A fugitive suspect in Rwanda's 1994 genocide with a five-million dollar reward on his head has been arrested in Uganda, police said on Friday.

Suspect Jean-Bosco Uwinkindi, accused of helping to orchestrate the mass killings of up to two thousand Tutsis, was arrested after entering Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"The people in Arusha were tracking him. As soon as he crossed into Uganda, which was on 26th or 27th (June), they informed us. We picked him up on Wednesday in Mbarara," said Edward Ochom, head of Uganda's Criminal Investigation Directorate.

Elly Womanya, deputy director of Interpol's Kampala office, said that Uwinkindi would be transferred to the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as soon as possible.

Until his arrest in western Uganda on Wednesday, he was among 11 suspects still at large and wanted by the ICTR, based in Tanzania's northern town of Arusha.

Two thousand corpses
Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte indicted Uwinkindi in 2001 for genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity. 

According to the indictment, Uwinkindi (1951), was a pastor at Pentecostal Church of Kayenzi near Kigali during the genocide, and allegedly collaborated with the extremist MRND (Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement) that professed hatred for Tutsis.

In early April 1994, Uwinkindi is accused of helping organise and instruct Interahamwe militias to kill Tutsis, and after allowing Tutsi women and children to seek refuge in his church, he ordered their execution. Prosecutors say that after Uwinkindi fled Rwanda in July 1994, “approximately two thousand corpses” were found near to his former church.

Five-million-dollar reward
The US State Department, through its Rewards for Justice Programme, had previously offered a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to Uwinkindi's arrest.

Uganda's independent Daily Monitor newspaper reported Friday that Uwinkindi entered the country using the alias Jean Inshitu and was attempting to buy land and settle under that assumed name.

Uwinkindi is the second Rwandan genocide suspect to be arrested in Uganda in less than a year. In October last year Uganda seized another suspect, Idelphonse Nizeyimana, after he slipped into the country from the DRC.

Nizeyimana was a former deputy intelligence chief in Rwanda and was accused of genocide, complicity in genocide and public incitement to commit genocide. 

10 suspects on the run
After Uwinkindi's arrest, the ICTR is still seeking 10 Rwandan genocide suspects, the best known of them being Felicien Kabuga. Accused of having bought the machetes used to hack the country's Tutsis to pieces in 1994, Kabuga is believed to be based in Kenya. Kabuga is the father-in-law of Augustin Ngirabatware, the former planning minister currently on trial at the ICTR.

Also on the list is former defence minister Augustin Bizimana. Accused of being one of the masterminds of the genocide, Bizimana, a trained agronomist, is in hiding in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to sources at the ICTR.

The third big fish still on the run is Major Protais Mpiranya, a former commander of the presidential guard, the elite military unit the most active in the massacres. Mpiranya, who was for a number of years was part of the command structure of the Rwandan Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), is currently thought to be getting protection from high-placed Zimbabweans.

ICTR Prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow says that Kabuga, Bizimana and Mpiranya must be judged by the ICTR. If they are arrested after the tribunal wraps up they will be tried by its "residual mechanism", a structure that the UN is still perfecting.

Jallow is contemplating sending the files on the other seven fugitives still at large to Rwanda and to other national court systems. But it is the ICTR judges who will have the last word on the issue and they have already refused five petitions aimed at transferring suspects before the Rwandan courts.

The seven are the former mayors Charles Sikubwabo, Ladislas Ntaganzwa and Aloys Ndimbati, the local militia chiefs Bernard Munyagishari and PhTnTas Munyarugarama, a former police inspector Fulgence Kayishema and a former restaurant owner Charles Ryandikayo.

All are thought to be hiding in the DRC.