Original subtitles

[birds twittering]

[chopper whirring]

[indistinct chatter]

[somber tune]

[man 1, in French] Some people put wood here...

to prevent cars from passing.

[indistinct chattering]

[man1, in French] Every time you crossed the road block, you had to--

you had to show your ID card...

to see if you were Hutu or Tutsi.

[somber tune continues]

[man 1, in French] They had machetes. There were rifles, clubs.

Many things.

If you were a Hutu, you were free to go. You could pass and go wherever you wanted.

But if you were a Tutsi...

-[in Rwanda-Rundi] Your ID! -I am not a Tutsi!

[man 1] You were in trouble.

[in Rwanda-Rundi] Did you see your nose?

[in Rwanda-Rundi] She's a Tutsi warrior!

[in Rwanda-Rundi] You want to die?

Bring the papers! Kill her!

[man 1, in French] They killed my mother,

my two older brothers, my younger brother, and my sister.

[newscaster] Rwanda is a country that was torn apart by hate

and now lives with a legacy of genocide.

It began when members of the Hutu tribe

began slaughtering members of the minority Tutsi tribe.

[man 1, in French] The machetes were bought...

by Kabuga. We all know that.

Of course, everyone knows it.

[sinister tune]

[car honking]

[chanting, in Rwanda-Rundi]

[woman crying]

Félicien Kabuga is responsible directly for the arming of people who killed

over 800,000 people.

[in French] Félicien Kabuga financed the genocide.

Nothing could have been possible without money.

[click]

[in Rwanda-Rundi] I hope God will help us to exterminate them,

and to organize ourselves to exterminate this bad race.

[click]

It's the-- the men often behind the scenes,

you know, those with-- with clean fingernails,

who may not even need to raise their voice

that-- that do the greatest evil.

He's a business man, a smart man, he knew who to pay off...

who could help him with protection.

[man 2] Félicien Kabuga is among

five to about seven of the world's most wanted people.

Five million dollars on his head.

[sirens wailing]

[man 3, in French] Félicien Kabuga is an exceptional figure

both for cruelty and perversity.

That's why I will never forgive myself for his escape from us.

[opening theme music]

[ominous tune]

[female narrator, in English] Félicien Kabuga is an international fugitive

wanted for his participation in the murders

of more than 800,000 Rwandans during the 1994 genocide.

The FBI searches for the suspected financial backer of the atrocities.

[gate clicks shut]

[man 4] My name is Pierre Prosper.

I put up a five million dollar reward to find Félicien Kabuga.

In 2001, I became the US Ambassador at Large for war crimes issues.

And we began

to-- to formulate a plan to go after these, uh...

leaders and organizers of the Rwandan genocide.

His name just kept coming up at the very top

of the people wanted.

Before that I was a US prosecutor.

I was in a hard core gang unit.

So I was used to seeing death and destruction.

But I was not prepared for...

seeing the consequences of a genocide.

[high-pitched ringing]

[Prosper] When I walked into Rwanda

I was shocked.

I was shocked by the depth of inhumanity that took place.

This was hand-to-hand combat.

And that individuals were walking up to their victims,

cutting their Achilles heel so they couldn't run,

and then chopping them up.

[indistinct chattering, in Rwanda-Rundi]

[Prosper] We realized that

someone had to be behind this operation, to finance.

We learned that Kabuga very early on was responsible

for bringing in... machetes.

[in Rwanda-Rundi] Kabuga distributed weapons and ammunition.

The militiamen were also given money, uniforms...

and they also had meetings...

and all met directly in Kabuga's office.

I even saw with my own eyes...

machetes delivered in a truck...

directly in his office in Muhima.

And then, the murders began!

The enemy was the Tutsis.

[Prosper] There were reports that machetes were being brought in

in the hundreds of thousands.

In our investigation we were able to learn that Kabuga...

was the one who was financing the importing of these machetes.

There were hundreds of thousand machetes that were brought in all at once.

We looked at the fact that the machetes were then distributed to militia.

In order to take the lives of the Tutsi population.

We could see Kabuga right at the top.

Right after the genocide in 1994,

you can imagine in a Rwanda context,

when you had about one million people killed in one hundred days,

that many of the leaders decided to flee.

