The assassination of a former Rwandan minister in Kenya

Rwanda gained independence in 1962 with Grégoire Kayibanda, a Hutu, becoming president. His young government first bloodied its hands in December 1963 when Tutsi exiles (called inyenzi or “cockroaches” by the government) from Burundi launched an attack and then started advancing towards the capital Kigali. The exiles were casualties of Hutu violent purges that took place during the Rwandan Revolution between 1959 and 1962. This was when power dynamics in the county firmly shifted from the Tutsi to the Hutu. The exiles were not well equipped or organized and in the end, were defeated by government troops. Between December 1963 and January 1964, an estimated 10,000 Tutsi were killed by the government. This included all Tutsi politicians who were still in the country.

By 1964, about 336,000 Tutsi were in exile in 4 neighboring countries: Burundi, Uganda, Tanganyika (later named Tanzania) and Congo-Léopoldville (later named Zaire and then Democratic Republic of the Congo).

In July 1973, Major General Juvénal Habyarimana overthrew Kayibanda in a military coup. He had been appointed as the Army Chief of Staff that January. Habyarimana summarily executed those close to the previous government who included government officials, lawyers and businessmen. His rule was practically a military dictatorship that didn’t take too kindly to any opposition or dissent.

Born in 1951, Seth Sendashonga was a man with a conscience and one that loved his country. He got into trouble as the leader of a student movement that opposed the rule of Habyarimana. The Rwandan President had continued in the footsteps of Kayibanda and did not allow the formation of other political parties in the country. He was routinely elected in elections where he was the sole candidate. Like many others who opposed the president, Seth was forced to go into exile in 1975.

In the first year of the Rwandan Revolution, a 2 year old Paul Kagame and his family had to flee their home as all around them Hutu activists were killing Tutsi. They eventually crossed into Uganda as did Fred Rwigyema, a fellow Tutsi, in 1960. The two first met in 1962 while living in a refugee camp. They would remain friends and eventually form the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Before that, Rwigyema joined the rebel army of Yoweri Museveni that removed President Idi Amin Dada from power in Uganda. It was this victory that endeared Museveni to Kagame and other Rwandan refugees. When Museveni disputed the results of the 1980 elections that followed after the removal of Amin, he formed the National Resistance Army (NRA). Museveni wanted to overthrow the new government of Milton Obote and Kagame and Rwigyema joined NRA as founding soldiers. When the NRA successfully completed their mission, capturing Kampala with a force of 14,000 soldiers that included 500 Rwandans, Museveni formed a new government and controversially appointed Rwigyema as the deputy Minister of Defence and deputy army commander-in-chief with Kagame as head of military intelligence. They were later demoted after outcry from Ugandans serving in the army.

A political organization, the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU), was formed in Uganda after Amin was overthrown to plan a possible return to Rwanda for the refugees. RANU became radicalized after some of its members joined Museveni’s NRA and helped remove Obote from power. In 1987, the organization was renamed the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and was dominated by Rwandans who had fought with Museveni. Rwigyema was named its head and he and Kagame started plotting to invade Rwanda. In October 1990, RPF rebels under the command of Rwigyema invaded Rwanda. He was killed on the third day of the attack and Kagame, who was in the United States for military studies had to return to lead RPF. The rebels continued to engage government troops within Rwanda and this eventually led to a ceasefire in 1993. A peace agreement was signed in Arusha, Tanzania whereby Government agreed to share power with the rebels.

Seth Sendashonga, who had been working periodically for the Nairobi-based UN-Habitat since 1976, joined RPF in 1993. He was brought in to serve as a liaison between the RPF and political parties within Rwanda who were opposed to Habyarimana. He was also designated to become a member of the New Transitional Government but this was not to be. The peace agreement was never implemented and in April 1994, President Habyarimana Falcon 50 jet was shot down. Following his death, a military committee led by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora took immediate control of the country and oversaw the killing of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. RPF immediately launched a new offensive and they finally defeated government troops in July 1994. RPF immediately formed a government with Pasteur Bizimungu as the President, Major-General Paul Kagame as the Vice President, Minister of Defence, Faustin Twagiramungu as Prime Minister and Sendashonga as the Minister for Interior.

As Minister for Interior, Sendashonga had serious differences with the now very powerful Kagame. He was uncomfortable with the killings and forced disappearances carried out by some sections of the army. The army had been named the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) to differentiate it from RPF, the political party. Sendashonga wrote to him regarding the issue on several occasions. The Local Defense Forces (LDF) replaced the police after the genocide and were also linked to murders and disappearances. Sendashonga, exercising his power as minister, disbanded the LDF. At the time, RPF was using the LDF to keep track of what was happening in the rural areas and Kagame wasn’t happy with the decision. Sendashonga was eventually fired along with Twagiramungu. They were both placed under house arrest but were later allowed to leave the country. Sendashonga went into exile in Nairobi in November 1995 where his wife, Dr. Cyriaque Nikuze Sendashonga, was working at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

On 26th February, 1996 someone tried to kill Sendashonga. He was lured to a meeting by a family friend who claimed to be in possession of a document that showed a failed mutiny in the RPA. They met and in the end there was no document. The real reason he was called for the meeting showed itself in the form of two men who shot at him as he walked back to his car. He was wounded but not seriously. A suspect, Francis Mugabo, was arrested nearby by Kenyan police with a pistol, a silencer and thirteen 9mm bullets. He was attempting to dispose of the gun in the toilet of a petrol station when he was apprehended. He was an attaché in the Rwandan Embassy in Nairobi at the time of his arrest and so the Kenyan government asked for a diplomatic immunity waiver so that he could be charged and tried. Rwanda refused the request and the case hit a dead end. Sendashonga suspected the RPF government was behind his shooting and their reluctance to help by approving the waiver didn’t help. They were more concerned with the release of Mugabo than assisting in solving the attempted assassination case. Kenya upped the stakes by giving the Rwandans two choices: waive the immunity or we close your embassy in Kenya. You can probably guess by now which one they chose. The Rwandan Embassy was closed and Mugabo, who had been in police custody for months, was expelled along with 4 other diplomats.

