An investigator who worked on key defense cases at the UN tribunal for Rwanda has been kidnapped in Kenya, amid mounting evidence that Rwandan President Paul Kagame's intelligence services were behind the abduction.
The kidnapping of Rwandan national Jean Chrysostome Ntirugiribambe in Nairobi has been widely condemned by political activists and defense lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) where the victim worked for years as a legal investigator."It is our information that he was seized by Rwandan intelligence agents, possibly with the connivance of local police in Nairobi," Christopher Black, a Canadian defense lawyer who worked with Ntirugiribambe at the ICTR, wrote in a letter obtained by Digital Journal.On July 7, Black officially requested Kenya's attorney general and ministers of interior and foreign affairs to investigate the matter.The latest abduction appeared to be part of a wider, relentless crackdown on Rwandan refugees and dissidents and comes eight months after the kidnapping in Nairobi of another high profile Rwandan asylum seeker.In November suspected Rwandan agents seized Emile Gafirita, a former Tutsi soldier due to testify against Kagame in a French inquiry into the 1994 downing of a plane carrying the former Rwandan president, an incident that sparked the 1994 genocide.In a series of interviews with this journalist, family and lawyers say that a group of armed men seized Ntirugiribambe on June 23 and forced him at gunpoint into a car in front of witnesses on the street. Kenyan police have acknowledged the kidnapping occurred but have refused official comment on the case, pending an investigation.However a Kenyan police officer said the Rwandan embassy in Nairobi would be in a position to provide details on Ntirugiribambe's disappearance."The Rwandan embassy would be able to give you that information. It would be better to call them," the officer, requesting anonymity, told Digital Journal.Sources close to intelligence in Rwanda said Rwandan government agents were indeed behind the abduction.One of the sources told Digital Journal that Ntirugiribambe' kidnapping was facilitated by Lt Col James Burabyo, a military attaché at the Rwandan embassy in neighboring Uganda, under the instructions of Jack Nziza. Nziza is a notorious figure that has worked in Rwandan intelligence for decades and played a crucial role in killing, abducting and torturing perceived opponents of Kagame. Rwanda's external intelligence chief, Francis Mutiganda, was also allegedly involved in organizing the abduction, the sources indicated.Lt Colonel Mutiganda is a much-feared individual who recently worked in UN peacekeeping before returning home to oversee the country's external intelligence, a branch long suspected of carrying out murderous operations abroad in conjunction with Rwandan embassies.A UN officer who worked closely with Mutiganda said the UN department of peacekeeping DPKO failed to properly vet the Rwandan colonel before hiring him and only became aware after the fact that he had allegedly directed a killing squad in Rwanda. The UN wrote an internal report on Mutiganda's criminal record following his appointment as deputy chief of DPKO's military planning services.Despite the report, DPKO was ultimately unwilling to fire Mutiganda because Rwanda exerted undue influence at the United Nations as a result of its troop contributions to peacekeeping operations, the UN officer explained.Mutiganda was also accused of threatening colleagues at DPKO. "I can tell you that a German Waffen-SS officer looks a Kindergarten cop compared to Francis Mutiganda," the UN official told Digital Journal.Mutiganda and Nziza work under the authority of an umbrella spy agency in Rwanda called the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). The head of NISS, Lt General Karenzi Karake, was arrested in London last month on a European arrest warrant issued by a Spanish court invoking universal jurisdiction. Karake now faces possible extradition to Spain for having allegedly organized the murders of three Spanish nationals in the late 1990s in Rwanda. He also is accused of having ordered large-scale massacres of Hutu civilians following the genocide.Jean Chrystostome Ntirugiribambe's daughter said her father's kidnapping had plunged the family into a state of anguish, following the recent death of their mother."It's been so hard to deal with. We are very worried," she said in an interview. The daughter said Kenyan police had conceded that a police officer in Mombasa, Kenya's second-largest city, appeared to have played a role in the kidnapping.Rwandan agents have often been accused of bribing local police to assist in their operations.Lawyer Christopher Black described Ntirugiribambe as an "intelligent, self-effacing, gentle man," and a vital member of his legal team that had secured the full acquittal at the ICTR of General Augustin Ndindiliyimana in 2014.Another colleague said Ntirigiribambe had been recently considered for a security job with the United Nations in Burundi, but that Rwanda had allegedly attempted to sabotage his candidacy, as election-related violence escalated and tensions flared along the Rwanda-Burundi border.Meanwhile the president of the Association of Defense Attorneys at the ICTR, John Philpot contacted Kenya's attorney general on Friday to express grave concern over the abduction.Philpot, a Montreal lawyer, said that "Rwanda has become an outlaw state by committing crimes of murder, assault or kidnapping in Kenya, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda to mention a few."Rwanda was roundly