UK charges doctor over Rwandan genocide

Vincent Brown directed six killings in the East African country during the 1994 massacres, prosecutors have alleged A former Rwandan health official has been charged by British prosecutors over his alleged role in the 1994 genocide in his home country, bringing the first UK charges linked to the massacre.

Vincent Brown, formerly known as Vincent Bajinya, appeared in a London court on Tuesday.

He faces one charge of conduct ancillary to genocide and six of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity.

Prosecutors allege Brown, 65, led a group to a house in Kigali’s Rugenge district on April 8 and ordered three people shot.

They say he subsequently ordered the killing of a woman and her infant son, and directed a group that stoned a taxi driver to death.

Brown denies involvement.

“Dr.

Brown… is alleged to have directed and incited acts of murder and genocide carried out by others,” chief crown prosecutor Frank Ferguson said .

More than 800,000 people, predominantly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed in roughly 100 days after the genocide began on April 7, 1994.

The UN tribunal established afterward indicted 93 people.

READ MORE: Germany arrests Rwanda genocide suspect Brown, a physician, headed the family health department at Rwanda’s National Office of Population when the genocide began.

He later moved to Britain as an asylum seeker and took the name Vincent Brown after gaining British citizenship in 2004.

Rwanda sought his extradition, but UK courts refused over concerns that he would not receive a fair trial there.

The British investigation began in 2019 following a request from Kigali.