The Daily Nation ran a curious editorial after Sendashonga’s assassination attempt. It warned refugees against abusing Kenyan hospitality. It read in part, “Kenyans do not give them succour and sanctuary in order that they may continue their wars here. If they want to kill each other they should go back to their country and do it there.”

Before the attempt on his life, he had planned to travel to Brussels, Belgium to launch a new opposition movement, the Forces de Résistance pour la Démocratie (FRD), with his friend and former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu. They would later launch it in April 1997 after Sendashonga recovered from the wounds he had sustained. Sendashonga received the support of soldiers from the old Rwandan army. He reached out to Tanzania, who agreed to host rebel training camps, and Uganda, through General Salim Saleh, President Yoweri Museveni’s brother.

On 13th May 1998, a taxi driver, Ali Abdul Nasser was approached by David Akiki Kiwanuka who sought to hire killers to eliminate someone. The person in question had apparently swindled his father about US$50 Million. Kiwanuka promised to pay Ksh. 100,000 to whoever carried out the deed. Nasser was shown a picture of the intended victim. He was also apparently taken and shown his house, business premises, a Forex Bureau in Gigiri, and the man himself, as he drove his car in Nairobi. Nasser was a police informer and on 14th May he reported the same to Chief Inspector Daniel Songol Seroney who was with the C.I.D in Nairobi. Seroney tasked two police officers, Corporal Oburu and Constable Ewoi, to accompany Nasser, to the meeting with Kiwanuka, where they would pose as killers for hire. The police officers met Kiwanuka the same day and accepted the assignment. The killing couldn’t however, proceed before some guns Kiwanuka was expecting from Uganda could arrive. They agreed to meet on 15th May but Kiwanuka didn’t show up. They went back again on 16th May but he was once again a no show.

On 16th May, 1998 at the junction of Limuru and Forest Road in Parklands, two gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles opened fire on a car killing the two men inside. The car, Reg NO. UNEP 108K, belonged to Dr. Cyriaque Nikuze, Sendashonga’s wife. The two dead men were Seth Sendashonga and his driver, Jean-Bosco Nkurubukeye. The gunmen fled in a car reg NO. KAJ 426Z which they dumped 3 kilometres away. Nimish Shah and Agnes Ngina saw the gunmen hurriedly dumping the car and described them as being very tall. Spent cartridges that were recovered from the scene of the shooting were similar to those found in the abandoned car. Firearm expert Benson Gichuki Nduguga would later confirm that the spent cartridges were fired from an AK-47 assault rifle.

The man Kiwanuka wanted killed had been Sendashonga and when Chief Inspector Seroney received a report of his shooting, he connected the dots and arranged for him to be arrested. He was apprehended on 19th May and a pistol and bullets were found in his house. He then lead police to Ngara where two other men, Charles Muhanji Wamuthoni and Christopher Lubanga Mlondo, who he named as co-conspirators were arrested. While in police custody, Kiwanuka repeated the story of how his father working as a Director of Immigration in Rwanda, was swindled of US$ 50million by Sendashonga while he was Interior Minister. The minister later arranged the death of his father and that’s why he took it upon himself to eliminate him. The story deviated from the original as this one now included Wamuthoni and Mlondo, who were apparently the killers that Kiwanuka hired to assassinate Sendashonga. Wamuthoni admitted that he was part of the plot to kill the former minister but denied actually doing it. Mlondo however, denied any involvement. A Charles Butera, once Kiwanuka’s story became public, would surface and confirm that he was indeed the Director of Immigration and had no son called Kiwanuka.

The officer tasked to investigate the twin murders was Inspector John Kathae. He inspected the evidence collected and came to the conclusion that there were political connotations to the killings. He did not believe Kiwanuka’s statement. He decided to change tact and went to interview Kiwanuka’s wife. She revealed a connection between the Rwandan government and Kiwanuka. Alphonse Mbayire, who was the acting Rwandan ambassador to Kenya at the time, was apparently financially supporting their family. Kathae tried to interview Mbayire by requesting for a diplomatic immunity waiver but it didn’t come and that was that.

Despite the case against the three being thin and lacking sufficient evidence, they were charged and taken to trial. The three were acquitted of all charges in 2001. Justice Mbogholi Msagha commented on the lack of compelling evidence against the three men. He also added, “I am convinced the murder was political.”

During the trial, Nikuze testified that she believed her husband had been assassinated on the orders of Rwanda’s then Vice President and Defence Minsiter, and now current president, Paul Kagame. She also claimed that Alphonse Mbayire organized the assassination. Mbayire was immediately recalled back to Rwanda in January 2001 after the accusation. He was shot dead a month later in a bar in Kigali by a young soldier who fired more than twenty bullets at close range into his head. The soldier, despite being identified, was never questioned.

Nikuze also shared that her husband had been scheduled to testify before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the French Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry. Defense lawyer Pascal Besnier later confirmed to ICTR that the former Rwandan interior minister, had agreed to speak in defense of his client Obed Ruzindana, a genocide suspect. Had he testified, he would have been the first current or former member of the RPF to testify before the International Criminal Tribunal. It is thought that his impending appearance at the court and the commission made some people jittery and therefore his elimination was planned. His friend Twagiramungu told AFP, “I’m pointing to the RPF and its government. Professionals were sent to carry out this dirty piece of work.” Other Rwandan exiles agreed with him.

The Rwandan foreign ministry denied any involvement in the killing, with Foreign Minister Anastase Gasana quoted as saying, “The Rwandan government did not order this assassination because Mr Sendashonga was not a problem for us. Rwanda has lost a worthy man and a well-known political figure”.

