LEAD: Rwandan genocide suspect deported from Canada

Jan 24, 2012, 1:03 GMT

Montreal - Former Rwandan politician and intellectual Leon Mugesera was deported Monday by Canada back to his native country, where he faces charges of inciting genocide.

'Leon Mugesera is now airbound for Kigali!' tweeted Rwanda's Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo. 'Mugesera's deportation, while decades past due, is welcome news for a people committed to healing and justice. Canada did the right thing.'

Canadian officials would not confirm Mugesera's departure, in keeping with Canadian policy of no comment on such issues. A final court ruling earlier Monday lifted the final legal constraint on his deportation.

Mugesera is wanted in his native Rwanda on war crime charges that he helped incite the 1994 genocide. He fought deportation for 16 years, arguing he would face persecution in Rwanda and would not receive a fair trial.

Mugesera, 59, arrived in Canada in 1993 with his wife and five children and was granted permanent residence status. They had fled Rwanda in 1992 after an arrest warrant was issued for Mugesera, who had made a speech allegedly inciting the majority Hutus to kill the minority Tutsis.

In his speech, Mugesera called Rwandan Tutsis 'cockroaches' and 'scum,' and encouraged fellow Hutus to kill them. That speech was later broadcast at the height of the 1994 genocide, which claimed the lives of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Mugesera was originally ordered deported in 1996, after it was discovered he had lied on his application form for residence, which asked whether he had been involved in the commission of a crime against humanity.

His deportation went through several appeals until 2005, when the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that Mugesera was not admissible to Canada because there were reasonable grounds to believe he committed a crime against humanity.

Another legal hurdle for Mugesera's deportation was cleared in 2007, when Rwanda dropped the death penalty for convicted war criminals. Canadian laws prohibit authorities from deporting suspects to countries where they face the death penalty.

It seemed Mugesera had exhausted all legal avenues of staying in Canada. Earlier in January, the Federal Court of Canada ordered his deportation.

But just hours after the ruling, Mugesera was rushed to hospital in Quebec City. His family claimed that he was suffering from a stress-related illness.

And the next day, a different court, the provincial Quebec Superior Court, approved his legal team's request for an injunction against the federal ruling. His team insisted that the special United Nations Committee on Torture needed to be consulted for an investigation into the possibility Mugesera would face torture if returned to Rwanda.

But on Monday, it lifted the injunction and rejected Mugesera's legal team's arguments. Justice Michel Delorme ruled that Mugesera's case was beyond the jurisdiction of his provincial court.

This opened the way for the federal authorities to deport Mugesera, who had spent his last week in Canada at an immigration detention centre in a suburb of Montreal.

Read more about Rwanda