[RwandaLibre] Ex-Rwandan spy chief killing alights allegations

Ex-Rwandan spy chief killing alights allegations



LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The killing of Rwanda's former spy chief in

South Africa has critics revisiting serious allegations against

Western-backed President Paul Kagame that go back to the Central

African nation's 1994 genocide.



Former Col. Patrick Karegeya, a wartime ally from Kagame's days as a

rebel leader, was found dead last week in a bed in Johannesburg's

prestigious Michelangelo Towers hotel. Police said he was possibly

strangled.



Karegeya's friends and fellow dissidents accused Kagame of ordering

the assassination, pointing to a pattern of alleged killings of his

opponents at home and abroad. Karegeya fled to South Africa in 2007.



Officials in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, have not responded to

requests for comment. But the Rwandan high commissioner in South

Africa, Vincent Karega, told local broadcaster eNCA that talk of

assassination is an "emotional reaction and opportunistic way of

playing politics."



South African police say they are investigating the case but no

arrests have been made.



The killing comes five months after Karegeya claimed to have

incriminating evidence that would prove Kagame, who is lauded by

Western leaders for ending Rwanda's genocide, actually provided the

catalyst for the mass killings.



In a July interview with Radio France International, Karegeya charged

that Kagame ordered the downing of a jet that killed the Hutu

presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi, the event that triggered

the genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were

killed over three months.



Karegeya said on RFI that he was willing to hand his evidence to a

court in France that is investigating because the plane's pilots were

French.



A long-suppressed U.N. report published in 2010 noted that Kagame in

1994 refused to have peace talks as thousands of mainly Tutsi Rwandans

were being killed, buying the time that allowed his forces to reach

Kigali and take control.



It accused Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front of then going on to

massacre Hutus in Rwanda, including at Kibeho refugee camp in April

1995 before the eyes of Australian and Zambian U.N. peacekeepers, an

attack allegedly led by Karegeya.



The same report, which carried a lengthy denial from Kagame's

government, accused the Rwandan-led forces of "a possible genocide" of

Rwandan and Congolese Hutus in eastern Congo in the mid-1990s.



Rwandan experts have said the U.N. failure to publish an earlier 1994

report on RPF massacres gave Kagame a blank check to continue the

killings.



Defense lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the

court for perpetrators of the genocide based in Tanzania, long have

contended that the court has provided "victor's justice" by ignoring

massacres by Kagame's forces.



Kagame is feted by current and former U.S. and British leaders who

point to how he has transformed an impoverished and war-ravaged nation

into an efficient technology hub with some of the highest rates for

literacy and health in Africa. That has come at the cost of a

dictatorship that ruthlessly suppresses opposition and routinely

jails, disappears and kills opponents, according to critics.



Analysts say the West panders to Kagame because of its great guilt

over not ending the Rwandan genocide. And Kagame, who blames French

troops that allowed perpetrators of the genocide to escape into Congo,

played to British and American interests in diluting French influence

in Central Africa when he changed Rwanda's official language from

French to English. That put Tutsi exiles who grew up in

English-speaking Tanzania and Uganda at a great advantage over

French-speaking Hutus. Rwanda's other official language is

Kinyarwanda.



Initial opposition to Kagame came, predictably, from members of the

Hutu tribe, but in recent years it has come increasingly from former

Tutsi allies like Karegeya and others who fear the brutal suppression

of Rwanda's majority people, the Hutu, might lead to another genocide.



About 85 percent of Rwandans are Hutu who were held in serfdom by

Tutsi royalty in the 18th century. After World War I Rwanda fell to

Belgian colonizers who entrenched divisions by ruling through the

Tutsi monarch and educating only Tutsi males. Hutus who revolted had

limbs amputated by Tutsis, on the order of the Belgians.



When independence and free elections came in 1961, they were won by

Hutus. The first Tutsi attempt to regain power came a year later, with

an invasion from Burundi. The Hutu government responded with brutal

reprisals against Tutsi civilians.



Under Kagame, Hutu politicians have been killed or jailed in Rwanda.

Journalists and judges also have been killed and imprisoned with the

most fatal year being 2010, when Kagame was re-elected in polls that

human rights activists called greatly flawed.



Kagame, who says many of his enemies deny the genocide, recently has

taken to demanding that the children of Hutus apologize for the

genocide that occurred before they were born.



"Kagame is actually blowing the country in the path of another

genocide," said former Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa. He was Kagame's army

chief of staff until 2010 and has survived two assassination attempts

that are the subject of a South African court case and that left him

with a bullet lodged in the base of his spine.



(Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material

may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)



http://m.cnsnews.com/news/article/ex-rwandan-spy-chief-killing-alights-allegations





--

SIBOMANA Jean Bosco

Google+: https://plus.google.com/110493390983174363421/posts

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B4024D0AE764F3D

http://www.youtube.com/user/sibomanaxyz999

***Transmission Time Interval (TTI) on Sunday January 5th, 2014:

TTI=12H16-20H30, heure de Montréal.***Fuseau horaire domestique: heure

normale de la côte Est des Etats-Unis et Canada (GMT-05:00)***





------------------------------------



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

.To post a message: RwandaLibre@yahoogroups.com

.To join: RwandaLibre-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

.To unsubscribe from this group,send an email to:

RwandaLibre-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

_____________________________________________________



More news:



http://amakurunamateka.blogspot.co.uk/



http://ikangurambaga.blogspot.co.uk/



--------------------------------------------------------------------------Yahoo Groups Links



<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RwandaLibre/



<*> Your email settings:

Individual Email | Traditional



<*> To change settings online go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RwandaLibre/join

(Yahoo! ID required)



<*> To change settings via email:

RwandaLibre-digest@yahoogroups.com

RwandaLibre-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com



<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:

RwandaLibre-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com



<*> Your use of Yahoo Groups is subject to:

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/