Thirty years after she would sneak glances at him in church, Dimitrie Sissi Mukanyiligira is welcoming the arrest of Felicien Kabuga, the genocide suspect accused of financing the Hutu militias that killed nearly her entire family.
David Doyle reports.
EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES Three decades ago an 18-year-old girl stood in a Kigali church stealing glances at the powerful businessman in her neighbourhood.
Four years later the militias he is accused of financially backing would kill almost her entire family.
The businessman was Felicien Kabuga, arrested in Paris on Saturday (May 16) after more than a quarter of a century on the run.
The teenage girl was Dimitrie Sissi Mukanyiligira.
"I am a new person who survived through very bad times and he has been hiding for over 26 years.
And he is now arrested, that is very good news, it's a success story, it's an achievement.
And then he will face the justice." Kabuga is accused of providing funding to the Hutu militias that slaughtered around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Among the dead were Mukanyiligira's two brothers - cut down with machetes, and her sister - killed by a grenade as she sought refuge in a hospital.
Kabuga is accused of buying machetes and firearms for the death squads and Mukanyiligira remembers Hutu militias going in and out of his house.
"That was the question for my kids: Mama, how many people had he killed?
I said no, he didn't kill one or two, he killed all of us, all of them because he was the financier, the brain behind all the plots.
Imagine if people wanted to kill but they didn't have machetes, you know, so he is the number one financier." According to French police, Kabuga had been living under a false identity in an apartment in a Paris suburb.
Kabuga is now being held in a prison in central Paris.
His arrest paves the way for the fugitive to come before the Paris Appeal Court and later be transferred to the custody of the international court, which is based in the Hague, Netherlands and Arusha, Tanzania.