THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) — Alleged Rwandan genocide financier Felicien Kabuga will go on trial in The Hague on Thursday, one of the last key suspects in the 1994 ethnic slaughter that devastated the small central African nation.

Kabuga's trial will open at 0800 GMT before a United Nations tribunal, where he has been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the massacres 28 years ago of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Prosecutors and the defense are expected to make their opening statements on Thursday and Friday, with evidence in the case to start the following Wednesday.

Kabuga's lawyers entered a not guilty plea to the charges at a first appearance in 2020.

Once one of Rwanda's richest men, prosecutors say the octogenarian allegedly helped set up hate media that urged ethnic Hutus to "kill Tutsi cockroaches" and funded militia groups in 1994.

Now in his mid-80s, Kabuga was arrested in France in May 2020 after evading police in several countries for the last quarter of a century.

He was then transferred to the UN's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, set up to complete the work of the now defunct Rwanda war crimes tribunal.