FILE PHOTO: A French Gendarme, wearing a protective face mask, stands in front of the courtroom during the initial extradition hearing for Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga at the Paris courthouse, France, May 20, 2020. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
PARIS (Reuters) – Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga told a French court on Wednesday that the international charges against him were lies.
Asked if he understood the charges made by an U.N. tribunal, Kabuga told the court through an interpreter: “All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them.”
Kabuga, who was arrested near Paris earlier this month after more than two decades on the run, is accused of financing and arming the ethnic Hutu militias that slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Reporting by John Irish; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Hugh Lawson