Sendashonga’s killers were never found. However, assassinations of Rwandan exiles abroad continue. In January 2014, former military intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya was found brutally strangled to death in a Johannesburg hotel room. Former Army Head General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa has survived assassination plots which, according to the South African government and other sources, were orchestrated by Rwandan government agents.

Picture: Seth Sendashonga

Source: http://www.hapakenya.com/2016/11/17/the-assasination-of-a-former-rwandan-minister-in-kenya/

Assassination in Africa: Inside the plots to kill Rwanda’s dissidents

Much of the world regards President Paul Kagame as a hero. But 20 years after he helped to stop his country’s brutal genocide, there are mounting allegations that he is silencing dissenters with violence.

A months-long, international inquiry by The Globe’s Geoffrey York and contributor Judi Rever has uncovered explosive testimonies from those who say they were recruited for assassinations – including an alleged recording of one job offer

‘The price is not a problem,” says the man on the phone. "We will show our appreciation if things are beautifully done. They will be rewarded."

The tone of this offer, calm and confident, is so casual it could be about bringing on workers for a plumbing job. What is actually under discussion: $1-million for the hiring of contract killers to assassinate two of Rwandan President Paul Kagame's most hated enemies.

It is 2011, and the speaker is Colonel Dan Munyuza, Rwanda's director of military intelligence and a trusted ally of the Rwandan president. The man on the other end of the line is Robert Higiro, a former Rwandan army major living in exile.

But Mr. Higiro said he had no intention of hiring killers. He had been tapped for the assassinations months before, and informed the targets. They told him to play along with Col. Munyuza - and to tape the explosive conversations.

When one of the two targets was brutally killed on Dec. 31, and gunmen tried to kill the second, Mr. Higiro agreed to share those recordings with The Globe and Mail. Three independent sources - former army colleagues who also know Col. Munyuza personally - confirmed that the voice on tape is his. Two independent translators worked on transcribing the phone recordings from the original Kinyarwanda language.

The phone recordings are part of a months-long investigation by The Globe into murder plots organized by the Rwandan government. Rwandan exiles in both South Africa and Belgium - speaking in clandestine meetings in secure locations because of their fears of attack - gave detailed accounts of being recruited to assassinate critics of President Kagame.

Their evidence is the strongest yet to support what human rights groups and Rwandan exiles have suspected for years about the Rwandan government's involvement in attacks or planned attacks on dissidents, not only in South Africa but in Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Uganda, Kenya and Mozambique.

It also raises new questions about the world's moral stand on Rwanda. This year, the country marks the 20th anniversary of a shocking genocide. Because he helped stop the genocide, Mr. Kagame is hailed as a hero and his reborn country is touted as a model for African development - stable, business-oriented, fast-growing, environmentally clean and virtually free of pettty corruption. But as revelations of murder plots and assassinations mount, easy narratives of good overcoming evil become more and more difficult to sustain. The reality in Rwanda is far more complex. The mass killings of the 1990s and the recent assassination plots left almost no one untainted.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kagame's enemies live in fear - or in hiding - after a wave of attacks against them.

And they are the lucky ones: On New Year's Eve, one of the Mr. Kagame's most-wanted, Rwandan dissident Patrick Karegeya, was brutally strangled to death in a Johannesburg hotel room. His killer or killers remain at large.


Too close for comfort

Rwanda has repeatedly denied any link to the attacks on dissidents abroad. Presented with the key allegations in this story, Vincent Karegeya, the Rwandan high commissioner to South Africa, said this week that the accounts by exiles are false and are motivated by a "political agenda."

If their stories are true, he said, they should go to the police and provide evidence for criminal charges. "These are stories that we can't rely on. They even sound a bit bizarre. It's a basic principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty."

When The Globe requested an interview with Col. Munyuza, the high commission said it would be impossible because the colonel is not an official government spokesman.

The assassination plots matter because of their implications for a country that is crucial to Western policy in Central Africa. Although a nation of only about 12 million people, Rwanda has been a key player in the wars and rebellions that have killed millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its role in perpetrating violence beyond its borders has often been ignored because of the worldwide sympathy for the 1994 genocide. Even reports from UN investigators accusing Mr. Kagame's army of mass slaughters in Congo in the 1990s have generally been brushed aside by the West, which continues to offer huge amounts of aid and political support to the country.

But many of Mr. Kagame's closest aides, who have inside knowledge of the violence in Central Africa, have defected and fled the country in recent years. These men, now dissidents, were members of Mr. Kagame's inner circle during some of the most significant events in African history: the presidential jet that was shot down in 1994, killing the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and igniting the Rwandan genocide, for example, and the 2001 assassination of Laurent Kabila, the Rwandan-backed rebel who became Congo's president. There have been frequent allegations that Mr. Kagame's loyalists were involved in both events, and the exiled dissidents say they have evidence to support those suspicions.

Four high-profile dissidents formed the Rwanda National Congress in 2010. The organization's goal is "to bring political change to Rwanda." Mr. Kagame has denounced its leaders as "terrorists" and cancelled their Rwandan passports. In early 2011, they were tried in a military court in absentia and sentenced to 20 to 24 years of prison on charges of destabilizing public order, endangering state security and fuelling ethnic division.

The convictions are dubious. Rwanda's courts are not independent. Mr. Kagame dominates the country in an authoritarian system that permits no serious opposition. But he remains enraged at the RNC's challenge. The two RNC founders at the top of Mr. Kagame's most-wanted list - and who Mr. Higiro alleges he was paid to have murdered - were Mr. Kagame's former army chief, General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, and his former intelligence chief, Colonel Karegeya.

Because both men were part of Mr. Kagame's regime, they have not escaped blame for atrocities in the 1990s. A Spanish court has accused Gen. Nyamwasa of war crimes because of the Rwandan Patriotic Front's involvement in the killing of civilians and refugees during that time. (The same court also found evidence against Mr. Kagame and his defence minister, but said Mr. Kagame had immunity as a head of state.) The general has also been asked to testify on the RPF's role in the presidential jet crash of 1994, which is still being investigated by an anti-terrorism inquiry in France.

