by Silver Bugingo
I was reminiscing with a friend also a media practitioner as we analyzed the hottest news headlines in the recent past and our attentions coincided on Victiore Ingabire’s criminal trial and the arrest of criminal suspects, Colonel Norbert Ndererimana and five other co- accused in Kigali by national police.
It’s indeed a coincidence! Imagine a criminal suspect at the rank of Colonel and head of an armed terrorists with five more co-accused in the rank and file of the FDLR group on a mission to blast bombs again?
According to the Police Spokesman, Sup. Theos Badege through a police press release issued on June 21, the colonel’s alleged accomplices are Ramathan Sibomana, Ibrahim Niyonzima, Asifat Kansime, Emmanuel Higiro and John Mutabaruka.
Apparently, all are armed militias who clandestinely crossed borders from their base with a criminal mission to blast grenades in Kigali. Subject to testimonies of suspects, their plans were committing terror acts in Rwanda from their bases- specifically from Binza, Rutchuru, in Virunga national park, North Kivu, Eastern DRC.
The prime suspects now under the custody of police, voluntarily revealed to the entire Rwandans, on a live Radio-television news cast last night, that they targeted high populated areas, fuel storage facilities and fuel transport vehicles, national leaders as well as diplomats in Kigali.
This incident happens at a time the controversial leader of yet to be registered FDU-Ikingi political party and terrorist suspect, Ingabire has finally been granted her plea to postpone the beginning of her trial to September, on grounds that her defense team needed more time to extensively study he dossier.Owing to the fact two of her lawyers are foreigners, the documents also had to be translated into English as all have been prepared in Kinyarwanda.
Of course these are logical grounds upon which any accused cannot be denied time to prepare his or her defense. After all, in principle and practice, the accused are presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a competent court.
For new readers in and out of Rwanda not conversant with this subject, Ingabire has among many serious charges been accused of promoting ethnic divisionism, setting up of a terrorist organization and collaborating and financing the Rwandan FDLR rebels in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
She had been living Europe since the 1994 Rwandan genocide but came back late 2009 with a political ambition to vie for the post of president against the incumbent President Paul Kagame in the recently concluded presidential elections held August last year.
She wanted to be elected under the auspices of FDU-Inkingi political party. But like anywhere in the world, genuine political ambitions must be pursued within the confines of the law and the reason her political party has never been registered is unquestionable.
The fact she allegedly helped create terrorist groups threatening national security and public order put her ambitions in question. I say “allegedly” because the onus is still on prosecution’s team to prove her guilty on all or any of the criminal charges.
What broadens Ingabire’s case is a likely relation with the new terrorist group, besides her co-accused Lt. Col.Vital Uwumuremyi, Lt. Col.Noel Habiyaremye, Lt.Col. Tharcisse Nditurende and Capt. Jean Marie Karuta, that also belong to the same FDLR.
Like the recent ones, Lt. Col.Uwumuremyi and company that were arrested last year confessed to be close associates to the adventurous Ingabire. This did not and won’t surprise many as we eagerly await the conclusion by the courts of law.
All I know for sure is that we are now under the rule of law; the courts are now a place anyone can go to seek justice, unlike in the past when there were a handful of judges, advocates and prosecutors who were qualified and experienced to administer justice in the interests of ordinary citizens.
What sounds unique to me in yesterday’s confession by the arrested militias was the revelation that they received orders from renegade Generals Kayumba Nyamwasa, Patrick Karegeya and Emmanuel Habyarimana through Rwanda National Congress (RNC) and Convention National des Republicains (CNR) respectively to carryout terror attacks in Rwanda.
To be honest dear readers, when the two former RPA renegade senior officers, Kayumba Nyamwasa and Patrick Karegeya were linked to the bomb blasts that claimed some innocent citizens in cold blood, I was among the many biblical “doubting Thomas’s”. Know why?
I was so naïve to accept, later on believe that military officer in then Gen. Kayumba’s or Karegeya’s calibre would think of allying with genocidaires he took a key role in defeating during the 1994 liberation! But at the moment, my doubt has waned like a moon.
It’s normal for comrades in the political arena to fall out due to disagreements in principle and practice and become arch-rivals in a democratic political competition. Yes, Ugandan President Gen. Yoweri Museveni fell out with his former guerilla combatant and personal doctor Col. Dr Kiiza Besigye and Maj.Gen Mugisha Muntu the longest serving army commander it was normal and accepted as such.
But it’s unbelievable and illogical to many, for such an elite senior officers of Kayumba’s calibre- a lawyer by profession and a freedom fighter to share interests with criminals who masterminded the most inhuman catastrophe that extinguished a million citizens of your own ethnic group moreover! So is there any difference between the renegades and the genocidaires?
No wonder the two renegade freedom fighters-come-terrorists were convicted on almost all the criminal counts, sentenced to jail for decades and stripped-off the army ranks in absentia. It’s still their right to challenge the court decision and seek for judgment review but of course there’s a time limit for seeking case review or else we take them to be the biblical “leopards in a sheep’s skin.
bugisr@yahoo.com