First charges brought in UK for Rwanda genocide

A man has been charged for allegedly helping carry out the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in the first such case in Britain, the UK Crown Prosecution Service said.

22 Sep 2026 04:20AM

LONDON: Prosecutors said Monday (Sep 21) they had brought the first-ever charges in the UK against a man for his alleged role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, after a complex seven-year investigation.

Vincent Brown, 65, was arrested and charged on Monday with one count of being an ancillary to genocide and six offences of aiding crimes against humanity in Rwanda, prosecutors and the London police said.

"He is alleged to have directed and incited acts of murder and genocide carried out by others" against the Tutsi, said Frank Ferguson, head of the Crown Prosecution Service's special crime and counter terrorism division, in the first ever such charges in the UK.

Some 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were beaten, shot, or hacked to death with machetes in 100 days of slaughter.

"This is the first time charges relating to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda have been brought in the United Kingdom," the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.

A number of other countries have previously prosecuted suspects in the Rwandan genocide. 

Brown, formerly known as Vincent Bajinya, is in custody and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday.

Brown was formerly from Kigali in Rwanda, but has been living in the Islington area of London. 

UK media said Monday he was a Rwandan national, but AFP reported in 2006 that he had become a British citizen.

Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the case had "involved a huge amount of work and determination from officers in the War Crimes Team" which launched their investigation in September 2019.

"This case demonstrates the UK is not a safe haven for individuals suspected of committing international crimes," she added.

Brown was first arrested in 2006. But his extradition to Rwanda, along with four other men, was finally refused by a British court in 2017.

The Rwandan government then asked the UK government to investigate directly those allegedly involved in a genocide in the Rugenge district of Kigali in April 1994.

Flanagan said "a number of other investigations remain ongoing" in the UK into similar offences committed during the Rwanda genocide.

The genocide followed years of tension between ethnic Hutu and Tutsi populations and was triggered by the death of president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose private plane was hit by two missiles.