And our goal was to go pursue them.

But the perpetrators began to scatter

all over the world.

[man 3, in French] The hunt for Kabuga starts in Switzerland.

One day, I get a phone call from a member of the Tutsi community in Switzerland...

telling me that Félicien Kabuga...

is in Switzerland with his family, and that he has applied for asylum.

[ominous tune]

[man 5, in French] Back... back then, it was a refugee registration center.

Mr. Kabuga arrived here

with two minibus cars, with a lot of suitcases.

So, an unusual way to enter a refugee registration center.

The others usually came with a small backpack

and they had nothing else.

[in French] He arrives, most likely

by quickly obtaining a visa for Switzerland,

because he had had one previously, because he's also a rich man.

[TV opening credits tune ]

[newscaster, in French] Félicien Kabuga arrived in Switzerland on July 22

even though he was blacklisted by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Until the end of July,

Félicien Kabuga seems to be spending quiet days in Bern.

He apparently stays in this hotel.

[Pitteloud, in French] I witnessed what happened in Rwanda,

and it's been haunting me for years.

For me, it's the burned children that I saw.

I still have nightmares [scoffs] about them.

I am, I must confess, horrified...

horrified, that my country could offer asylum

to a genocidist.

Given the special functions that I had back then,

I heard rumors.

I heard rumors that Félicien Kabuga

was about to be deported from Switzerland.

So I called the director of the Federal Office for Foreigners.

And I remember telling him,

"You can't let this war criminal leave."

And then, a couple days later,

I learned that Félicien Kabuga

had boarded a plane in Geneva.

I was overwhelmed with a feeling of rage and powerlessness.

FÉLICIEN KABUGA DEPORTED

KABUGA CASE: OPEN INVESTIGATION

[sinister tune]

[in French] He had his bank account here.

It was a well credited account of course, that of a millionaire.

And he was given time to completely empty his account.

He left Switzerland with all his money.

He even managed to leave with a ticket paid for by Switzerland,

with his whole family.

This is unbelievable.

[Pitteloud, in French] It's a decision of political cowardice

to say, "We are not going to burden ourselves with a trial

in violation of human rights in a distant country."

The easiest is to put this gentleman on a plane.

[thunderclaps]

[suspenseful tune]

[Ceppi, in French] At that moment, for me, it is incomprehension, it's anger.

For Switzerland,

homeland of human rights, which hosts the United Nations,

to not anticipate this serious issue,

at least for the sake of prevention, keep Mr. Kabuga

in Switzerland in order to clarify the case,

for me it is completely incomprehensible.

Absolutely incomprehensible, still now.

[thunder rumbling]

[Prosper] We were not ready for the genocide.

And not ready for the aftermath of the genocide.

Mechanisms need to be put in place to prevent

movement of these perpetrators.

Those mechanisms were not in place.

So they were able to move about freely.

[cars honking]

[dramatic tune]

[man, in French] After leaving Switzerland,

Kabuga left for Kinshasa.

Kinshasa is certainly a big city,

but with few international class hotels.

There were just two back then.

So, we thought we had one in two chances to find the right one.

And we decide to try to find him.

We go to Intercontinental. And I decided to go for it.

I went to the reception and said,

"We would like to talk to Mr. Félicien Kabuga."

The receptionist looks in her sheets

and says, "It's this room, I'll call him."

She calls, I introduce myself,

journalist from Swiss Radio.

He accepts, and we go up to Félicien Kabuga's room.

[elevator dings]

[man speaking indistinctly, in French]

[in French] ...to see a doctor or for business.

But beyond that, he didn't know anyone.

[Fontaine, in French] He was with his family,

so his children and wife were in the other room.

He was totally calm.

He thought it was unfair that he was deported

since he followed the procedure to seek asylum.

[indistinct background conversation]

[Fontaine] He decides to speak in his own language,

and his daughter translates.

[in Rwanda-Rundi] Did they ask you questions when you arrived in Geneva?

[replies in Rwanda-Rundi]

[Kabuga's Daughter, in French] There was no particular question,

the visa was valid.

He entered as he would usually enter.

[Fontaine, in French] Of course, he denied any direct involvement in the genocide.

