Dutch To Extradite Two Genocide Suspects To Rwanda: Prosecutor

THE HAGUE, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Nov, 2016 ) - The Dutch national prosecutor said Saturday that two Rwandans living in the Netherlands accused of participating in the country's 1994 genocide would be extradited to their homeland.

"Two Rwandan residents of the Netherlands, a 40-year-old from Voorburg and a 57-year-old from Leusden, will be extradited to Rwanda today," the prosecutor said in a statement. Rwanda had demanded the extraditions of Jean-Claude Iyamuremye and Jean-Baptiste Mugimba in 2012 and 2013 respectively to face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The two are suspected of having been militiamen during a four-month massacre of some 800,000 people, mostly from Rwanda's Tutsi minority, in 1994. The extraditions come after a lengthy legal battle.

Dutch authorities had at first approved the extraditions but they were blocked on appeal as judges doubted the two would receive a fair trial. That ruling was later overturned in another appeal.

Iyamuremye is accused of having participated in a notorious massacre near the Official Technical School (ETO) outside the capital Kigali on April 11, 1994. According to the website of Kigali's memorial centre, some 2,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed that day near the school after Belgian UN peacekeepers left the area.

Mugimba is believed to have attacked Tutsis in a neighbourhood of Kigali. The Rwandan genocide was triggered by the assassination of the country's president Juvenal Habyarimana, from the Hutu majority, whose plane was shot down.