KIGALI, Feb 9 – The Rwandan prosecutor\’s office on Wednesday accused a former intelligence chief of collaborating with Felicien Kabuga, a fugutive said to have financed the 1994 genocide.
Public prosecution spokesman Alain Mukurarinda said Patrick Karegeya, a former close ally of President Paul Kagame now in exile, in 2003 lifted a freeze on Kabuga\’s property and handed his family two buildings in Kigali.
Mukurarinda said the move was "unilateral and in violation of the law."
The wealthy businessman Kabuga is accused of supplying machetes to kill Tutsis during the massacre that claimed some 800,000 lives.
Kabuga is the top genocide suspects sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and still on the run. The United States has placed a five-million-dollar bounty on his head.
The prosecution office spokesman also accused Karageya of paying for a trip for Kabuga\’s children to Kigali to reposses their father\’s property.
The Rwandan army also last year accused Karegeya of blocking Kabuga\’s arrest in Kenya where he is believed to be operating his businesses.
The South Africa-exiled Karegeya was Rwanda\’s former spy chief. He was last month handed a hefty jail term alongside three other former Kagame aides for threatening state security and criminal conspiracy among other charges.
The four are critical of Kagame\’s regime and accuse the president of being authoritarian, corrupt and driving the country back towards a conflict on the same scale as the 1994 genocide.
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