Rwanda's foreign minister says Canada has deported a Rwandan man accused of helping to incite the country's 1994 genocide.

In messages posted Tuesday to the social media website Twitter, Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo says the suspect, Leon Mugesera, is airbound for the capital Kigali and is due to arrive there by midnight local time.

Canadian officials have not confirmed the deportation, citing privacy laws, but Canadian newspapers report Mugesera was put on a plane at the Montreal airport late Monday.

Mugesera, a former Rwandan political operative, recently lost a long legal battle to remain in Canada, where he had been living for the past two decades.

He is accused of helping to instigate the genocide with a 1992 speech in which he referred to ethnic Tutsis as cockroaches and called for their extermination.

Rwandan authorities have said they plan to put him on trial for war crimes.

Canadian officials have tried to expel Mugesera since 1995. His lawyers argued that he would be subject to torture if he was returned to Rwanda.

Hutu extremists killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates during the 1994 genocide.