But the complications of their own pasts also make men like Gen. Nyamwasa and other RNC leaders dangerous to Mr. Kagame. Gen. Nyamwasa's testimony, for example, could contain fresh revelations about who was responsible for the 1994 plane crash. He and other leaders also have extensive military connections that could allow them to incite a revolt against the Rwandan President. "These are people who were close to him, people who understand his way of operating," says Mr. Higiro. "Kayumba [Nyamwasa] formed the military. He knows everybody."

Most-wanted men

Over the past four years, Gen. Nyamwasa has been the target of a series of attacks and murder plots, which - according to the South African government and other sources - were orchestrated by Rwandan government agents. Deeply worried about his safety, he agreed to talk to The Globe only in a heavily guarded courtroom in the town of Kagiso, near Johannesburg, where six men (including three Rwandans) are on trial for one of those attempts to kill him.

Assassination in Africa: Inside the plots to kill Rwanda’s dissidents (contd.)


At one time, though, the general was one of the Rwandan President's closest comrades. He served with Mr. Kagame in the Ugandan army in the late-1980s; together they helped found the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a largely Tutsi rebel movement, and led its invasion of Rwanda in 1990, fighting the largely Hutu army during the genocide. When the RPF became the ruling party in 1994, Gen. Nyamwasa held senior posts, including as the army chief of staff.

He says he began to fall out with Mr. Kagame around 2002, when the government arrested a Hutu opposition leader and former president, Pasteur Bizimungu. Gen. Nyamwasa says he disagreed with the arrest. He remembers how Mr. Kagame became "jittery and excited" in their arguments, denouncing Mr. Bizimungu as an "enemy."

A few years later, Gen. Nyamwasa was pushed aside and appointed to a lower-ranking post as ambassador to India. Then, in early 2010, on a return trip to Rwanda, he was interrogated by senior RPF officials about his suspected dissent, and realized he could be arrested. So, at dawn the next morning, he drove to the border and swam across a crocodile-infested river to Uganda. "It was dangerous, but I had to take the risk," he says. "I knew they would kill me."

He made his way to South Africa, but his defection infuriated Mr. Kagame. Three months after arriving in South Africa, he was shot in the stomach by assailants at his home in a Johannesburg suburb. (He still has the bullet in his spine.) As he recuperated in hospital, another group of attackers tried to kill him in his room. According to South African officials, one of the suspects planned to strangle the general with string.

Rwandan government agents were among the six people arrested for the first attack, according to the South African authorities, who also reported that the suspects had offered a $1-million bribe to get the charges dropped.

In total, Gen. Nyamwasa says he has been the target of at least four murder attempts - most recently on March 4, when a group of heavily armed men broke into his government-supplied "safe house" in Johannesburg and hunted for him room-by-room after overpowering his police guards.

He had been forewarned, and the house was empty. Things went differently for the other man on Mr. Kagame's hit-list, Patrick Karegeya.

Born in exile in Uganda, Col. Karegeya joined Mr. Kagame and the RPF rebel movement in its early days, leading up to its invasion of Rwanda in 1990. He was the intelligence chief from 1994 to 2004, but began to disagree with Mr. Kagame's repressive policies.

He was jailed for six months in 2005 for unspecified "disciplinary" infractions. The following year, he was jailed again for 18 months for "desertion and insubordination." When he was released from prison in November, 2007, he fled the country and journeyed to South Africa as a refugee.

The South African government put him up in a safe house to prevent him from being attacked. But Col. Karegeya found it difficult to earn an income in the witness-protection system, and he felt isolated. His daughter, a university student and intern at a human-rights centre, was living in Canada.

Col. Karegeya moved out of the safe house and let down his guard - a decision that cost him his life.

David Batenga, his nephew, remembers the horror of identifying his uncle's body after he was strangled with a towel and a curtain rope in an upscale hotel in Johannesburg's business district, Sandton. After his uncle had disappeared on Dec. 31, it took him many hours to persuade the hotel staff to check the room. By the time the hotel contacted police to investigate, Col. Karegeya had been dead for 24 hours. His face was blackened and shrunk, and the killer or killers were long gone.

In an interview last month at a hotel where he feels safe, Mr. Batenga said his uncle was normally very cautious about meeting any visitor from Rwanda. But in late December, he was visited by an old and trusted friend: a Rwandan businessman whom he had known for many years.

The businessman had been harassed by Rwandan authorities because of his friendship with Col. Karegeya, and this made the colonel sympathetic to him, Mr. Batenga said. But he was also developing a major retail project in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, which may have left him vulnerable to pressure from Rwandan agents seeking his co-operation in a murder plot.

Before his arrival in Johannesburg on Dec. 29, the businessman had asked Col. Karegeya to rent him a room at the Michelangelo Towers hotel. On New Year's Eve, the Colonel visited the hotel room, number 905, to share a drink with his friend. He was never seen alive again.

Directly across the hotel corridor from room 905, Mr. Batenga alleges, two Rwandan agents had rented a room - and he believes they were involved in the murder. The next morning, before the body was discovered, all of them returned to Kigali on a commercial flight, he said.

Within days, Rwanda's top leaders were gloating about Col. Karegeya's murder. The foreign minister and prime minister denounced the former intelligence chief as an "enemy" who had suffered the consequences of his "betrayal" of his country. "When you choose to be a dog, you die like a dog, and the cleaners will wipe away the trash," said the defence minister, Gen. James Kabarebe.

Mr. Kagame denied Rwandan involvement in Col. Karegeya's murder but said he would have been happy if Rwanda had killed him. "I really wish it," he told an interviewer.

Even before this murder, Mr. Kagame made little secret of his desire to see the RNC leaders dead. "Maybe he deserves it," Mr. Kagame told an interviewer in 2012 when asked about the attempted murder of Gen. Nyamwasa. His propaganda newspaper, the New Times, said the RNC leaders should suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden.

