Rwandan genocide suspect Callixte Mbarushimana dies in France without facing trial
The former UN employee and senior figure in the FDLR militia was 63. A French investigation into him had been reopened last year after an appeal by survivors' groups.
Kigali — Callixte Mbarushimana, a Rwandan accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and later a senior figure in the FDLR militia, has died in France at the age of 63, The New Times reports.
He died on 4 October, the Kigali newspaper says, and was due to be buried on Friday. He was never convicted of any crime.
The accusations
In 1994 Mbarushimana worked as a computer technician for the United Nations Development Programme in Kigali. He was accused of using that position to help organise attacks and killings. A UN investigation in 2001 linked him to 32 deaths.
He later became executive secretary of the FDLR, an armed group based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and founded by people who fled Rwanda after the genocide. He lived in France as a political refugee for about two decades.
Years of proceedings
Mbarushimana was placed under judicial examination in France in 2010 and arrested in Paris that October. In January 2011 he was transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Judges there declined to confirm the charges against him in December 2011, a decision upheld on appeal in May 2012, and he was released.
A French case against him was dismissed in October 2024. On 21 May 2025 the Paris Court of Appeal ordered the investigation reopened, after an appeal by the Collectif des parties civiles pour le Rwanda, a group that pursues genocide suspects living in France.
His death ends those proceedings before any court had ruled on the allegations.
This report is based on reporting by The New Times, via AllAfrica.