criticized last year following the assassination of Kagame's former colleague, ex spymaster Patrick Karegeya. Karegeya broke with the regime in 2007 and fled to South Africa to help set up an opposition party. On New Year's Day 2014, he was found strangled in a Johannesburg hotel room. Diplomats from the Rwandan embassy in South Africa were later expelled.Rarely do disappearances and kidnappings of Rwandan dissidents garner international attention, however. In August 2014, a Rwandan human rights activist named Emmanuel Munyaruguru who holds Norwegian citizenship quietly went missing in Uganda after traveling to a refugee camp in Nakivale and has not been seen since.In October 2013, Rwandan agents assisted by Ugandan police kidnapped Kagame's former bodyguard Joel Mutabazi from a UN safe house in Kampala. The kidnappers also seized Mutabazi's younger brother Jackson Kalemera during the operation, brought him to Rwanda and tried to force him to testify in a trial against his brother. Family members in Uganda have had no news of Jackson for months and fear he has been killed. More recently, Rwanda has been accused of trying to persuade police forces and governments in Africa to deport a number of high profile Rwandan refugees who are activists or survivors of massacres by Kagame's troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).In May 2015, police in Brazzaville arrested a Rwandan refugee activist named Jean Leonard Mbarusha, claiming to be acting on an Interpol alert. According to the refugee's family, police later said they were detaining him because of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). However no arrest warrants for Mbarusha have been issued by either Interpol in Lyon or the ICC in The Hague.Nor was Mbarusha investigated by the ICTR or Rwanda's traditional Gacaca courts, his supporters say.When contacted by Digital Journal, Congolese police could not explain why Mbarusha was being detained. Officer Lt. Jean Marie Ntsinda said the case was being handled by Congo's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose officials subsequently met with Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo in Brazzaville.In letters obtained by this journalist from his family, Mbarusha said that Congolese police have tortured him in jail. He also explained that he is Hutu refugee survivor of killings by Kagame's troops during the 1996-97 invasion of the DRC .In 2010, a UN report concluded that Kagame's army committed crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Hutu civilians in the DRC jungle.
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T he FDLR Pretext Collapses Under the Weight of Documented Plunder Introduction: A Battle That Tells the Truth When Rwandan-backed RDF/M23 forces fought with extraordinary ferocity to seize and hold Rubaya — a remote mining town in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo — the stated justification was security. Kigali's consistent public line has been that its military presence in the DRC is a response to the threat posed by the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group whose leaders include individuals linked to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. This narrative has been accepted, qualified, or left insufficiently challenged by Western governments and multilateral institutions for over a decade. The Battle of Rubaya strips that narrative bare. What unfolded in Rubaya was not a counter-insurgency operation against genocidal remnants. It was a sustained military campaign — reinforced by the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF), prosecuted at sign...
http://www.inyenyerinews.org/amakuru-2/rwandas-major-john-sengati-assassinated-in-gitarama-rwanda/ Rwanda's Major John Sengati assassinated in Gitarama, Rwanda May 12, 2013 by Rwema IT Webmaster Leave a Comment By: Jennifer Fierberg Rwandans are saddened by the death of Major John Sengati who was assassinated in Gitarama (appx 50km from Kigali) on May 10th, 2013. John Sengati was a retired Major, and ADC to Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa from 1993 to 2001. After Gen Kayumba went to UK to further his studies, Major John Sengati was appointed Commanding Officer (C.O.) of Garrison Force that was in charge of the security to VIPs under the Ministry of Defense. Around 2007, he went to study at Kigali Institute of Technology (KIST) while he was still an active member of the RDF. According to local reports , in 2009 Major Sengati's land was redistributed in Karama to local residents. Around 2010 he was forced to retire from the army, because he was considered to be loyal and ...
How Paul Kagame Uses Diplomats' "Bury Your Head in the Sand" Strategy as a Green Light to Continue Rwanda's War in the DRC Africa Realities Media | 17 July 2026 The purpose of this article is to expose a deliberate and systematic strategy: Paul Kagame's years-long practice of creating events — diplomatic dinners, RPF party meetings, genocide commemorations, international business forums and RPF Bureau Politique addresses — to which he invites foreign ambassadors and the world's business and political elite for one purpose: to explain, justify, and defend Rwanda's military invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Everybody who follows this region knows the strategy now. The same narrative. The same arguments. The same defiance. At one event he tells the Trump Administration to go to hell. At the next he says those sanctioning him will leave power and he will remain. At the RPF Bureau Politique of 17 July 2026, he tells ambassadors that the on...
