LONDON (AP) — A British prosecutor accused a doctor on Tuesday of overseeing six killings during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Dr. Vincent Brown was a leader or supervisor in the killing of a young woman and her baby, three household members and a taxi driver who was stoned to death, prosecutor Jane Stansfield said in Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Brown, 65, who was formerly known as Vincent Bajinya, is the first person to be charged in the U.K. for taking part in the ethnic genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. He is charged with one count of conduct ancillary to genocide and six counts of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity. U.K. law allows British prosecutors to bring charges for some international offenses, including genocide and crimes against humanity, regardless of where they were committed.
Brown denied playing any role in the killings when interviewed by police in 2020, a year after Metropolitan Police war crimes investigators began looking into the case at the request of the Rwandan government, prosecutors said.
Defense lawyer Sam Blom-Cooper said in court that Brown wants to clear his name.
Another defense attorney, Frank Brazell, told The Associated Press that Brown has always maintained his innocence “in the face of manifestly fabricated evidence against him” and has urged U.K. authorities to prosecute him, because he believes he'll get a fair trial here.
Brown didn't enter a plea and only spoke to confirm his identity. He was released on 25,000-pound ($33,400) bail and ordered to appear next at London's Central Criminal Court on Oct. 9.
Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said that the prosecution marked a long-overdue step toward accountability following the seven-year investigation.
The allegations span several days in April 1994 when Brown worked as head of the department of family health at the National Office of Population.
Brown led a group to a house in the Rugenge district of Kigali on April 8 and ordered the shootings of Dominique Mukurarinda, Immaculee Mukankusi and Gerase Rurangirwa, Stansfield said.
He ordered the killings of Charlotte Kamaguja and her infant son Olivier Tuyishime on April 10, prosecutors said. He directed the group that stoned cabbie Leandre Mbogoye between April 9 and 11, authorities said.
Brown is originally from Kigali and lives in London, where he once worked for a charity assisting refugee nurses and midwives seeking to work in Britain. He's believed to have entered the U.K. as an asylum-seeker in 1998, former Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told the AP in 2006.
Brown changed his name when granted U.K. citizenship in 2004, an attorney for him said at the time.
Police said they were continuing to investigate several other Rwandan genocide suspects living in Britain. Cmdr. Helen Flanagan, head of counterterrorism policing, said that the case shows that the U.K. isn't a safe haven for international crime suspects.
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Khaled Kazziha contributed to this report from Nairobi, Kenya.
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