Rwanda: Zimbabwe Protecting Top Genocide Fugitive
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
9 June 2008
Posted to the web 9 June 2008
Kigali
One of the most notorious names in the Rwandan Genocide - an officer whose troops allegedly raped and killed the former Rwandan prime minister and the Belgian soldiers protecting her - is living in Zimbabwe, RNA reports.
Major Protais Mpiranya, a former head of the Presidential Guard is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and has a $5 million (about Rwf 2.7 billion) bounty on his head as part of the U.S. government 'Reward for Justice' program.
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UN sources tell The Sunday Times that Major Mpiranya established personal business links with several Zimbabwean officers, some of whom set up their own companies to plunder DR Congo wealth - during the bitter occupation by different countries including Rwanda.
He falls in the same category with suspected financer of the mass killings millionaire Felicien Kabuga, and 11 others still at large.
Major Mpiranya is suspected of enjoying business links with former army officers close to the country's president, Robert Mugabe. It is these links that enable him to feel secure in Zimbabwe, the paper said.
However, the presence in Zimbabwe of Mpiranya has never been officially admitted by the authorities. He is one of a handful of top leaders of the genocide to have got away.
In a year 2000 indictment, the Tanzania-based court accuses him General Augustin Ndindiliyimana; the former chief-of-staff of the FAR, General Augustin Bizimungu, and two commanding officers in the reconnaissance battalion, Major François Xavier Nzuwonemeye and captain Innocent Sagahutu.
They are charged under the group Military II. The first military trial, currently in progress for years, groups together four senior officers of the FAR, including the former director of cabinet in the ministry of defence, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora - considered the brain behind the mass killings.
The UN Tribunal alleges that Major Mpiranya 'supervised trainings' of the interahamwe militia in northern Rwanda - with collaboration from General Augustin Bizimungu.
In 1993, Major Mpiranya along with his co-accused distributed weapons to the militia and certain carefully selected members of the civilian population with the intent to exterminate the Tutsi population and eliminate its "accomplices", the indictment claims.
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On April 09 1994, the fugitive former government insider apparently 'tracked down, arrested, sexually assaulted and killed" Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. She was assassinated with her 10 Belgian guards that were part of the Belgian contingent on the UN mission.
Their murder precipitated the immediate withdraw of the Belgians troops. Major Mpiranya is said to have adopted a strategy aimed at provoking the Belgian soldiers, in order to force them into withdrawing. With this in mind they waged an anti-Belgium propaganda campaign, the indictment alleges.
In July 1994, faced with the advance of the troops of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Major Mpiranya fled Rwanda most probably towards the Democratic Republic of Congo - then Zaire.
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