BRUSSELS - A Rwandan accused of genocide during his country's mass killings in 1994 and linked to the murder of United States gorilla expert Dian Fossey will face a war crimes trial.
Protais Zigiranyirazo will be transferred to the United Nations tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, after a judgment yesterdayby Judge Damien Vandermeersch which gives prosecutors 90 days to provide the necessary paperwork.
Zigiranyirazo, who is the 63-year-old brother-in-law of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, was arrested on July 26 at a refugee detention centre after trying to claim asylum in Belgium.
Once his identity was discovered he was taken into custody on a warrant issued by Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal. The Africa Rights pressure group claims Zigiranyirazo was associated with a group called Network Zero, which organised and protected death squads operating in Rwanda in 1992.
As prefect of Ruhengeri he is also believed responsible for widespread killings.
But he may also be interviewed by the US Federal Bureau of Investigations over the murder of Fossey in her mountain hut on Rwanda's border with Uganda and Congo in 1985.
Fossey, played by Sigourney Weaver in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, had been working to save rare mountain gorillas from poachers.
A book published in 1993 by Nicholas Gordon claimed that Zigiranyirazo was involved in illegal trading in endangered species and Fossey was about to expose him.
There has been no confirmation in Belgium that the FBI wants to question Zigiranyirazo.
The defendant's lawyer, Sandrine Ghilain, said her client would fight the transfer for "technical reasons".
She said Zigiranyirazo had "nothing to do with" Fossey's killing.
