Father Athanese Seromba, a Rwandan priest wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for alleged mass murder during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, was "not in hiding", an Italian church official said yesterday.
The priest, accused of playing a major part in the massacre of more than 2,000 Tutsis, was "keeping a low profile" somewhere in the archdiocese of Florence, a spokesman for the archdiocese, Mr Riccardo Bigi, told The Irish Times. He had dropped out of public view to avoid unwelcome publicity, the spokesman said.
Father Seromba, who moved to Italy in the mid-90s, served as a curate in the small parish of San Mauro-a-Signa, near Florence for the last 18 months.
Last week, Italian authorities enraged the International Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Judge Carla Del Ponte, by refusing to hand over a wanted suspect, believed to be the Rwandan curate. Simultaneous raids in Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands had all turned up Rwandans wanted by the tribunal.
According to Africa Rights, a London-based human rights organisation, Father Seromba (38) played a leading role in one of the most infamous incidents in the Rwandan genocide, herding more than 2,000 Tutsis into the parish church at Nyange and then ordering two bulldozers to crush them to death.
Some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were brutally slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide. Tutsi rebels subsequently overthrew the Hutu regime and many Hutus fled Rwanda fearing reprisals.
In a dossier originally published two years ago, Africa Rights not only details the charges against Father Seromba but also provides a list of those willing to testify against him. These include one of the bulldozer drivers, the priest's former cook, his former night watchman, local policemen and businessmen as well as survivors of the massacre.
Despite the volume of evidence gathered against Father Seromba, not everyone, especially in the Italian church, is convinced of his guilt. In an interview yesterday with the missionary news agency, MISNA, Mgr Giuseppe Andreozzi, head of the Italian Episcopal Conference's missionary office, said: "It is not up to the Catholic Church to either favour or hinder the arrest of this priest since that is a matter for the Italian state authorities under whose jurisdiction he is currently living."
He continued: "One thing, however, is clear and it is that today, so many years after the criminal events in question, it is still very difficult to understand just what happened in Rwanda.
"The accusation that priests took part in acts of racial hatred has been repeated many times. While it is true that all our solidarity goes out to the victims of the genocide . . . it is also true that the accusations made against members of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Rwanda have often been shown to be false."