UK Charges First Suspect Over Rwanda Genocide After Seven Years
A Changed Name, a Charge Without Precedent
The man charged is 65 years old, has lived in London for many years, and answers to a name that was not always his.
Dr Vincent Brown, formerly Dr Vincent Bajinya, is the first person charged in the UK with offences relating to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. [1] No one before him had faced a British court on charges arising from those hundred days in Rwanda.
Seven offences sit on the charge sheet. [1] One is conduct ancillary to genocide; six are conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity. [1] The distinction matters: the first charge concerns the genocide itself, the other six treat the killings as a crime against humanity, a separate category in international law
Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS’s Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said Brown is alleged to have directed and incited acts of murder and genocide carried out by others. [3] Brown is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
A Request From Kigali, a File, a Legal Test
For the better part of three decades after 1994, Britain had brought no charge over the genocide. The mechanism that changed this began with a formal request from Kigali. In September 2019, the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Team opened an investigation into people allegedly involved in a genocide in the Rugenge district of Kigali in April 1994, after the Rwandan government asked it to. [2]
The investigation took years, not months. The Metropolitan Police characterised the work behind the charges as a complex and extensive investigation running across seven years. [2]
Ferguson said the decision to charge followed a review of a file of evidence submitted by the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Team. Only after that review, he said, was the division satisfied that its legal test for bringing criminal charges had been met.
Safe Havens, Atrocity Cases, and the Numbers Behind Them
The genocide itself is measured in two figures: 100 days, and an estimated 800,000 dead. Over those 100 days in 1994, an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed in Rwanda by Hutu extremists. Those killed were members of the minority Tutsi community and their political opponents, irrespective of ethnic origin.
The violence was not one-directional. The mainly Tutsi forces who took power after the genocide were alleged to have killed thousands of Hutu people in Rwanda in retaliation.
Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the case demonstrates that the UK is not a safe haven for individuals suspected of committing international crimes. [3] She said the War Crimes Team remains committed to holding those suspected of genocide and other atrocity crimes accountable through due legal process, and added that a number of other investigations remain ongoing into other individuals in the UK for similar offences related to the genocide in Rwanda. [3]
Sources
1. Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division — Quote source (original article)
2. War Crimes Team — Quote source (original article)
3. MSN (Original laut Text: BBC) — Portal copy
Mentioned organisations (context, not sources)
- Crown Prosecution Service — Organisation (homepage)
- Metropolitan Police — Organisation (homepage)
- Government of Rwanda — Organisation (homepage)
- Counter Terrorism Policing London — Organisation (homepage)