ANALYSIS AND INVESTIGATION Introduction: The Myth and the Man Behind the Myth There is a version of Paul Kagame that exists in the conference halls of Davos, in the pages of Western magazines, in private hotel meetings in London, Paris and Washington, and on the sleeves of European football shirts. In this version, Kagame is a visionary. A builder. A disciplined African moderniser. A leader who pulled a broken country from the ashes of genocide and turned it into what admirers often call the “Singapore of Africa”. In this version, Rwanda is clean, efficient, safe, investment-friendly and orderly. Kagame is presented as the African leader the West wants to believe in: controlled, polished, pro-market, security-focused and comfortable in elite Western spaces. Then there is the Rwanda that many Rwandans, exiles, journalists, opposition figures and human rights organisations describe. In this Rwanda, YouTubers and online commentators are jailed for what they say. Critics die in custo...
The FDLR Myth: How Rwanda Weaponises a Diminished Threat to Justify Occupation Investigation Exposes Contradictions in Rwanda's Security Narrative For over a decade, Rwanda has justified its military presence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by citing threats from the FDLR, a Hutu militia group linked to the 1994 genocide. But an investigation into FDLR's actual capabilities, Rwanda's military operations, and patterns of violence reveals a narrative that does not match reality. The FDLR threat, whilst real, has been systematically exaggerated and manipulated to justify objectives that have nothing to do with the militia group. Introduction The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) occupies a central position in Rwanda's justification for military intervention in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. For more than two decades, Rwandan authorities have portrayed the militia group as an existential threat requiring sustaine...
Ndabona mu bo Francois Hollande avugana n'abo Kagame wenyine niwe utarimo. Nimwisomere namwe: http://www.slate.fr/story/90909/hollande-telephone-politique-etrangere#xtor=RSS-2 From: "Samuel Desire sam4des@yahoo.com [Democracy_Human_Rights]" <Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr> To: DHR <Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr>; Rwandalibre Group <rwandalibre@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 21:08 Subject: *DHR* A qui François Hollande téléphone-t-il? Et qui reçoit-il à l'Elysée? A qui François Hollande téléphone-t-il? Et qui reçoit-il à l'Elysée? [VISUALISATION] http://www.slate.fr/story/90909/hollande-telephone-politique-etrangere#xtor=RSS-2 Envoyé par : Samuel Desire <sam4des@yahoo.com> ...
Kigali wants Washington to punish Congo too. But a ceasefire that leaves the occupier in place is not peace; it is occupation without noise. African lives are not worth less. African deaths are not normal. Western interests must never become a licence to kill African people. Introduction: A Familiar Complaint On 29 June 2026, Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe, sat before the cameras of France 24 and declared that his country was “disappointed by the increasingly biased US mediation” in the conflict with the Democratic Republic of Congo. He asked why sanctions had targeted only Rwanda. He called the measures unfair, one-sided and counterproductive. Weeks earlier, President Paul Kagame had told Jeune Afrique that sanctions and threats were insults thrown at Rwanda, and accused Washington of exerting heavy pressure on Rwanda while treating the DRC more delicately. The grievance sounds reasonable until you remember where you have heard it before. Since 2022, the Kr...
This article identifies the central obstacle to accountability for Paul Kagame’s actions in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region: the powerful global network of political leaders, former presidents, diplomats, philanthropists, religious figures, businesspeople, international institutions, sporting organisations, advisers and paid lobbyists that has promoted, legitimised, defended and protected him for three decades. This is a problem-identification article. It asks why Kagame has remained internationally influential and protected despite serious and extensively documented allegations concerning Rwanda’s military actions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, political repression, extraterritorial operations, mineral exploitation and the treatment of political opponents, journalists and critics. The answer is that Kagame has built an international network that gives him political access, diplomatic protection, commercial partnerships, institutional legitimacy, favourable media coverage, ...
Kagame’s Global Protection Network: Lobbying, Silence and Western Complicity: From 1990 to 2026. More at: https://www.africarealities. com/2026/07/the-empire-of- kagames-global-friends.html
French State-Sponsored Racism Without Limits Against the Hutu in France France does not simply remember the Rwanda genocide. It owns it. For three decades, the French state has sponsored and enforced a racist political order — criminalising Hutu identity, silencing African expertise, enforcing a one-sided judicial record and reproducing the same ethnic hierarchy Belgium imposed on Rwanda under colonialism. This is not a failure of memory. It is state-sponsored racism without limits, dressed in the language of historical accountability. African lives are not worth less. African deaths are not normal. Western interests must never become a licence to kill African people. Introduction: Racism as Policy The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was real. Between April and July 1994, following an invasion of Rwanda launched by the RPF from Uganda on 1 October 1990, initially under the command of Major-General Fred Rwigyema and subsequently led by Paul Kagame after Rwigyema was killed ...
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