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CAPE TOWN — One of the most wanted suspects in Rwanda’s genocide, a police officer suspected of orchestrating the killing of more than 2,000 people at a church nearly three decades ago, has been arrested in South Africa after 22 years on the run, a special tribunal set up by the United Nations to find the perpetrators said yesterday.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said Fulgence Kayishema was arrested on Wednesday at a vineyard in Paarl, a small town in a wine-making region about 30 km east of Cape Town.

Kayishema, who is believed to be in his early 60s, had assumed a false identity and gone by the name Donatien Nibashumba, South African police said.

He was captured in a joint operation by the tribunal’s fugitive tracking team and South African authorities, the tribunal said, following an investigation that had tracked him across several African countries, including Mozambique and Eswatini, since his indictment in 2001.

The United States had offered a US$5 million reward for information leading to Kayishema’s arrest through its Rewards for Justice programme.  – AP