{{The Rwanda Supreme Court has today confirmed a life sentence for Deo Mushayidi, on charges of trying to overthrow the government by means of war, inciting Rwandan population against the current regime and using a false passport.}}<\/p>\n
His lawyer Twagirayezu said that he was saddened with the court\u2019s decision.\u201cAll of these charges are political, we are saddened by the decision and it\u2019s not at all what we expected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mushayidi was arrested in Burundi and immediately extradited to Rwanda on March 5, 2010. At the time, Rwanda was in the midst of a series of coordinated and deadly grenade attacks in the run-up to the 2010 president election and prosecutors insisted that Mushayidi was part of a \u201cterror network\u201d, along with fellow dissidents Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa and Col Patrick Karegeya, behind the attacks.<\/p>\n
Rwanda\u2019s High Court had cleared Mushayidi, a former combatant of the Rwanda Patriotic Army and the controversial ex-head of the Association of Rwandan Journalists (ARJ), of the terrorism related charges in September 2010, but sentenced him to life for the three remaining indictments.<\/p>\n
After fleeing to Europe in 2000, Mushayidi became a fierce critic of Rwandan government and joined with multiple opposition groups there. He did not return to Rwanda until his 2010 extradition following the Burundi arrest.<\/p>\n
Additional Reporting: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The Rwanda Supreme Court has today confirmed a life sentence for Deo Mushayidi, on charges of trying to overthrow the government by means of war, inciting Rwandan population against the current regime and using a false passport.}} His lawyer Twagirayezu said that he was saddened with the court\u2019s decision.\u201cAll of these charges are political, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[158],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-b_igi_adm1n"],"bylines":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"contributors":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}