Kenyan police quiz doctor over Rwandan fugitive

Kenyan police on Wednesday quizzed a Nairobi doctor alleged to be treating Rwandan fugitive Felicien Kabuga accused of funding genocide in 1994.

Gerald Yonga, a Consultant Cardiologist at Mater Hospital in Nairobi, said he was quizzed by detectives from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda(ICTR) and Kenya's Criminal Investigation Department(CID) officers over his links with the exiled Hutu fugitive.

"They told me they had information that I have been treating Kabuga or his relatives but I told them I never have," Yonga told journalists in Nairobi.

He said the investigators showed him photographs of the fugitive, a wealthy Hutu businessman who is being sought to face trials at the Arusha-based tribunal.

The exiled Hutu millionaire is accused of supplying machetes and other weapons used in the genocide and of transporting the killers in his company's vehicles.

Kabuga, who is believed to be in Kenya, is also accused of funding the notorious Radio Mille Collines which incited Hutus to murder.

"I have never had contact with Kabuga or any of his relatives. I also told them that due to the nature of my work, I see a lot of people and I can not be able to tell who Kabuga's relatives are," Dr. Yonga said.

He said the investigators told him that they had established that he had contacts with people believed to be Kabuga's relatives between the year 2000 and 2001 and wanted to know whether the doctor had ever talked to any of them on telephone, a claim he also denied.

Yonga said the detectives left with a list of names of people they were interested in questioning and who are thought to be Kabuga's relatives.

Kabuga is one of the 18 Rwandans named as key suspects by the Arusha-based Rwandan tribunal and the United States has offered rewards of up to 5 million dollars for information leading to their arrest.

ICTR investigators said last week that have tracked Kabuga's movements for a number of years and believe he is a regular visitor to Kenya, where the 72-year-old Hutu owns a haulage firm.

Investigators say Kabuga has moved relatively freely between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya for several years.

They believe he holds more than one passport in different names and has bribed officials in both countries to protect him from arrest.

In 2005, tribunal investigators tracked Kabuga to Nairobi and were about to organize his arrest when they believe he was tipped off and disappeared.

Source: Xinhua