Germany Extradites Rwandan Politician to France

Rose Kabuye is wanted for questioning in connection with a 1994 assassination. German federal police said she left on a flight from Frankfurt to Paris in the early afternoon.

Since arresting her on Nov. 9 when she arrived by plane, Germany had been waiting for French police to pick her up. She was wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by the French.

Last week, Kabuye agreed to fast-track extradition and German judges approved her being handed over to France. A former guerrilla chief and mayor of the Rwandan capital Kigali, she is currently chief of protocol to Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Kabuye's role to be clarified

Kabuye is suspected of having been involved in shooting down the aircraft of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, an act that sparked the 1994 genocide by Hutus of up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Rwanda responded to her arrest by expelling the German ambassador to Kigali and recalled its own ambassador from Berlin for consultations. Thousands of Rwandans demonstrated outside the German embassy in Kigali.

Germany gave Kabuye advance warning she would be arrested if she came to Frankfurt independently of a presidential delegation.

The Hutu government of the day accused Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of shooting down Habyarimana's plane on May 6, 1994, and then embarking on the genocide. The RPF says that the Hutus shot down the plane themselves to provide an excuse for massacring Tutsis.

A French magistrate suspects Kabuye and eight other Kagame staff of complicity in Habyarimana's death. Kabuye is the first to be arrested.