He described himself as a businessman

who invested in different companies in Rwanda,

including the Radio des Mille Collines.

[in Rwanda-Rundi] I was just a shareholder and I was not the only one.

We invested in a simple commercial radio.

We just wanted the radio to be a success and be open to those

who wanted to advertise on it.

[Fontaine, in French] By then, we already knew

that Radio des Mille Collines

was one of the main instigators of the genocide.

[click]

[in Rwanda-Rundi] Tutsi-cockroaches want to harm our daily lives!

These people are very bad,

their race is bad.

[click]

[speech on radio, in Rwanda-Rundi]

[man, in French] Kabuga was one of the founders and a major financier

of Radio television libre des Mille Collines...

established in 1993.

[click]

[in Rwanda-Rundi] Dear audience, it's RTLM! Kigali's free radio,

which broadcasts on 106.94!

[radio broadcast continues]

[click]

Without the radio,

in my view, the genocide would have never reached the magnitude

that it actually did.

They would not have been able to mobilize

effectively an entire population against a particular group.

The radio was...

probably the most powerful weapon in the genocide.

[ominous tune]

[RTLM presenter 1, in Rwanda-Rundi] Dear audience, it's RTLM!

Kigali's free radio, which broadcasts on 106.94!

There's no Tutsi as rich as Kabuga! So stop bragging!

I'm not joking, you'll be exterminated.

Let's organize to eliminate them all

so that our children and great grandchildren never ever hear

about the thing we call "Tutsis".

[click]

[RTLM presenter 2, in Rwanda-Rundi] As I often tell you,

Tutsi cockroaches eat human flesh and they are cannibals.

[rewind, click]

[RTLM presenter 2] Cockroaches resist!

They are annoying because we kill them over and over,

we crush them, but it's impossible to exterminate them!

[click]

[RTLM presenter 2, in French] I had, it's true,

a very strong voice against the Tutsis.

We said that they are animals that can kill you.

The little children of the Tutsis...

were also enemies.

They will kill you once they grow up.

At the time, we thought it was true. I thought it was true.

We knew...

we knew very well that it was Kabuga who was the big boss.

I saw him all the time because he came to the radio.

I saw him several times... several times.

He was the ideologue.

If he had not been an ideologue,

he couldn't have established this radio

and given the line to follow.

[dramatic tune]

[Bizimana, in French] Félicien Kabuga was the richest man in Rwanda.

He was a very successful businessman from the north of the country.

[man 1, in Rwanda-Rundi] Kabuga was so rich

that when someone in the neighborhood got rich,

we called him a "Kabuga".

He was comparable to a soccer star.

When he passed, everyone recognized his car.

He was shining through. But no one ever saw his face.

[Prosper] So as he built that wealth,

he also built the political connections

with all these various Hutu leaders.

And began to support

the extremist views to annihilate and eliminate the Tutsis.

[cars honking]

[suspenseful tune]

[man, in French] The increasingly frantic hate speech on RTLM

arouses the indignation of the Democrats.

In particular, of the Minister of Information, Faustin Rucogoza,

who threatens to shut down RTLM.

[Rucogoza, in Rwanda-Rundi] News that fuels hatred...

this news is not acceptable and does not belong in this country.

[in French] In the office of Rucogoza, we will see

Félicien Kabuga publicly for the first time,

since television is there and is able to film this pathetic discussion.

[in Rwanda-Rundi] RTLM can not please everyone.

Mister Minister,

RTLM only tells the truth

and only what is really happening.

And it is for this reason that we founded it,

to enlighten the population.

[Dupaquier, in French] This is the first and, I believe, last time

that he was publicly seen in a video

as the great organizer of the group of Hutu extremists.

[Kabuga speaks indistinctly in the background]

[Dupaquier] So, no one will dare to come and close RTLM.

In the end, Rucogoza is the one who will lose

because he will be assassinated with his wife and kids.

[Rucogoza speaks indistinctly in the background]

[Dupaquier] Because he opposed those people.

[melancholic tune]

[radio speaker, in Rwanda-Rundi] Let's all sing together:

♪ Come to rejoice with me my friends ♪

♪ That Tutsis are exterminated! ♪

♪ Come to rejoice with me my friends ♪

♪ God is right! ♪

[crows cawing]

[Prosper] What we began to do is, as the tracking team began to build,

was set up several operations

around the world.

