Ahorugeze is a former Director General of what is now Rwanda’s Civil Aviation Authority, who has been living in Sweden despite the overwhelming evidence pinning him over his role in killing Tutsis in Rwanda 25 years ago, Prosecutor General Jean-Bosco Mutangana said.
Speaking during an interview with local media on Friday, the senior Rwandan justice official said that the suspect was neither extradited nor tried there (Denmark) for the crimes he committed despite an inquiry by the Swedish judiciary having established a prima facie case against him after an investigation.
Reports said that Ahorugeze was instead released and quietly slipped back into neighbouring Denmark, where he has lived for close to a decade, and goes about his normal life.
“He must be brought to justice since no substantive case was examined by the Danish court to try him on genocide and call witnesses to thus effect,” Mutangana was quoted as saying.
The suspect is especially accused of using his position of power to mastermind the killing of dozens of Tutsis, especially in the Kigali suburb of Gikondo, where he lived at the time.
In late April 2018, a court in the Danish town of Hillerød ruled that genocide suspect Wenceslas Twangirayezu – a regional leader of the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) political party, during the genocide – be handed over to Rwandan authorities for prosecution over genocide crimes he committed in the former Gisenyi prefecture.
Eight months later, Danish authorities extradited Twagirayezu, 50, after he exhausted all legal avenues to contest his extradition to Rwanda.
In 2014, another genocide suspect seeking asylum in Denmark, Emmanuel Mbarushimana, was extradited in 2014 and tried and sentenced to life in prison in 2017, for his role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.