Dutch police arrested a 63 year-old woman last week on suspicion of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Yvonne Ntacyobatabara is said to have led a group of young men in the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the Gikondo locality near the Rwandan capital Kigali.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

A former member of the extremist Coalition for the Defence of the Republic, she moved to the Netherlands in 1998 and obtained Dutch citizenship in 2004. She was later sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a local gacaca court in Gikondo.

Ntacyobatabara, who denies all charges, is only the second person in the Netherlands to be arrested for crimes committed as part of the Rwandan genocide. In March last year a court in The Hague sentenced Joseph Mpambara to twenty years in jail for the torture of a German doctor and his wife during the genocide.

Ntacyobatabara’s arrest came a few days after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Netherlands and Rwanda. Dutch caretaker Minister of Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin and his Rwandan counterpart Tharcisse Karugarama agreed that both countries should cooperate more closely in trying to bring suspected génocidaires to justice.

The two countries will share expertise on witness protection and will collaborate in training judges, public prosecutors and other judicial staff.

Hirsch Ballin says there could be up to a dozen Rwandan génocidaires living in the Netherlands, adding that he hopes an extradition treaty will soon be in place, allowing suspects who came to the Netherlands as refugees to face trial in Rwanda.

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