KIGALI, Rwanda
British police on Saturday arrested the head of Rwanda’s intelligence service based on a Spanish warrant for his arrest for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity.
Gen. Emmanuel Karenzi Karake was “prevented from leaving the country since June 14 while he was on an official business trip [to the U.K.],” Johnston Busingye, Rwandan attorney-general and justice minister, was quoted as saying by British daily The Independent.
Karake was arrested at Heathrow Airport while preparing to return to Rwanda following a weeklong trip to the U.K.
"We are still in discussions with the British government,” Busingye said, adding that the general was due to "face a court of law in London on Thursday."
In 2008, a Spanish court indicted Karake for alleged war crimes.
According to Spanish Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles, the intelligence chief had ordered the assassination of various Rwandan politicians and court witnesses – including a number of foreign nationals – in the period between 1992 and 1994.
Like Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Gen. Karake is an anglophone Tutsi who hails from the Ugandan diaspora.
In the mid-1990s, Karake had been a leading member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a predominantly-Tutsi rebel movement.
