BERLIN (AFP)--Rwandan President Paul Kagame's chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye, was arrested Sunday in Germany under an arrest warrant issued by France, Germany's foreign ministry said.
"She was arrested on her arrival at the Frankfurt airport. Germany was bound to arrest her by a European arrest warrant issued by France," a ministry spokesman said.
Kabuye is suspected of participating in the 1994 downing of a plane carrying Rwanda's former Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana.
Habyarimana's death triggered a genocide in the east African country in which some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists over 100 days.
A former deputy, Kabuye figured among nine arrest warrants issued by a French judge in 2006 against those close to Kagame, whom he suspected of being implicated in Habyarimana's death.
Rwanda immediately severed its diplomatic ties with France.
Kabuye sparked controversy by visiting Germany in April as part of an official delegation headed by Kagame.
At the time, Berlin acknowledged the government was aware of the French arrest warrant, but said German law prevented it from taking action against representatives of foreign states or their delegations it had invited to visit.
This time Kabuye "was at the Frankfurt airport on a private basis," a diplomat told AFP.
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/al?rnd=GQSEj%2BjGxj4TSpr2pdZc4Q%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 09, 2008 13:34 ET (18:34 GMT)

Publié le 09 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones