RWANDA-SENEGAL: Ex-colonel arrested for genocide

NAIROBI, 30 November 2001 (IRIN) - Senegalese police have arrested a former Rwandan army colonel, Aloys Simba, who is wanted for genocide crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, news organisations reported. A privately owned Dakar newspaper, Sud Quotidien, reported that 12 Criminal Investigation Division agents (Division des investigations criminelles), carrying warrants, arrested Simba on Tuesday at his home in town of Thies, 70 km east of the capital. "They came in. My father met them. They showed him the papers and spoke briefly. Then, they took him with them into the night," the paper quoted Simba's 19-year-old daughter as saying. It did not identify her by name. The BBC reported that Simba "is expected to be charged with genocide and crimes against humanity" for massacre of Tutsis in the southern Rwandan province of Gikongoro. BBC reported that he was in charge of "so called defence units" in the province and in Butare, also in the south. Simba, 60, arrived in Senegal directly from Kigali in 1994, Sud Quotidien reported. He first settled in the town of Rufisque, some 28 km east of Dakar, with his wife, sons and mother-in-law and a family friend. His daughter said the family moved to Thies in 1998.