The Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA) announced on Wednesday, October 03, 2018 that it rejected Ntuyahaga’s asylum application but he said he will appeal this decision.
Ntuyahaga was convicted by a Belgian court in 2007 for the murder of ten United Nations peacekeepers (MINUAR) who at the time, protected Prime Minister Agathe Uwiringiyimana at the start of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
He was released in 2018 and went to seek asylum in Belgium where he is held in jail in Caricole Transit Center, Steenokkerzeel in Belgium since June 1st. Ntuyahaga’s asylum application has caused fury among many Belgians because the asylum seeker was convicted of murdering their fellow Belgian soldiers.
Ntuyahaga contended that when a court in Brussels sentenced him to 20 years in prison in 2007 for the murder of members of the armed forces of Belgium in Rwanda, he lost the chance for his safety as provided by the Geneva Convention in 1951.
Belgian media published that the 66 year-old fears that “if he comes back to Rwanda his life will be in danger”.
Towards the beginning of October 2018, family members and friend of the 10 UN troops killed in Rwanda on April 10th, 1994 complained about Ntuyahaga’s asylum request in a country he killed its citizens.
There are also reports that Ntuyahaga wants to go to Denmark where his wife and children live.
In June 1998, Ntuyahaga surrendered himself to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ITCR) in Arusha, Tanzania. In September of that year, the ICTR issued an indictment charging him with: conspiracy to commit genocide; genocide or complicity in genocide; war crimes; and two counts of crimes against humanity to which he pleaded not guilty.
However, on 18 March 1999 the ICTR dropped its charges. In the face of public outcry and official outrage from the Rwandan Patriotic Front government of Rwanda, deputy prosecutor Bernard Muna explained that the ICTR counts only carried a moderate prison sentence and that they hoped Tanzania would extradite Ntuyahaga to Belgium, which could hold a trial over the murders of the peacekeepers.
However, Rwanda stated that Ntuyahaga should be extradited to the country, which would try him over the murder of the prime minister. On the same day, the ICTR dropped its charges, Tanzanian authorities arrested Ntuyahaga for entering the country illegally. The following years saw a complicated set of legal procedures, including an application by Ntuyahaga for asylum as a refugee in Tanzania and Tanzania adjusting its charges against Ntuyahaga to fall under its extradition treaty with Rwanda.
This eventually ended when Tanzania denied Rwanda’s request for extradition in favor of Belgium. In March 2004, Ntuyahaga, of his own free will, flew to Belgium, accompanied by a Belgian diplomat. There, he gave himself up and was put in prison on demand. He was charged with handing over the Belgian soldiers to the Rwandan soldiers in the Kigali military camp of which he was an officer, without taking any measures to prevent their massacre; of celebrating with the soldiers implicated in the massacres of the Kigali Tutsi civilian population, and allowing these soldiers to use his residence as its headquarters.
On 7 September 2006, the trial chamber referred the case to the Court of Assise. The trial began on 19 April 2007.
On 4 July 2007, the court came back with the verdict that Ntuyahaga was guilty in the murder of the peacekeepers and an unknown number of Rwandan civilians. He was found not guilty in the murder of the prime minister and the killing of an unknown number of civilians in Butare. The public prosecutor asked for life imprisonment, but the following day the jury sentenced Ntuyahaga to twenty years’ imprisonment.
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