Félicien Kabuga’s recent death in a hospital in The Hague confirms his final escape from justice. Judges at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals had decided that he was unfit to stand trial, but prosecutors believed he was putting on an act—including soiling himself deliberately once he arrived in the court room—either as defiance or a last desperate attempt to avoid justice.
French police had arrested him in a modest apartment outside Paris in 2020 after a 26-year manhunt, complete with an unclaimed $5 million bounty on his head. Half ghost, half human, he had reportedly been sighted in Nairobi, Mombasa, Switzerland and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, leaving a trail of dead bodies in the wake of rumours about his presence.
