One of the world’s most wanted men on Wednesday lost his appeal against being handed over to an international court to be tried for his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The Court of Cassation in Paris upheld an order from a lower court that Felicien Kabuga be handed over to a UN tribunal on charges including genocide, persecution and extermination.
Kabuga, born in 1933 or 1935, was a wealthy businessman at the time of the atrocities in which more than 800,000 people were killed.
He had been on the run for more than 20 years when French police tracked him down in May to a Paris suburb where he was living under a false name.
An indictment from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) alleges that he chaired a notorious radio station that helped orchestrate the genocide against the Tutsi ethnic minority.
He is also accused of agreeing with others to create and fund a genocidal militia in the capital Kigali, and establishing a fund to finance the killings.
Rwandan prosecutors have said in the past that financial documents found in Kigali after the genocide indicated that he used his companies to import vast quantities of machetes from China which were used to slaughter victims.
No further appeal against his extradition is possible in the French legal system, although his lawyers could take a case to the European Court of Human Rights. (dpa/NAN)