Picture:
Robert Higiro was part of Paul Kagame’s rebel army in 1990 when it invaded Rwanda. Here, the two men (Mr. Higiro at right) attend a military academy ceremony. (Courtesy of Robert Higiro)

He has a job for you...

The investigation by The Globe and Mail found a common thread in interviews about plots to murder exiles: Rwandan agents search for vulnerable people within the social circles of their targets and then put pressure on them or offer them money in exchange for their co-operation. In some cases, the agents go back repeatedly to the same potential assassins even if they failed to do the job, urging them to do what they were paid to do.

Robert Higiro was one of them.

Born in exile in Uganda in 1972, he joined Mr. Kagame's rebel army in 1990 when it invaded Rwanda. After 20 years in the army, he was serving as a United Nations peacekeeper in Darfur in 2010 when he fell afoul of the Rwandan authorities after making offhand comments critical of two senior Rwandan army officers.

Mr. Higiro was discharged from the army. He needed to make a new living, so he went to Uganda to pursue business opportunities, but was soon summoned to the Rwandan army headquarters to be questioned.

Mr. Higiro says it was then that Col. Munyuza first reached out to him. He was given about $500 for his transportation home (much more than he needed). But he says he was also put under covert surveillance. He wondered why he was becoming the subject of such attention.

He eventually fled to Senegal, where he had contacts, and within a few days was working for a French security company in Dakar.

Someone tied to Col. Munyuza came to talk to him.

"He has a job for you," Mr. Higiro says the intermediary told him.

A few days later, Col. Munyuza phoned him and asked him to go to South Africa to kill Col. Karegeya and Gen. Nyamwasa, says Mr. Higiro. If he did the job, the intelligence chief promised that he would be amply rewarded and would become "a hero" in his country.

Mr. Higiro stalled, fearing that he would be killed no matter what happened. He decided to phone Col. Karegeya - an old family friend - to warn him of the plot. Mr. Higiro says they agreed that he should play along with Mr. Munyuza's offer and secretly record the phone conversations. (Jump to an excerpt of one of those conversations.)

Mr. Higiro went to South Africa and invented a cover story. He told Col. Munyuza that he knew a South African military officer with a friend who could gain access to the dissisdent's bodyguards. The bodyguards could either kill the targets or allow a Rwandan hit squad to do the job. Mr. Higiro says he asked for a $1.5-million (U.S.) payment to arrange the hit, and Col. Munyuza countered with an offer of $1-million in installments.

In their recorded conversations, the man identified as Col. Munyuza suggests that the hit men could be rewarded with "a piece of the market" - possibly a contract at a Rwandan cellphone company. "Tell him that the essential thing is that the job is done and I'll take care of the rest," he says to Mr. Higiro. "I know people who've carried out similar jobs in the past, and they are well-treated today."

In another conversation, the colonel tells Mr. Higiro: "If we managed to hit both of them ... the others would shut up."

He adds: "If he could kill two birds with one stone and eliminate them both at once, he could earn more. Even one alone, the enemy would be weakened."

But these conversations eventually ended when the Rwandan officials refused to provide any upfront money. Talks petered off. And Mr. Higiro decided to take the chance to escape, first to Kenya, then Belgium, where he has applied for refugee status.

After the latest attacks on Rwandan dissidents this year, though, he decided to disclose the secret phone recordings.

"I think it's time to expose - using evidence that we have - that this conspiracy of assassinations is going on," he said in an interview in a hotel room in Brussels.

I can’t kill refugees...

A similar murder plot is described by a Rwandan exile named Gustave Tuyishime.

Born in Rwanda in 1979, he migrated to South Africa as a young man and got UN refugee status in 2001. He worked in odd jobs in Pretoria, as a taxi driver, a barman and a bouncer, but was often desperate for money. In 2011, he says, a Rwandan intelligence agent approached him and offered him about 100,000 rand (about $16,000 at the time) to buy a gun and shoot Gen. Nyamwasa or other RNC leaders, whom he knew through the small Rwandan exile community.

A total of about $15,000 was wired to him, he says, and he was given the address of a safe house in a small rural town where Gen. Nyamwasa was being guarded. He says he was promised millions of dollars, plus a government medal, if he completed the job. But he got cold feet. "I can't kill refugees," he says. "I'm a refugee myself."

He spent the money on a new car, warned the dissidents of the murder plot, gave a statement to the South African police, and then went into hiding, to the fury of the Rwandan agents.

Mr. Tuyishime, though highly nervous, agreed to meet for an interview at a Pretoria hotel after being contacted by Kennedy Gihana, an immigration lawyer and Kagame opponent who had become the RNC's secretary-general. The two know each other through Rwandan refugee circles and remain on amicable terms - even though Mr. Tuyishime says he was twice contracted to kill Mr. Gihana himself.

It was last year, Mr. Tuyishime says, that a senior Rwandan diplomat tracked him down and told him to repay the debt from the Gen. Nyamwasa job by doing a new hit for them.

First, he says, the diplomat offered him 200 rand to find the hospital room of Mr. Gihana, who had been injured in a car accident in early December, 2013. Then, Mr. Tuyishime says, he was offered money to kill Mr. Gihana. But instead he warned him, and Mr. Gihana quickly moved to another hospital.

Mr. Tuyishime says he also filed a statement with a police station in Pretoria, giving details of the murder plot. A text message on his cellphone from the police station gives the file number of the case.

A few weeks later, though, just before Patrick Karegeya was strangled to death, the diplomat gave him a new assignment: for a $5,000 payment, he says, he was supposed to set fire to an RNC house in a Pretoria suburb.

"They think you will see the money and you'll do whatever they want," Mr. Tuyishime says. But again, he was unwilling to do the job.