We were able to successfully apprehend people in Cameroon

and then we also learned that there were people in Kenya.

And featured among them was Kabuga.

And we ultimately learned that they were receiving some--

some protection at that time.

[racy tune]

[Namu] Kenya was this... ground where some of the business elite,

the political elite, could come and...

slip into the shadows, and it was fairly

okay for a lot of genocidaires.

[Prosper] With a lot of effort, a lot of push,

we were able to make several arrests.

[newscaster, in French] Great success

for the International Criminal Court for Rwanda.

After the arrest in Kenya, last week,

of seven members of the former Rwandan regime...

[Namu, in English] Kabuga was arrested

in a police station not too far away from where we are sitting.

[funky tune]

[Namu] When he was arrested and they were looking into the issue,

a number of people came out of the woodwork.

Lawyers... government agents...

who claimed that Kabuga was the victim of political persecution.

So he was arrested, then released.

The explanation that the police officer who released him said,

was that, you know, orders from above, basically.

[tense tune]

Kabuga was connected at the highest level with the Kenyan government.

So he was always one step ahead of any operation.

[tense tune continues]

[Ceppi, in French] Kabuga had the opportunity

to stay in Kenya because he had a lot of money.

It was, back then, an extremely corrupted country...

where it was possible to buy visas and to buy silence.

Where you could buy anything if you have money.

[in English] If you look at the-- the registration documents...

[click]

[Namu] ...if you look at the visa documents that, uh,

Félicien Kabuga signed on behalf of his family as well.

Everything's very clear. It looked like just another guy who's come

and he has an interest in setting up in Kenya.

And used his name.

And, fairly quickly, he was...

also able to establish an import-export company.

He was able to move freely, shop in, you know,

some of Kenya's most expensive shopping districts.

He had houses in, you know, areas that

a regular Kenyan would not be able to afford to live in.

So, he lived a quiet life, but it was a comfortable life.

[somber tune]

So, we got to the point where...

we launched a very aggressive campaign in Kenya.

[dramatic tune]

[Prosper] We set up phone numbers, hot-lines where people could call in...

and provide us tips.

And from there we would send out a-- a-- the tracking team.

When we launched the program, Kabuga was our featured person.

The idea was really quite simple. If someone was able to give us information

we could pay up to five million dollars.

Those individuals who have been indicted for serious violations

of international humanitarian law

that is, those most responsible

and those most wanted for the Rwandan genocide.

[dramatic tune]

[Prosper] We had a witness...

that came forward and provided information.

He had seen Kabuga.

And had actually had conversations with Kabuga.

We needed to test the information.

So we had, uh, the FBI perform

polygraph, lie detector tests.

[whirring]

[Prosper] The man passed the test.

The FBI concluded he was telling the truth.

And so he was willing to help set up

a sting operation where we were going to arrest Kabuga.

[suspenseful tune]

[Namu] William Munuhe was a journalist working for a local newspaper here,

who had very good and close links to government.

So William Munuhe

gets introduced to Félicien Kabuga.

And once he realizes who Félicien Kabuga is,

he reaches out to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

And he starts to hatch a plan to get Félicien Kabuga arrested.

[Munuhe's brother, in Rwanda-Rundi] I'm William Munuhe's brother.

He is the last born of the family.

[baby wailing]

[Munuhe's brother] Once, he told us that

he had friends from America.

He said that through his friends,

he could raise our living standards as a family.

Because in our lives we've been raised in poverty.

Munuhe was a smart man.

People of the government sometimes asked him to hide Félicien Kabuga.

And when Kabuga needed someone to get a job done,

they would ask Munuhe to do it.

[Prosper, in English] But... we do believe that there was a leak

in the Kenyan security system...

that, uh, alerted Kabuga's people

of the identity of our informant.

[paper rustling]

[Mureithi in Rwanda-Rundi] This is the letter. Munuhe narrates how

he was kidnapped on a highway in Nairobi.

[in English] "I was blindfolded and locked in the car boot.

I found the three men seated together with Kabuga

and the interrogation started.

