A Rwandan man has been arrested in the Netherlands because of an extradition request from Rwanda on suspicion he was involved in the 1994 African country genocide, Dutch prosecutors said.
The 65-year-old man, who was not identified, has been living in the Netherlands since he was granted asylum there in 1999. He was arrested on Wednesday in Ermelo town, 44 miles east of Amsterdam.
In 1994, the man was an officer of the Gendarmerie in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan authorities, he played a prominent role in the massacres committed in the Rwandan capital of Kigali and the municipality of Mugina, the prosecutors said in a statement.
The mass killing of Rwanda's Tutsi population was ignited on 6 April 1994 when a plane carrying the then president Juv nal Habyarimana was shot down and crashed in Kigali, the capital, killing the leader who, like most Rwandans, was an ethnic Hutu.
The Tutsis blamed for downing the plane, but they denied it, bands of Hutu extremists began killing them, including children, with support from the army, police and militias.
An estimated 30,000 civilians have been killed during the Mugina parish massacre.
According to the Rwandan authorities, the officer was closely involved in the planning and execution of the massacres in Mugina, including by providing weapons to militias that killed Tutsi refugees.
The man received Dutch citizenship in 2013 but the immigration authorities tried to revoke it in court after the allegations against him came to light. He was arrested after his final appeal was exhausted on Wednesday.