Three days after the murder of Col. Karegeya, he says, the Rwandan diplomat who had been contacting him found him in a Pretoria hotel. "You didn't do what we told you to do," the diplomat told him angrily. "So we did it ourselves." Two days later, he says, the diplomat issued a death threat to him: "You will be the second to die."

Mr. Gihana, too, says he often gets phone calls from South African police officers warning him of new threats on his life. When the Rwandan embassy hosted a social event at a Johannesburg hotel, the dissidents boldly tried to barge in, and Mr. Gihana says the diplomat told him: "I didn't come here as a diplomat. I came here to hunt you."

Other RNC leaders in South Africa have also been the targets of mysterious attacks - including Frank Ntwali, a laywer who is Gen. Nyamwasa's brother-in-law and the head of the RNC's Africa branch. In August, 2012, in Johannesburg, a car with police-style blue lights pulled over his vehicle, and three men approached him. "Are you Frank?" one asked. A second man jumped into the back seat and stabbed him repeatedly in the shoulder and hip.

He fought back and the men ran away. He was stabbed 10 times but survived, perhaps because of the thick winter coat he was wearing. The assailants were clearly uninterested in robbery - they ignored his cellphone, computer and wallet.

Mr. Ntwali has become so worried about the threat of attack that he often removes the batteries from his cellphone so that his movements cannot be traced. "They will keep coming after me," he said in an interview in a Johannesburg restaurant. "But they'll never succeed. Only God has the right to take our lives. The cause that I'm fighting for is bigger than I am. It's about liberty. People won't be intimidated forever."

Forward, carefully

Global authorities are taking what they hear from Rwandan dissidents seriously. Their own investigations have confirmed their stories, and they are trying to protect the dissidents by urging Mr. Kagame to restrain himself.

The U.S. State Department has already warned the Kagame government that it must not "silence dissidents." It has expressed "deep concern" over Mr. Kagame's public threats against critics and the apparent "politically motivated attacks" on them.

In Britain, police warned two dissidents in 2011 that the Rwandan government "poses an imminent threat to your life."

In Sweden, a Rwandan diplomat was expelled in 2012 for "espionage" against Rwandan refugees, and authorities protected an exiled Rwandan newspaper editor who feared for his life.

Despite Rwandan officials' denials, the South African government has concluded that the country's diplomats have been involved in murder and attempted murder. In 2010, it recalled its ambassador from Rwanda to protest an attack on a dissident in Johannesburg. And in March, after the latest attack, it expelled four Rwandan diplomats and accused them of "direct links" to the Karegeya assassination and other attempted murders and "organized criminal networks."

There is also the ongoing trial against the six people accused of trying to kill Gen. Nyamwasa in 2010. The trial is now in its final stages, with a verdict expected in the next few weeks.

While he awaits that ruling, the general sits on a bench at the back of the courtroom, protected by seven South African police officers with guns and bulletproof vests. It's one of the few places where he feels secure.

On Christmas Eve, a week before Col. Karegeya's death, the general met socially with the fellow dissident. On that same night, he remembers, Col. Karegeya got a mysterious phone call from a Rwandan intelligence agent who had been briefly arrested in 2010 in connection with the general's shooting. The agent may have been trying to discover where the two men were located, Gen. Nyamwasa said.

Faced with violent attacks in South Africa and repression in Rwanda, the dissidents see little hope for peaceful solutions. In every election, Mr. Kagame wins more than 90 per cent of the vote, a result that has been widely questioned by democracy advocates. Some of the RNC leaders have hinted that an armed revolt or coup, led by the Rwandan army, might be the only way to depose him. It would be "self-defence," they argue.

"If you imprison people and force them into exile, the anger could end up in war again," Gen. Nyamwasa says.

He's not afraid to talk about the genocide in Rwanda either. The general says his lawyers are still talking to French authorities about their investigation into the RPF's role in the presidential crash of 1994, the event that triggered the genocide.

"If I'm alive, and if the opportunity arises. I will tell my story."

Staying alive requires care, of course - for targets as well as those recruited to attack them.

In Pretoria, Gustave Tuyishime says he doesn't feel safe these days, and he takes precautions to stay out of sight. "I sleep in a car," he says.

Robert Higiro, the ex-army major who secretly recorded Col. Munyuza, also keeps a low profile in his new hometown in Belgium.

He does speak out when he can by attending impromptu meetings and doing interviews. But he moves around. He shifts his daily patterns and is unable to attend regular Flemish language class for fear of being spotted.

For all that, he still has ongoing security concerns, which Belgian authorities are aware of. He sometimes gets phone calls from Rwandan visitors who seem to be looking for him.

"I'm definitely being hunted," he says. "I'm in a fragile situation. I'm afraid, but it doesn't stop me from doing what I have to do."


THE END

More than 100 000 women ( some of then pregnant ), and children were jailed after the genocide Kagame his cronies have engineered in Rwanda in the mid-1990. Those women had nothing to do with the killings. Not only that, the Tutsi army killed at least 400 000 Hutu in the RDC ( former Zaire). To hide the evidence the bodies were burned and the ashes thrown in the rivers.

Can you substantiate this claim?

panafrican:
More than 100 000 women ( some of then pregnant ), and children were jailed after the genocide Kagame his cronies have engineered in Rwanda in the mid-1990. Those women had nothing to do with the killings. Not only that, the Tutsi army killed at least 400 000 Hutu in the RDC ( former Zaire). To hide the evidence the bodies were burned and the ashes thrown in the rivers.

Can you substantiate this claim?

panafrican:
More than 100 000 women ( some of then pregnant ), and children were jailed after the genocide Kagame his cronies have engineered in Rwanda in the mid-1990. Those women had nothing to do with the killings. Not only that, the Tutsi army killed at least 400 000 Hutu in the RDC ( former Zaire). To hide the evidence the bodies were burned and the ashes thrown in the rivers.

I enjoyed reading this piece. It was just as if I was watching a movie.