He criticized me for betraying him

I was asked about my relationship with America.

I was taken to another room

where electric shock was used."

[in Rwanda-Rundi] At that point, he says:

[in English] "They took me back. They took back my phones."

[in Rwanda-Rundi] That's how the letter ends.

I think they had an agreement.

Kabuga was supposed to come to Munuhe's place

to pay him so he would keep quiet.

That's when Munuhe tipped off the FBI.

And the FBI planned on how they would arrest Kabuga.

[sirens blaring]

[sinister tune]

[in English] We set up a meeting that was confirmed,

where Kabuga was going to go to... this man's house.

We were all set

and we were waiting and waiting.

And Kabuga never shows up.

[dog barking]

[Prosper] And we can't find our informant.

He's not returning our calls.

Someone went into his house...

and found him... dead.

[click]

[Namu] The first time news of William Munuhe's death emerged,

fairly senior police officers at the time claimed that he had died from suicide.

[Mureithi, in Rwanda-Rundi] This is my brother's death certificate.

It's written:

[in English] "Cause of death uncertain,

pending full toxicology due to carbon monoxide levels."

[in English] But the evidence in the house where his body was found, spoke

a completely different story.

[Mureithi, in Rwanda-Rundi] They struck his throat with a sharp object.

Blood spurted and splashed from the ceiling to the closet.

We even found blood in the sink that they probably used to clean up.

[Namu, in English] It looked as if William Munuhe had been murdered.

But Kenyan authorities always denied... that...

Félicien Kabuga was involved in his murder.

[Prosper] We know that Kabuga was a killer.

Kabuga had no problems with killing in Rwanda.

So killing an informant was very easy for-- for Kabuga.

[sighing] You know...

It was one of those days where... you just feel terrible.

And you feel mad and angry at the same time.

He was about to be arrested. We had him...

cornered.

But there was someone in the-- the Kenyan services that got the information,

gave it to Kabuga, and... sold us out.

After William was killed,

the information began to dry up.

The tips stopped coming in.

Because people now know...

that uh... Kabuga... is a killer.

And is serious.

And that if you bring information,

they are going to come after you.

Then uh... he moved on somewhere.

[indistinct in-flight announcement]

[Prosper] And we just could not get a good grasp of-- of where he went to.

[racy tune]

[Prosper] Maybe he went back to the Congo.

We had information at one point that he spent some time in the Seychelles.

[Bizimana, in French] It is even said that he went through a body transformation

in order to hide himself.

That he could have traveled to countries in Asia,

in Europe, with fake passports.

[racy tune continues]

[Prosper, in English] Kabuga, with his wealth and his willingness to kill,

has been able to remain at large.

[Dupaquier, in French] Kabuga was wanted. He was the most wanted man,

but a lot of others were wanted, namely

his son-in-law, Ngirabatware, who played a terrible part during the genocide.

They located him in Germany.

The process was obviously to alert the German police,

the only ones able to operate on German soil.

[Rapp, in English] What happened in 2007

is that the effort to arrest his son-in-law

finally succeeds in Germany.

RWANDAN GENOCIDIST ARRESTED IN FRANKFURT

A FORMER MINISTER ARRESTED

[Rapp] At the time he's arrested,

he's actually at an Internet cafe

and he's communicating on a rented computer.

Uh-- and he also has with him a thumb drive,

a memory stick that's in that computer, and when he's arrested,

he pulls out the memory stick and attempts to stomp on it and destroy it.

[in French] Some German policemen found the debris from this USB drive and

sent it for expertise.

When they managed to recover some of the data from this USB drive,

they saw that there was an invoice for the hospitalization of a Tanzanian.

This document was a piece of paper with the photo ID of a Tanzanian,

and the photo was clear.

It was indeed Félicien Kabuga,

who had been smuggled into Germany on a fake passport.

[Rapp, in English] That then leads them to understand

that Kabuga has been there.

There's no question, you know, that he was in Germany at that time.

And so there's a lot of efforts to try

to locate him in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe.

Which, frankly, don't yield

any solid, uh, information about his whereabouts.

[suspenseful tune]

[Dupaquier, in French] Félicien Kabuga did not wait to be identified.

