Rwanda rebuked by UN over refugee raid

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[h=1]http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/africa/article3849343.ece[/h]The TimesRwanda rebuked by UN over refugee raid | The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent and Tabu Butagira, in Kampala
The United Nations issued a furious protest yesterday after suspected members of Rwanda’s intelligence service stormed a safe house for refugees in Uganda and abducted one of its residents at gunpoint.
Witnesses said that eight men burst into the Unik Hotel in Kampala at about 5pm on Tuesday and wrestled Joel Mutabazi into an unmarked car. The Israeli-trained commando, who fled his country after being tortured, had accused President Kagame of being a cold-blooded killer who brooks no dissent.
Mr Mutabazi, who served in President Kagame’s personal bodyguard, was arrested in 2010 over alleged links to Rwanda’s Opposition. He had been living under UN protection after surviving an assassination attempt in Kampala last year by, he said, Rwandan agents linked to similar attacks in Britain, Sweden, South Africa and Kenya. Ugandan police said they were investigating the shooting but no one had been arrested.
In an unusually robust response, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) berated Uganda for what it called the “spate of abductions of refugees and asylum-seekers and the assassination attempts on Joel Mutabazi by people who appear to be non-Ugandans”.
“The impunity displayed by people who are clearly non-Ugandan operating inside Uganda is an affront to the asylum regime,” said Kitty McKinsey, the UNHCR spokeswoman, in a thinly veiled reference to Rwandan agents. “We expect the Uganda Government to keep safe houses safe.”(Read more…)