True Crime fans were gifted the ultimate TV series by Netflix when the streaming service released World’s Most Wanted.
Already trending in the top 10 for Australia, the series focuses on five shocking stories of the most wanted criminals in the world. Amongst the criminals are suspected terrorists, mafia and drug cartel bosses, with each episode speaking to those who are actively in the world’s largest search.
The five-part docuseries profiles the crimes that these five fugitives are alleged to have committed and how they have evaded capture by the FBI, CIA and MI5.
Until now.
While four remain at large, 85-year-old Félicien Kabuga, whose story is shown in episode two, was captured in Paris on May 16, 2020.
Kabuga managed to stay free for 26 years and according to the BBC, is believed to have held 28 aliases and a tie to the Kenyan Government to say hidden.
While the global coronavirus pandemic has continued to wreak havoc around the world, it was actually a Parisian lockdown that helped capture him — thanks to an investigation relaunched by Serge Brammertz, a UN war crimes prosecutor. An incredible feat, particularly because of his crimes.
In 1994, the wealthy businessman was the richest man in Rwanda, however, rather than using his wealth for good, he is accused of being the financier of the Rwandan genocide.
The BBC reports that he has at least five known children, two of which were married to sons of Rwanda’s former President Juvénal Habyarimana. Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down in April 1994, triggering the genocide.
The event saw 800,00 murders in 100 days and was responsible for the mass slaughter of people belonging to the Tutsi, Twa and Hutu groups, forcing him to flee to Switzerland.
Kabuga, who made his money from tea trade, was on the run for so long that the international tribunal set up to bring justice to those responsible now ceases to work.
In an interview with the BBC, the chief prosecutor for the UN’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals’ Brammertz said that it was the “French authorities who located the apartment in which he was hiding, which led to the operation.”
“One of the major reasons he was able to be on the run for so long was “the complicity of his children”, he told the outlet.
The former businessman had a USD $5 million and was charged with seven counts of genocide and crimes against humanity.
According to the outlet, he had lived in countries in East Africa and in 2006, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said he even carried out business in Kenya — evading capture multiple times after a tip-off from a senior officer.
In 2003, a freelance reporter, William Munhue, was hot on his trail until he turned up dead in an apartment in Nairobi. After his death, his brother revealed that he had been planning a sting operation with the FBI.
Patrick Baudoin of the International Federation for Human Rights, told the BBC, that “it is difficult to imagine he could have escaped into French territory without the help of accomplices.”
After his arrest, his neighbours said that he had lived in the building for three to four years and would often go for walks before lockdown began.
Kabuga is now confined to La Santé Prison in central Paris before he will be released to the ICTR.
Watch World’s Most Wanted on Netflix and read the full story of his capture at the BBC.
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