Gabon Sends Refugees Back to Rwanda; Men Are Arrested

In a secretive nighttime military operation, Gabon has returned 168 Rwandan refugees to their homeland, where most of the men in the group were immediately arrested, a U.N. official said Tuesday.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is trying to locate the men, mainly former government soldiers, who were handcuffed and taken away in military trucks from the airport in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, agency spokeswoman Pam O’Toole said.

Rwandan authorities said the 45 women and children flown back from Gabon will be returned to the communes they fled in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, O’Toole said.

She said the refugee agency was denied access to the Rwandans at the airport in Gabon and in Kigali.

Of special concern are eight Rwandans who had been awarded refugee status by the U.N. agency. There could be more; the agency didn’t have time to finish screening everyone, O’Toole said.

About 100 of the men were questioned briefly last week by officials of the international criminal tribunal on Rwanda to see if they had participated in or witnessed any atrocities during the genocide.

They belonged to the armed forces of Rwanda’s former Hutu government, which is accused of instigating the massacres of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. But tribunal officials decided that none were of special interest to the Tanzania-based U.N. court, O’Toole said.

Gabon was eager to get rid of the refugees, claiming they were a security risk.