While radio is usually a tool for information, Kabuga’s station turned it into a weapon of mass psychological warfare. RTLM didn’t just spread "fake news"; it dehumanized the Tutsi population, calling them "cockroaches" and literally broadcasting the names and locations of people to be murdered. He took the intimacy of radio and used it to turn neighbors into executioners. The Business of Death
His story took a cinematic turn in May 2020. At age 87, the "Financier of Genocide" was finally cornered not in a jungle or a war zone, but in a quiet, nondescript apartment in , a suburb of Paris. He had been living under a false identity, shielded by his children and the anonymity of urban life. A Legacy of Accountability [S1E2] FГ©licien Kabuga: The Financer of the Gen...
Beyond the airwaves, Kabuga used his logistics empire to arm the Interahamwe militias. Investigations revealed that his companies imported hundreds of thousands of cheap machetes from China—far more than were needed for Rwanda’s agricultural sector. In a country where bullets were expensive, Kabuga provided the tools for a manual, face-to-face slaughter, ensuring that the genocide was both low-tech and terrifyingly efficient. The Ghost of the Pyrenees While radio is usually a tool for information,
In the early 1990s, Kabuga’s influence was inescapable. He was a successful businessman with deep ties to the ruling Habyarimana elite, but his most lethal investment was in the machinery of propaganda. He was a founding father and main financier of . The Business of Death His story took a
After the 1994 genocide, Kabuga became one of the world’s most elusive fugitives. For 26 years, he vanished into a shadow world of aliases and high-level protection, traversing Africa and Europe with a $5 million bounty on his head.