenarian fugitive.
Kabuga presented himself to our source as the owner of the transport company, as he reportedly oversaw daily operations of the company that owned the fleet of buses.
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The source says he was not shocked when the man he thinks was Kabuga stopped going to his place of work. The man says he knew the foreigner may have travelled back to his country.
Up close
The source, who has since moved jobs since the interaction at a personal level with a possible war criminal, would only speak on condition of anonymity citing fear of being questioned by authorities.
Kabuga was said to have settled in Kenya after he was denied entry into Switzerland as the international arrest warrant hang over his head. An estimated 800,000 Rwandese nationals of the Tutsi ethnic group and moderate Hutus were massacred in the madness, which Kabuga is suspected to have helped organise.
Kenya has repeatedly denied claims of aiding Kabuga to find a hideout and delaying his arraigning to answer charges of financing the genocide.
George Saitoti, a former Interior Minister (now deceased) was at one time forced to issue a statement in Parliament denying that Kenya helped shield Kabuga from arrest.
The area around Jogoo Road is a beehive of activity any day, surrounded by largely-poor city estates developed several decades ago. This might have informed the decision by the fugitive to hang out there.
Records at the companies’ registry show the majority shareholder in a Rwandese-owned public transport company, which operates hundreds of shuttles from the same petrol service station, is Jean Bosco Ndarugoragoye.
Mr Ndarugoragoye is listed as a Kenyan citizen. The name Jean-Bosco Ndarugoragoye is mentioned in the records of the trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. One other of Ndarugoragoye’s co-directors in Rwaken Investments is Haruna Imaniraguha, who is listed as a foreigner, owning 50,300 shares in the company.
Haruna, commonly known by his initial HM, confirmed, in a telephone interview with The Standard, that he was a shareholder and director with the transport company.
