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Out of the blur of politically or ethnically motivated death squads that carried out genocidal massacres in Rwanda in 1994, one suspected mastermind is now appearing on the wanted lists of several countries, the Rwanda war crimes tribunal and a United Nations commission on illegal arms trafficking.
The man is Theoneste Bagosora, a former army colonel accused not only of playing a central role in attacks that killed more than half a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu but also of trying to re-arm an exile resistance to the Tutsi-led force that became the present Rwanda Government.
This man is the key architect of genocide in Rwanda,
a Rwandan diplomat said here today.
Mr. Bagosora is now in jail in Cameroon after Belgium requested his detention and extradition on charges that he killed 10 Belgian soldiers based in Rwanda as peacekeepers in April 1994. He was arrested earlier this month.
But Rwanda's Foreign Minister, Anastase Gasana, wants Mr. Bagosora to face charges in Rwanda first. Today, in Cameroon, he tried but failed to have the former colonel extradited to Rwanda because Cameroon's President, Paul Biya, was out of the country and he alone is empowered to grant an extradition request in the absence of a treaty between Cameroon and Rwanda, according to a Rwandan Government radio broadcast.
Later this week Mr. Bagosora's Belgian lawyer, Luc de Temmerman, is expected to go to Cameroon and bring his client back to Belgium, where the former Rwandan military officer and Defense Ministry official has agreed to be questioned. In Belgium, officials have said that Mr. Bagosora may then be handed over to the war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania.
This week the Security Council will be considering a United Nations commission of inquiry report that identifies Mr. Bagosora as the Rwandan who apparently organized the smuggling of weapons for Hutu-led soldiers through Goma, Zaire, in 1994 in violation of an international arms embargo. By then, Mr. Bagosora was operating from Zaire, where resistance to the Tutsi-led government that took power in the summer of 1994 is still centered. He occasionally described himself as a Zairian buying arms for Zaire.
The weapons were bought by Mr. Bagosora with the help of a South African, Willem Petrus Jacobus Ehlers, a private citizen who the South African Government told the commission in a letter could have brokered the arms transactions.
The weapons were picked up in the Seychelles, where the Government has since barred further shipments, officials there say. Two payments for the purchases -- one of about $180,000 and another of nearly $150,000 -- were deposited in the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York for transfer to the Seychelles, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York told the commission in February.
The United Nations commission -- made up of high-ranking military and police officers from Canada, Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, Pakistan and Zimbabwe -- says in its final report that Zaire has not cooperated with investigations into past transfers or into inquiries about a continuing illegal trade.
Officials in Rwanda say that until shipments of arms and military training for exiles in Zaire are stopped, Rwanda will be under continuous threat of attack.
The Human Rights Watch Arms Project, which produced the first documented report of the illegal arms trade to Rwanda exiles -- a report the United Nations commission drew on heavily -- is calling on the Security Council to impose sanctions on Zaire and any other government that is refusing to cooperate with the commission. The Arms Project also asks for the stationing of United Nations military observers at airfields and border crossings in Zaire.
