First charges brought in UK for 1994 Rwanda genocide

Prosecutors said on Monday 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 counterterrorism 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.