Belgian Roman Catholic priest Guy Theunis, accused of taking part in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, was still in prison on Monday, five days after the High Court of Rwanda ruled that he be sent to his home country to stand trial, an official said.
“There are some formalities that have to be finalised before he boards a plane to Brussels,” Emmanuel Rukangiram, a senior government prosecutor, said.
On Wednesday, the court ruled in favour of a government demand that Theunis be transferred to Belgium. Initial reports had suggested that he would be sent back on Saturday.
Rwandan police arrested Theunis, 60, in September for his alleged role in the genocide.
Last week’s ruling came after Rwanda signed an agreement with Belgian authorities in which both countries agreed to have Theunis tried in a Belgium court. He is accused of reprinting in a review he published articles from an extremist publication, called Kangura, that incited the country’s majority Hutus to kill its minority Tutsi population during the genocide.
Theunis is also accused of masterminding killings in and around a church in the capital, Kigali, a charge that observers think is unfair since Theunis left Rwanda seven days after the start of the killings.
However, Rukangira said: “There’s evidence that within those initial days, he chased away many people who came to hide in the church. Many of those who he chased away were killed in the surrounding areas.”
Theunis, who worked in Rwanda as a member of the White Fathers Catholic order from 1970 until 1994, is the first European to be arrested by Rwandan authorities for genocide. He is not, however, the first European to be charged in the killings. The tribunal sentenced Belgian journalist Georges Ruggiu to 12 years imprisonment in June 2000.
Several Rwandan priests and nuns have also been convicted of participating in the genocide. This includes two nuns, who had sought exile in Belgium. They were convicted by a Brussels court in 2001.
