New Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki is ”eager” to assist the United States in its hunt for a Rwandan genocide suspect believed to be hiding in Kenya, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.
The official said Washington had been pleased with Kibaki’s pledge to help in the search for fugitive Felicien Kabuga and said the matter would be discussed later this month in person when the top US diplomat for Africa, Walter Kansteiner, travels to Nairobi to meet the new president.
”President Kibaki has said he is very eager to cooperate with us on Kabuga,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
”It’s a good sign. The initial conversations were very good.” Kansteiner will follow up on those preliminary talks in Kenya after attended an African trade forum in Mauritius that is to conclude on January 17, the official said.
Late last month, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes Pierre-Richard Prosper said there was evidence that Kenya’s former internal security chief Zakayo Cheruiyot had been hiding Kabuga who is a key suspect in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Kenyan police said they had questioned Cheruiyot but that he had denied any knowledge of Kabuga’s whereabouts and that their investigation continued.
Cheruiyot was security chief under former president Daniel arap Moi’s government that was ousted in December 27 polls with Kabaki’s election.
Kabuga was owner of a Rwandan radio station that incited Hutus to exterminate Tutsis in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which left up to a million minority Tutsis and moderates from the Hutu majority dead.
He has been indicted on war crimes and genocide charges by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Kabuga escaped arrest in Nairobi in 1998, when an ICTR team raided a house allegedly rented from one of Moi’s nephews, but found a note indicating that he had received a tip-off about the raid from Kenyan police. – Sapa-AFP