He disappeared again. It was a monumental failure.

[Prosper, in English] We continued to try to find Kabuga.

But it became tougher and tougher to get real, actionable

information or intelligence on-- on Kabuga.

[church bells tolling]

[Rapp] He may be, you know, in some...

in some villa in France, being, you know, taken care of by a nurse.

But they're never answering the door.

[church bells tolling]

[Dupaquier, in French] The genocide organization is,

in some ways, like the mafia.

And you know that when a mafia member is buried,

all mafia members go to the procession.

I learned one day

that a friend of Félicien Kabuga's had passed away...

and that he was about to be buried in the Paris region.

Here is Jean Bosco Barayagwiza's grave.

This is where I hoped Félicien Kabuga, the genocide's financier, would come...

since he was a great friend of Jean Bosco Barayagwiza's.

-Both of them were at RTLM. -[indistinct background speech]

[click]

[suspenseful tune]

[in French] I was here, not very far, with a cameraman friend,

to film Kabuga's arrest.

Two policemen hid in the gatehouse you see here,

at the end of the cemetery, which is used to store tools.

And they were waiting for my signal to get closer and arrest Kabuga.

There were employees of the Public Gardening Services,

who were pretending to plant flowers.

There were two trucks and it was planned that,

if Kabuga was spotted, to prevent him from escaping

at my signal, one truck would block the street

and another would block a little further up. He had no way to escape.

The procession of Rwandans approach the grave here,

and when the procession is leaving...

I'm still waiting for Kabuga's arrival,

because I saw that he was not in the procession.

I see that there is Dr. Eugene Rwamucyo,

who is wanted by an international arrest warrant,

who is there and I say to myself: "At least, let's arrest that one."

[in French] You are coming with us.

-[in French] Now? -Give me your hands, please.

[Dupaquier, in French] That's how I failed to arrest Félicien Kabuga

but managed to arrest Dr. Eugene Rwamucyo.

-[in French] Call my lawyer, Mr. Boulain. -[in French] Let's go, sir.

[indistinct dialog in French]

[in French] What's going on?

[in French] It's too tight, please.

-[in French] Move, sir. -[in French] Thank you.

[click]

[click]

[ominous tune]

[in French] Those who have been arrested and put in jail are the little people.

Kabuga and the authorities who planned the genocide...

Many have never been arrested.

They are hiding.

[in French] I'm pretty sure that Kabuga is in Kenya.

[in English] The last I heard, he had popped up somewhere in Belgium.

How he had been able to make it to Europe, I'm not sure.

[Ceppi, in French] Just like the victims of the Holocaust

have never given up,

have never stopped hunting down the perpetrators of the Holocaust,

I think we must never stop hunting down people like Félicien Kabuga.

[Prosper, in English] I would have loved

to have gotten, uh... Kabuga.

But I have found that time catches up with-- with everyone.

And we will...

find out where Kabuga is, dead or alive,

at some point in time.

[footsteps]

[somber music]

[traffic humming]

[man, in French] In the beginning of 2020, we received information from the English

that one of his daughters was in the area.

She often came to the country, and notably to Asnières.

[Emeraux, in French] The other members of the family, who were being tapped,

also came to Asnières.

[man on phone, in English] Yep, well, I hope this isn't a recorded line.

All right.

[in French] We thought there was something special about this city.

[Emeraux, in French] We decided to speed things up.

[dramatic music]

A meeting was set for Saturday at 6 a.m.

And when we arrived outside the apartment

we went through the basement

to go up the stairs discreetly, of course.

Once we were in front of the apartment door,

everyone got into position.

And it was time.

[somber music]

[in English] After decades on the run, one of the world's most wanted

fugitives has been captured.

Félicien Kabuga is finally in custody this evening,

after French police raided a flat in Paris in the early hours of this morning.

[in French] The man was living under a false identity

in Asnières-sur-Seine, near Paris.

The result of a long investigation by French police.

[Emeraux, in French] He acknowledged that he was indeed Félicien Kabuga.

I thought it was a historic day because it was the end of his run.

[male narrator, in English] His arrest is a reminder

that those responsible for genocide

can be brought to account, even 26 years after their crimes.

[somber music]

[latch clicks shut]