Four men, including a doctor who worked for a refugee charity, were remanded in custody by a British court today on extradition warrants accusing them of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Vincent Bajinya, 45, who changed his name to Vincent Brown when he came to Britain, Charles Munyaneza, 48, and Celestin Ugirashebuja, 53, were denied bail at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in Central London.
The case of Emmanuel Nteziryayo, 44, was delayed because he requested a translator. Gemma Lindfield, the Rwandan Government's lawyer, said he did not want a Tutsi translator. Mr Nteziryayo sat listening silently, wearing a grey sweater and spectacles, as he was also remanded in custody. Because he did not apply for bail no details of the allegations against him were read to the court.
A remand hearing for all four men will take place on January 5, although the defendants are not expected to appear in court in person until January 26.
The court heard that the arrests came after a special agreement was signed between Britain and Rwanda allowing them to be extradited.
The police said the extradition warrants allege that between January 1 and December 12, 1994, the men killed Tutsis with the intent of destroying the group in whole or part, conspired to kill Tutsis and aided and abetted other people in the conspiracy.
The men were arrested last night in London, Manchester, Essex and Bedfordshire.
They cannot be tried in Britain as courts here do not have jurisdiction over acts of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by foreign nationals outside the country.
All four men claim to be innocent and it is thought that they will fight any attempt to send them home.
The court was told that under the newly-signed Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda - which has not been previously publicised in order not to alert the four suspects - the men would not be given the death penalty were they to be convicted.
In an unusual hearing for a British magistrates court, Miss Lindfield set out the origins of the 1994 slaughter in which up to one million Tutsis were massacred.
The court was told of a series of incidents dating back to the 1930s, when Rwanda was under Belgian rule, which served to intensify divisions between the two groups.
The court heard that by 1994, when the then president Juvenal Habyarimana died in a plane crash, Hutu militias had been set up across Rwanda with specific plans drawn up to systematically kill their Tutsi neighbours.
Miss Lindfield told the court that during the blood letting and mass murder which followed the president’s death both Mr Munyaneza, from Bedford, and Mr Ugirashebuja, from Walton on the Naze, Essex, had been local 'bourgmestres' or mayors with sweeping powers in their area.
Their role, she said had been to oversee and facilitate the killing of Tutsis while Mr Bajinya of Islington, north London, had been a militia co-ordinator in the capital Kigali.
The court was told that Mr Munyaneza, who had been working as a cleaner in Bedford, had attended a number of meetings in which the killing of Tutsis had been planned, as well as making speeches to the population during the genocide urging them to kill Tutsis and portraying them as a threat to Hutus.
Miss Lindfield told the court that Mr Munyaneza had also urged Tutsis to flee to safety in public buildings amid the massacres, only for them to find that the Hutu militias were lying in wait.
"It is estimated that there were tens of thousands of Tutsis killed in his district and as bourgmestere he was very much responsible for the planning of the killings," she said.
Mr Munyaneza had been granted refugee status in the UK but this was recently been cancelled by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate.
Miss Lindfield told the court that Mr Ugirashebuja was a mayor in the commune of Kigoma, close to Kigali, where militias also roamed murdering Tutsis and raping women.
"His role was to make sure that the Tutsis were being killed and to monitor how many were being killed.
"He also organised road blocks in the commune to prevent the escape of Tutsis and again is responsible for many thousands of Tutsi lives," she said.
Mr Ugirashebuja was refused asylum in the UK and excluded from refugee status last year. His appeal against the decision at the High Court earlier this year was unsuccessful.
Miss Lindfield went on to say that Mr Bajinya, a qualified doctor and a British national who until recently was working for a British-based charity, had co-ordinated militias in Kigali itself. .
The court heard that he had personally helped to man roadblocks and had led militiamen on searches of houses to seek out Tutsis and kill them in their homes while those who escaped were murdered at the roadblocks.
She said that he too had also attended meetings in which the progress of the genocide was monitored.
Objecting to bail, she told the court: "All three men are heavily involved in the implementation of the genocide in 1994.
"They were not the militia men, they were the organisers and facilitators in the genocide in which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children died because of the fact they were Tutsis."
She said that the Rwandan government believed that there was evidence to suggest that they retained the Hutu ideology and feared that were they to be given bail they could flee to another country.
Survivors of the Rwandan genocide welcomed the arrests as "excellent news" and a sign that Britain will not tolerate genocide.
Beatha Uwazaninka, a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, said she lost members of her family in some of the areas the men are alleged to have been operating in in 1994.
She said: "The Home Office is to be congratulated for closing down Britain as a safe haven for Rwandan genocide suspects. It’s good that people will see Britain is taking genocide seriously as a crime. It gives a signal that wherever genocide is committed, now or in the future, Britain won’t tolerate it."
Dr James Smith, Chief Executive of the anti-genocide campaign group the Aegis Trust, said: ""It’s been a long time coming, but it’s excellent news that the Home Office has worked with the Rwandan government to get the extradition process organised. Not only Rwandan genocide suspects, but anyone who commits crimes against humanity should learn that their deeds will catch up with them."