Anywhere there is chaos, anarchy & genocide, history teaches me that, Amerika must surely be involved.

Now, Read This:

PENTAGON PRODUCES SATELLITE PHOTOS OF 1994
RWANDA GENOCIDE

The U.S. officials in power at the time -- William Jefferson
Clinton (President) or Warren Christopher (Secretary of
State) or Madeleine Albright (Ambassador to the United Nations) or William Perry (Secretary of Defense) or R. James Woolsey (CIA Director) or Anthony Lake (National Security Adviser) -- claim that they didn't know what was happening on the ground in Rwanda. They did. They always did. They knew at the time and they have known since.

The confirmation of satellite reconnaissance and intelligence
photographs newly implicates the U.S. government in the mass atrocities of 1994, and raises serious new questions about the coverup of the double presidential assassinations of April 6, 1994 and the atrocities committed by the
Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) commanded by now President Paul Kagame.

The sudden and unexpected revelation of the existence of
satellite imagery shot over Rwanda in 1994 also further
corroborates claims and evidence that U.S. and Pentagon officials had plenty of satellite evidence of the numbers and whereabouts of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees massacred by the Kagame war machine in Congo's forests.

Now, look at these attached pictures carefully and tell me what you see. Yes, you guessed right! This how the CIA has been propping-up Dictators all around the globe - especially in Afrika - and then replacing them once they get out of the line.

Can you see George Bush giving that bastard - Kagame a handshake for a job well done?

The 3rd picture is actually when he went for his CIA training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Can you also see Kagame posing with leaders of Multi-national corporations (directors of Royal/Dutch Shell Corporation in Kigali) who have been plundering all the Natural Resources of Rwanda till date?

That is Amerika's bounty & reward for installing scores of dictators in Rwanda & other Afrikan Countries.


I am repeating this for the umpteenth time, unless Amerika & Britain are balkanized & nuked into vapour by the axis of good - namely - Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the world - especially Afrika will never know peace. It doesn't even matter if we all die in the process but Amerika must be stopped at all cost.

Zoharariel:
I enjoyed reading this piece. It was just as if I was watching a movie.

Anywhere there is chaos, anarchy & genocide, history teaches me that, Amerika must surely be involved.

Now, Read This:

PENTAGON PRODUCES SATELLITE PHOTOS OF 1994
RWANDA GENOCIDE

The U.S. officials in power at the time -- William Jefferson
Clinton (President) or Warren Christopher (Secretary of
State) or Madeleine Albright (Ambassador to the United Nations) or William Perry (Secretary of Defense) or R. James Woolsey (CIA Director) or Anthony Lake (National Security Adviser) -- claim that they didn't know what was happening on the ground in Rwanda. They did. They always did. They knew at the time and they have known since.

The confirmation of satellite reconnaissance and intelligence
photographs newly implicates the U.S. government in the mass atrocities of 1994, and raises serious new questions about the coverup of the double presidential assassinations of April 6, 1994 and the atrocities committed by the
Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) commanded by now President Paul Kagame.

The sudden and unexpected revelation of the existence of
satellite imagery shot over Rwanda in 1994 also further
corroborates claims and evidence that U.S. and Pentagon officials had plenty of satellite evidence of the numbers and whereabouts of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees massacred by the Kagame war machine in Congo's forests.

Now, look at these attached pictures carefully and tell me what you see. Yes, you guessed right! This how the CIA has been propping-up Dictators all around the globe - especially in Afrika - and then replacing them once they get out of the line.

Can you see George Bush giving that bastard - Kagame a handshake for a job well done?

The 3rd picture is actually when he went for his CIA training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Can you also see Kagame posing with leaders of Multi-national corporations (directors of Royal/Dutch Shell Corporation in Kigali) who have been plundering all the Natural Resources of Rwanda till date?

That is Amerika's bounty & reward for installing scores of dictators in Rwanda & other Afrikan Countries.


I am repeating this for the umpteenth time, unless Amerika & Britain are balkanized & nuked into vapour by the axis of good - namely - Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the world - especially Afrika will never know peace. It doesn't even matter if we all die in the process but Amerika must be stopped at all cost.

You are still on your anti American rants. Don't get your blood pressure up for nothing. America is an Eagle that will keep on soaring. Worry about the Billions of $ that the politicians and their cronies are stealing from Nigeria that kept Nigeria to be a perpetual Third World country.

At a conference in 1996 at UQAM, Universite' du Quebec a' Montreal ( University of Quebec, Montreal Campus), there was a clash between Hutu and Tutsi. At that time the new regime was pushing its genocide propaganda against the Hutu. There we learned from Hutu students at at least 100,000 ( Not 1,000 ) Hutu were held in concentration camps by the Kagame regime. Among the prisoners thousands of children women with babies, and children age less than 4 years), not to count the elderly , the disabled etc. Since that time many panafricanists took a step back from Coup leader Paul Kagame and his foreign legion mainly made of jobless Ugandans. Them mercenaries came from Uganda to help on purpose to establish a 100 % Tutsi domination in the Great lakes. Note: Museveni is a Tutsi just like Kagame'.

Wow! Good to know at least some of you see through Kagame's bs! You haven't mentioned,though a crucial part of the source of much anti Tutsi feeling among Hutus and also the secret source of much of the formers strength.

Tutsi women!

As we shall see Tutsi women have a history,a culturally encoded injunction to break this covenant when married to Bantus,specifically Hutus. This is merely a reflection of their enthusiastic service to the secret group regional objective which is -Tutsi rule,by any means necessary. To this end,they have spied,lied,poisoned and murdered;all for their group. Willingly they have subordinated their basic feminine power to the cause of Tutsi supremacy.

http://karanjazplace..co.ke/2017/07/pussy-power-real-reason-tutsis-and.html

The link is NSFW!

Typical Tutsi hotties;btw some look a lot like Kikuyus.

