UK charges doctor over Rwandan genocide
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.
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. Brown, who denies involvement, is due back in court on October 9 after being released on £25,000 ($33,400) bail. His lawyer, Sam Blom-Cooper, described the killings as “appalling crimes” and said Brown welcomed the charges as an opportunity to clear his name, according to Reuters.
Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo welcomed the UK charges as a “long overdue” step toward accountability and urged Britain to speed up its remaining cases, local daily New Times reported. President Paul Kagame has previously accused the international community of failing to stop the killings, saying it failed Rwanda “whether from contempt or cowardice.”
The UK case follows prosecutions of suspects in other countries. In 2024, a French court upheld former Rwandan gendarme Philippe Hategekimana’s life sentence for organizing roadblocks and taking part in massacres around Nyanza. A Belgian court sentenced former militia leader Seraphin Twahirwa to life in 2023 for directing killings in Kigali and raping Tutsi women. Germany arrested another suspect, identified as Innocent S., in July on suspicion of complicity in genocide and involvement in 25 murders.
Rwandan businessman Felicien Kabuga, accused of financing militias and using his radio station to incite attacks on Tutsis, died in UN tribunal custody in May before his trial reached a verdict.
