09:56 am
The Arrest Everybody Missed
It’s been a good week for international justice, with the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb President indicted for genocide as a result of his actions during the seige of Sarajevo and the massacre in Srebrenica; the ICC’s indictment of Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir for his role in Darfur; and the the UN Security Council’s decision to extend the mandate of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda through 2009.
Amidst these good tidings, another story got lost: the arrest of Sylvere Ahorugeze, who is wanted in Rwanda for genocide. From the AFP:
A Swedish court has ordered a Rwandan man suspected of taking part in the 1994 genocide remanded in custody pending a possible extradition request from Kigali, the judge said Friday. The man [was identified] as Sylvere Ahorugeze, aged 52. According to public broadcaster Swedish Radio, Ahorugeze is suspected of murdering 25 Tutsis in a suburb of Kigali in April 1994.
Like Karadzic, he was hiding in plain sight. He was arrested after going to the Rwandan embassy in Stockholm, where employees recognized him.
The number of people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda boggles the mind. It runs to the tens of thousands, if not more. How do you heal a society when so many are responsible for so much suffering?
I cannot help but think of Eleanor Roosevelt, who once said that human rights begin “in small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.”
Sometimes, the same is also true of genocide.