Karlsruhe, Germany - Germany is preparing to prosecute the former mayor of a northern Rwandan town on charges of massacring thousands of Tutsis during the 1994 genocide, according to federal prosecutors Tuesday.

The Hutu man, 51, who has emigrated to Germany, was arrested in the Frankfurt area on Monday, one month after Rwanda's own attempts to obtain his extradition from Germany collapsed. Prosecutors identified him only by the initials O R.

He is suspected of either overseeing or calling for multiple murders in both 1990 and 1994.

"In particular, he is accused of involvement in a massacre at Nyarubuye in mid-April 1994 in the course of which several thousand people were killed," said a statement in Karlsruhe, where the federal prosecutors are based.

The prosecutors said the separate German inquiry began in March this year after Rwanda had requested his arrest in Germany.

He was initially detained on April 23 in Frankfurt but released on November 3 after German judges ruled against his extradition, citing a ruling by the International Tribunal on Rwanda which is based in the Tanzanian city of Arusha.

German law allows trials for crimes abroad provided the accused is a German resident or the victims are German.

The Rwandan government was upset last month when Germany arrested a senior Tutsi politician, Rose Kabuye, on a French warrant which accused her of being an accessory in the assassination of a Hutu president in 1994.

She was extradited to France. News reports in Paris Tuesday said she has been freed on bail and was allowed to fly home to Rwanda for Christmas, but was required to re-appear January 10 before a judge in France.

Kabuye is the Rwandan president's chief of protocol.

The shooting down in 1994 of the plane carrying president Juvenal Habyarimana triggered the genocide of 800,000 people. It has been debated whether Tutsi rebels shot down the plane or Hutu militants stage-managed the assassination as a provocation. dpa