German police in the city of Frankfurt arrested a 51-year-old Rwandan man suspected of involvement in genocide, federal prosecutors said today.
The Hutu, identified only as OR, was mayor of an area in northern Rwanda and is suspected of taking part in the mass killings of Tutsis in 1994.
In particular, he is suspected of involvement in a massacre in Nyarubuye in April 1994 in which several thousand Tutsis were killed, the prosecutors said in a statement.
It is the second high-profile detention in Germany of an individual linked to the Rwandan genocide in the last two months.
In November, German police held Rose Kabuye, an aide to the Rwandan President, for questioning in France over the death of a former president that sparked the mass killings of Tutsis and some moderate Hutus in the central African nation in 1994.
She has since been extradited to France, although the Rwandan government said earlier on Tuesday she would be allowed to Rwanda on bail.
The prosecutors' office in the southern city of Karlsruhe said German authorities had been investigating O.R., who was arrested on Monday, since March.
Only last week, a U.N. court handed a life sentence to a former army colonel accused of masterminding the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994.