As Rwandans prepare for the 20th commemoration of the Genocide against ethnic Tutsi’s, the memories of the horror are fresh but the strong zeal to rebuild the broken hearts and country is unstoppable.
However, the Architects of the Rwanda genocide are living larvishly in a Mali prison with access to newspapers, super meals, frequent visits and large space among other entitlements.
The Genocidaires are serving their prison sentences in Mali at a Prison in Koulikoro garrison town on the banks of the River Niger 57 kilometres (35 miles) downstream from Bamako.
According to a warden supervising Jean Kambanda and Colonel Theonest Bagosora, “the genocidaires are very disciplined prisoners, they do not bother anyone and scrupulously respect the rules.”
Bagosora now 72 was a member of the Hutu extremist regime that seized power in 1994, he then took over the army and unleashed the notorious Interahamwe militia against the Tutsi population.
The rate of killing was far faster than the Holocaust of the Jews in World War II — a million Tutsis were murdered in just 100 days — as Kambanda and his ministers toured the country urging on the murderers.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found that Bagosora had spent years “preparing the apocalypse” and sentenced him in 2011 to 35 years in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Kambanda was arrested in Kenya in 1997 and admitted genocide at his trial the following year after he was accused of handing out arms to militias knowing they would be used to massacre Tutsis.
Mali signed a deal with the ICTR tribunal in 1999, agreeing to become the first foreign country to provide prison cells for the convicts as a symbol of Malian support for African unity.
Other countries on the ICTR’s list of willing hosts of convicted Rwandans include Italy, Benin, Swaziland, France and Sweden.
The first convicted Rwandans, including Kambanda, began arriving in Mali in 2001 and a second group of nine prisoners, including two former ministers, have been in the country since 2008 while Bagosora was sent there in 2012.
Kambanda and most of the others are serving life sentences but some have fixed terms of less than 20 years and Malian officials have voiced concerns in the past over what would become of them if they were released.
The genocidaires were originally held with local inmates in Bamako’s central prison but the ICTR funded a facility specifically built for them in Koulikoro, where they are segregated from Malians in an air-conditioned cell block.
The Rwandans, whose day-to-day expenses are covered by Mali, are entitled to receive visits while their meals are better than those served to other inmates and they receive $2 a day to buy newspapers.
Their lavish unit boasts separate showers, a dining room and a well-appointed library
additional reporting AFP
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