Former Gatagara home director held in Belgium over 1994 Rwanda genocide

Arrest in Belgium

A former director of a care home in Rwanda, named as Jean Baptiste R., is in pre-trial detention in Belgium on suspicion of genocide and crimes against humanity. An investigating judge issued an arrest warrant on 28 September 2026, and the Leuven pre-trial chamber confirmed the detention on 6 November. The man, born in Rwanda in 1948, also holds Belgian nationality, and the case only became public on Saturday, 14 November. Before his arrest he had been staying with the Brothers of Charity in Bierbeek, having moved to Belgium from Italy around 2023. One report placed the arrest at the end of the previous week, while others date it to late September, so the warrant date of 28 September is the one used here.

Allegations about the 1994 killings

The Home de la Vierge des Pauvres in Gatagara, southern Rwanda, took in children and adolescents with disabilities and was founded in the early 1960s by a Belgian priest. Hutu militiamen began killing dozens of residents and staff there on 21 April 1994. Prosecutors allege that the director checked residents' files to find Tutsi children and handed them over to the Interahamwe militia. On 24 April 1994, when militia entered the centre, he allegedly identified the Tutsi men hiding there, and they were taken outside and killed. A report by Rwanda's National Commission for the Fight against Genocide also points to the director's complicity, and a witness testimony published in May 2007 pointed in the same direction. The federal prosecutor's office described the attack of 9 May 1994 in a statement:

“They would have killed, again on R.'s indication, several more Tutsi that day, but this time mainly women and children.”

These allegations have not yet been tested in court.

Investigation in Rwanda

Investigators travelled to Rwanda in the summer of 2026, where they heard dozens of witnesses and visited the Gatagara centre. The arrest followed that trip. Ann Lukowiak, press magistrate at the federal prosecutor's office, set out the purpose of the visit:

“The aim is to meet witnesses and people who were able to flee the centre when the militias arrived.”

She also said the team wanted to see the centre and its surroundings and to ask Rwanda what evidence it still held. In Rwanda, the suspect was listed as number 1,309 on the first-category list of genocide suspects. He fled to Belgium after the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, took power.

Wider caseload in Belgium

Belgium prosecutes genocide under universal jurisdiction, and the federal prosecutor's office handles 37 ongoing cases linked to the 1994 genocide. Across those files, six people have been suspected so far, four of them held in pre-trial detention. He is the first of them arrested on Flemish soil and the first such case in Flanders. Seven trials linked to the genocide have taken place in Belgium, all before the Brussels assize court, and twelve people have been convicted in them.

Ongoing files37

People suspected so far6

In pre-trial detention4

Ongoing files

37

People suspected so far

6

In pre-trial detention

4

Data from the article text