Key Rwandan genocide suspect Ladislas Ntaganzwa, who was being held in detention in Kinshasa, was today handed over to UN custody by the Democratic Republic of Congo, a media reporter said.
The former mayor, who is accused of being responsible for the slaughter of thousands of people and organising mass rapes in 1994, was captured by Congolese police in December and is expected to face trial in Rwanda.
"Ladislas Ntaganzwa, who is accused of participating in genocide in Rwanda, has been in our hands since December 2015. We have decided to hand him over to the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT)," Congolese Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba told reporters after the suspect was transferred to UN custody at Kinshasa airport.
Around 800,000 people -- mostly members of the minority Tutsi community -- were slaughtered in the 100-day orgy of violence in 1994, largely by ethnic Hutus.
The US State Department, which offered a USD 5 million bounty for his arrest under its War Crimes Rewards Program, lists Ntaganzwa as "one of the main instigators of the genocide" in Rwanda's southern Butare district.