In war,not all battles are fought and won by the kinetic capabilities of brigades of T-90 tanks,squadrons of gunships or batteries of heavy artillery. In the Tutsi arsenal lies the inestimable power of good pussy.

naijalander:
Can you substantiate this claim?

Did you hear about the Great lake Tutsi empire project?
Did you know Museveni is a Tutsi?
You want some proofs of the genocide and crime against humanity the Tutsi regime is responsable for? Go to Kigali and ask to visit the prisons.
Go to the southern part of the DRC ask questions.

FYI, I know one of the tutsi who planned the framing of Habiarimana' s relative in Quebec Canada in the mid 1990' s.
They said the man threatened them on an Underground ( Metro).It was a set up on purpose to pressure the Canadian government to expel the guy although he had a canadian citizenship and was married to a canadian woman with whom he had a child. He fought in court for years but was expelled.
Tutsi think for them having sharp noses they are close to white people , they refer to Hutu as retarded Bantu from West Africa who deserve nothing but being enslaved.

panafrican:

Did you hear about the Great lake Tutsi empire project?
Did you know Museveni is a Tutsi?
You want some proofs of the genocide and crime against humanity the Tutsi regime is responsable for? Go to Kigali and ask to visit the prisons.
Go to the southern part of the DRC ask questions.

FYI, I know one of the tutsi who planned the framing of Habiarimana' s relative in Quebec Canada in the mid 1990' s.
They said the man threatened them on an Underground ( Metro).It was a set up on purpose to pressure the Canadian government to expel the guy although he had a canadian citizenship and was married to a canadian woman with whom he had a child. He fought in court for years but was expelled.
Tutsi think for them having sharp noses they are close to white people , they refer to Hutu as retarded Bantu from West Africa who deserve nothing but being enslaved.

All true! There was a plan TO CONTROL AFRICA NOT JUST THE GREAT LAKES! I was shocked but they had proxies as far as Botswana to take over-Idk if the plan is still in the works or temporarily shelved. l never heard of that Habyarimana relative story,but its extremely plausible knowing how ruthless Tutsis are. But they've made a horrible blunder:the West acts strictly out of self interest! [b]The day they tire of Tutsi bs,the latter will realise they're an insignificant people stranded in the Middle of Africa with no independent resources whatsoever. [/b]Also having antagonised everyone else in the region they have no friends!
That day is close. See this BBC doc banned by Rwanda that starts;"what the world believes and what actually happened are two different things."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4DKBgJlif8

Watch the whole thing. 2 US researchers showed how the RPF lied. Their findings were:
-the killing ended before RPF arrival
-the RPF killed both Hutus and Tutsis
-maximum,300-350k died,forget that '1 mn Tutsis and moderate Hutus,'you keep hearing

No wonder Paul has a new law about genocide denial for questioning these facts.

I ALWAYS KNEW THE SINGAPORE STYLE DEVELOPMENT STORY WAS ALL BS!!

"Large numbers of Rwandans are crossing into Uganda as illegal immigrants and settling in forest reserves. These poverty-stricken Rwandans in their thousands are illegally moving to Uganda in search of a livelihood of any kind.

Rwanda has been labelled as one of Africa's progressive economies, enjoying the benefits of a fast-rising economy. While Rwanda has made enormous strides by extricating itself from the mess of the 1994 genocide, there are still deep problems which the country needs to address"

https://www.africanexponent.com/pos...-uganda-in-search-of-better-living-conditions

Ofc,the skinny serial killer defaults to threats:

[b]"There is no border you can cross and get better services than what we can provide here, whether it is healthcare or education. We shouldn’t be crossing borders for any reason," [/b]Kagame said. He pledged that his government would "do whatever it takes to ensure that the reasons people cross borders are removed." He said, "We will ensure that whatever services they are looking for can be obtained locally."

Why would they flee to a 5th world country if Rwanda was all that? I've been saying it for the longest-Rwanda is only Kigali,a city of shiny new hotels filled with NGOs and gov't Tutsis endlessly congratulating themselves on non existent growth and development.

Read this book! The first by a Mainstream Westerner questioning Kagame and all his works!

The true HISTORY of the RPF dating from their Uganda days. Some insights:
-at least half of M7s rebels of the NRA in the 80s were Tutsi and related Banyankole
-the area that suffered most, Luweero triangle in Buganda lost minimum 200k dead
- one of the NRM hierarchy ACTUALLY admitted they were murdered by his own to put international pressure on Obote
- Kagame may be genuinely psycho frequently publicly beating generals and senior officers gleefully warning the world of his reach after successful assassinations
- DON'T pity those RPF guys he falls out with! Their hands are equally bloody and they've massacred from Uganda to Rwanda to the DRC
- many of this erstwhile gang have admitted numerous times,"yes, we shot down the plane! Dunhh!"
- more Hutus died in April 94 as many of the "Interahamwe" were disguised RPF
- there's a long standing culture of dishonesty in Rwandese society remarked upon by everyone from Richard Burton, the first German explorer, later Belgian colonisers and observant foreigners.
- Saffa NIS on ANC orders caved into Rwanda's demands after killing Patrick Karegeya. These Tutsis even threatened the prosecutor!

The sun has at last risen on Tutsi depredations! Be sure more info will follow.

Why wasn'y anu mention of general Tito Okelo ?
He was the one Museveni's rebels overthrew.

Did anyone catch M7's son,Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba's whisky fuelled rants this week?

The nigga said it would take him 2 wks to capture Kenya!?

Apart from the comical delusion of the mental image of a midget boxer challenging a pro boxer the statement revealed certain Tutsi characteristics. Arrogance, conceit, contempt for others and a definite aspect of narcissism- the same source of f'ery that wrecked Uganda, Rwanda and the entire Great Lakes.
Fyi his dad had definite designs on Kenya in the 80s during his Tutsi rampage- we'd have been his route to the sea.
Muhoozi was coming from a familiar place for those who've observed these guys.