UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A Rwandan genocide suspect accused of coordinating the massacre of up to 25,000 people in one incident has been arrested in France, the United Nations said on Thursday.

Dominique Ntawukuriryayo was detained by French police in the southern town of Carcassonne earlier this week and is due to be transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, in the coming days.

Ntawukuriryayo was sub-prefect of the town of Gisagara in the southern Rwandan province of Butare during the 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. He is charged with genocide, complicity in genocide and inciting the public to commit genocide.

According to the 2005 tribunal indictment, Ntawukuriryayo played a central role in a massacre at Kabuye hill near Gisagara in which thousands of Tutsi refugees were rounded up and ordered to collect on the hill where they were told they would be safe.

Ntawukuriryayo gathered soldiers and militias to go to the site to kill the Tutsis, it says.

"As a result of his actions, Dominique Ntawukuriryayo was responsible for the death of as many as 25,000 Tutsi refugees who were killed at Kabuye hill during the period of 21 to 25 April 1994," the indictment reads.

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