No closure for genocide victims as Kabuga dies before trial ends

Félicien Kabuga during his Initial Appearance at The Hague, November 11, 2020. [AFP]

The death of Félicien Kabuga last Saturday, the man long described as a key financier of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which close to a million people were killed, has reopened wounds for victims’ families, leaving them torn between unresolved grief and a sense of denied justice. He died while hospitalised in The Hague, the Netherlands, at the age of 91.

The announcement of his death by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) is unlikely to bring closure to victims’ families and instead marks a painful interruption to efforts to fully document his alleged role in the genocide. With his death, questions about the extent of the networks he built and the machinery of hate he was said to have financed may now remain partially unanswered.