These machetes, at a cost of Rwf95 million were paid for by Mr Kabuga, according to Jean Damascene Bizimana, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the fight against genocide, (CNLG).

Jean Nzarubara, who was a businessman in Kigali before the genocide and used to meet Mr Kabuga in meetings that brought together business owners, describes him as "a mild man, with few words."

Rwandan genocide scholar and researcher Tom Ndahiro says that Mr Kabuga took advantage of the goods vacuum left by the liberation struggles in Uganda in the 1980s, and supplied the Ugandan market, building his wealth on that trade.

According to Mr Kabuga's ICTR charge sheet, he is alleged to have operated RTLM in a manner to further ethnic hatred of the Tutsi through disseminating messages with a goal to commit genocide.

In 1993, at an RTLM fundraising meeting, Mr Kabuga is said to have publicly defined the purpose of the radio station, as "defence of Hutu power."