masopakyindi
Platinum Member
- Jul 5, 2011
- 18,410
- 14,119
Its also a matter of time before Kagame is had.Associated Press
KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) It's a matter
of time before those who've
betrayed Rwanda face consequences,
Rwandan President Paul Kagame said
Sunday, nearly two weeks after the
killing of a former Rwandan
spymaster turned dissident.
The body of the former head of
Rwanda's external intelligence
service, Col. Patrick Karegeya, was
discovered in a Johannesburg hotel
on New Year's Day. South African
authorities believe he was strangled.
Kagame's critics have accused him of
ordering the killing. Government
representatives have not denied or
accepted responsibility.
Kagame said Sunday: "You cannot
betray Rwanda and get away with it.
There are consequences for
betraying your country."
Karegeya, a wartime ally from
Kagame's days as a rebel leader,
fled to South Africa in 2007.
"It's a matter of time, whoever
betrayed the nation cannot escape
the consequences," Kagame said in
Kinyarwanda during a national
prayer breakfast meeting.
He warned that you cannot walk
away from the country that made
you who you are and expect to get
away with it.
"I cannot be apologetic about that if
you know the grenades that have
been thrown on our streets killing
Rwandan children," he said, in an
apparent reference to the
accusations by the government that
Karegeya and other dissidents were
behind a spell of grenade attacks in
the Rwandan capital.
South African police are looking for
a man who was last seen with
Karegeya before his death.
A former Rwandan Lt. Gen. Kayumba
Nyamwasa, who has survived two
assassination attempts in South
Africa, said the man who was last
seen with Karegeya was Rwandan
businessman Apollo Kiririsi
Gafaranga who befriended the victim
in jail and who Karegeya trusted.
Nyamwasa and others accuse
Rwanda's president of ordering
Karegeya's killing and two 2010
attempts on Nyamwasa's life in
Johannesburg.
Theogene Rudasingwa, another
Rwandan dissident and formerly
secretary general of Kagame's
Rwandan Patriotic Front party, told
The Associated Press that Karegeya's
body was found in a room rented by
a man called "Apollo." Police said
Karegeya, who had a home in the
town of Roodepoort just outside of
Johannesburg, had checked into the
hotel.
Karegeya, Nyamwasa, Rudasingwa
and some others were once allies of
Kagame, and became critics.
Karegeya headed the feared external
intelligence agency from 1994, when
Kagame's rebel movement took
power and ended the Rwandan
genocide, until 2004. Several Kagame
opponents were killed in that time,
including former Interior Minister
Seth Sendashonga, who was gunned
down in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998.
The most recent killing that critics
blamed on Kagame is the October
2012 death of Theogene Turatsinze,
the former managing director of the
Rwandan Development Bank who
was found tied up and floating in
the sea in Mozambique.
Karegeya's killing comes five months
after he 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.
Dictators have always ended up in disgrace before discontented peoples wrath.