A Subject of Netflix Doc 'World's Most Wanted' Was Arrested in May

Netflix's latest true crime series World's Most Wanted tells the story of five alleged criminals who were at large at the start of the year: Sinaloa Cartel head Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, alleged genocide financier Félicien Kabuga, terrorism suspect Samantha Lewthwaite, Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich and Casa Nostra leader Matteo Messian Denaro.

However, one of these was found and arrested in Paris in May.

After being on the run for 26 years, authorities captured Félicien Kabuga, who is suspected to have financed the genocide in Rwanda that left 800,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group and moderate members of the Hutu group dead in 1994.

At a bail hearing on May 27, Kabuga told a French court: "All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them."

The International Criminal Tribunal inducted Kabuga on seven counts in 1997, which included genocide and crimes against humanity.

On May 16, Kabuga was captured in a dawn raid in the suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine, where he had been living under a false name—one of 28 that police say he had used to evade capture.

In early June, a French court approved a request for Kabuga to be extradited to a United Nations tribunal in The Hague, in the Netherlands. At that time, however, his lawyers asked another court to examine the decision, delaying his extradition to the U.N.'s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).

worlds most wanted felicien kabuga
'World's Most Wanted' subject Félicien Kabuga was arrested in May 2020. Getty

The head of the French police's war crimes unit told the BBC that the coronavirus had aided in the capture of Kabuga, as it halted many of the unit's operations, freeing up time to find the alleged genocide financier.

In order to find him, authorities spied on his children, who helped them find his third-floor flat in a Paris suburb.

At the time, the chief prosecutor for the IRMCT told the BBC: "We knew already a year ago that he was very likely to be in the UK, France or in Belgium and we concluded only two months ago that he was in France."

To escape capture as one of the world's most wanted criminals, with a $5 million reward on his head from the U.S. for information that leads to his capture, Kabuga is believed to have lived across East Africa. He is thought to have been harbored in Kenya, where he had numerous business interests, and powerful politicians in the country have been accused of preventing his arrest.

In 1997, seven people believed to been involved in the Rwandan genocide were arrested in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, though Kabuga is alleged to have escaped thanks to a tip-off.

Other countries that Kabuga was believed to have been in include Switzerland, where he fled after the genocide, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Burundi, and Germany.

Now, however, Kabuga is in Paris' La Santé Prison, where he will stay until his extradition.

World's Most Wanted is streaming now on Netflix.

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