Callixte Mbarushimana is a

Hutu The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the p ...

Rwandan and former

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

employee (1992–2001) who is alleged to have participated in the

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed H ...

of 1994. On 28 September 2010, Mbarushimana was indicted by the

International Criminal Court The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals f ...

(ICC) in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...

for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

in 2009. He was arrested in France in October 2010 and extradited to the ICC on 25 January 2011. However, he was released on 23 December 2011 as the ICC found there was insufficient evidence for prosecuting him.

Alleged participation in the Rwandan Genocide

Mbarushimana is alleged to have directed and participated in the murder of 32 people in 1994 — including U.N. employees he was given the responsibility to protect. He was dismissed from the U.N. in 2001 but in 2004 he won a lawsuit seeking compensation for his dismissal. Mbarushimana joined the UN in 1992 and remained a staff member until 2001 serving in Angola and Kosovo. At the time of the Genocide, Mbarushimana was left in charge of providing supplies and support to the UN national staff who had been left behind following the UN's evacuation of international civilian staff. A strange designation as the years prior to the Genocide, Callixte Mbarushimana is known to have participated in anti-Tutsi rallies. Additionally, evidence collected by the ICTR team preparing the draft indictment against him indicated that before the war he trained a personal militia. Mbarushimana is alleged not only to have handed over UN vehicles and supplies to Rwandan militias (e.g. the

Interahamwe The Interahamwe ( or ) is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND ...

) or the military, but he is also accused of being directly involved in killing and ordering the killing of people during the genocide. Amongst the U.N. employees Mbarushimana is alleged to have murdered was Florence Ngirumpatse, the director of personnel at the U.N. development office in Kigali. When war crimes investigator Tony Grieg researched the Mbarushimana case, he interviewed at least 20 people who witnessed the murders and confirmed that Mbarushimana was directly involved. However, Mbarushimana was never indicted for these crimes, possibly because he was not considered to be one of the main organisers of the killings.

Indicted by the International Criminal Court

On 11 October 2010, Mbarushimana was arrested in France under a sealed warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in the Kivus (Democratic Republic of the Congo)."New suspect in the ICC's custody: Callixte Mbarushimana arrives at the ICC detention centre"
Press Release ICC, 25 Jan 2011 The warrant concerns widespread attacks allegedly committed by troops of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), against civilians in North and South

Kivu Kivu was the name for a large "region" in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko that bordered Lake Kivu. It included three "Sub-Regions" ("Sous-Régions" in French): Nord-Kivu, Sud-Kivu and Maniema, correspondi ...

in 2009. The Court's judges state that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mbarushimana, as Executive Secretary of the FDLR, bears criminal responsibility for these attacks, including murder, torture, rape, persecution and inhumane acts. The warrant alleges that Mbarushimana was part of a plan to create a humanitarian catastrophe to extract concessions of political power for the FDLR. On 25 January 2011, Mbarushimana was extradited to the International Criminal Court for prosecution at The Hague. Prosecutor

Luis Moreno-Ocampo Luis Moreno OcampoMoreno Ocampo's surnames are often hyphenated in English-language media to mark Moreno as a surname, not a given name. (born 4 June 1952) is an Argentine lawyer who served as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Co ...

issued a statement in which he recalled that Mbarushimana's FDLR triggered the Congo wars and that girls and women have borne the brunt of ruthless sexual violence for almost a generation. He stated that, due to the ICC, "rape can no longer be used as a weapon of war".

Released

On 16 December 2011 the First Preliminary Chamber of the ICC, by a two-to-one majority, dismissed the charges against Mbarushimana, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence for assuming that he has contributed to the war crimes in North and South Kivu. The Prosecutor's appeal against an immediate release was rejected on 23 December, and Mbarushimana was released the same day. On 30 May 2012 the ICC's Appeal Chamber also dismissed the Prosecutor's appeal against the decision not to prosecute him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mbarushimana, Callixte 1963 births Living people People from Northern Province, Rwanda Hutu people People of the Rwandan genocide People indicted by the International Criminal Court Rwandan officials of the United Nations People extradited from France Rwandan rebels