Cassien Ntamuhanga, was a journalist and Managing Director of Amazing Grace Christian radio broadcasting from Kigali Rwanda, since 2009. On April 07,2014 He was kidnapped with his colleague Gerald Niyomugabo who was a researcher on religion and history of Rwanda, author and a university professor and held incommunicado in unknown safe house where they were tortured for the whole week. During that time the press and some members of their respective families announced their missing but police denied any knowledge. After a week, the police accepted publically that Cassien was in its custody and presented him to the press but didn’t show his colleague Gerald Niyomugabo, and up to now, no news about him. It’s was later discovered that my colleague had been killed during our detention.
At that time, he realized that the police had arrested another famous singer Kizito Mihigo and held him under the same circumstances. “Kizito Mihigo and Cassien we’re prosecuted and charged with; forming a criminal gang, Conspiracy against the established government or president, complicity in a terrorist act and conspiracy to murder.
“During our detention in safe house, police extracted each of us confession under duress and requested us to confess once we arrived in the court before the judge.” Says Cassien When arrived to the court I pleaded no guilty on all charges, but my colleague Kizito Mihigo pleaded guilty and dismissed his lawyers expecting that government will keep its promise and release him but in vain. Narrates Cassien.
With unfair trial which was it has been observed by many observers, the Kigali High court sentenced Kizito Mihigo to 10 years in prison, and Cassien to 25 years plus another former soldier named Dukuzumuremyi Jean Paul brought in their case from nowhere was sentenced to 30 years in prison. It was a controvesial summary case.
The real Reasons why Cassien was arrested and prosecuted resulting into prosecution
1. Gerald as a researcher and Cassien as a journalist and director of a radio, the two made many radio shows and during these shows used to point out many realities and truth about the country and its situations in different corners of its life contradicting the some lies preached by the government.
Gerald who was also Cassien’s bestfriend, was a very popular and wise person, with lots of radio invites, One day on a show (Rwandan television) with Kizito Mihigo, on a program initiated by Kizito Mihigo Foundation for Peace (KMP),”Umusanzu w’umuhanzi”(The role of an artist) they openly criticised the way the commemoration of genocide is observed, where some people think that the genocide was the tragedy against Tutsi, while is a tragedy against the whole country. On the same show, they denounced the attitude of accusing one side, while each part played its negative role: the government of Rwanda never toralates anybody who points out its role in genocide.
2. A few days before the start of 20th commemoration of genocide, Kizito Mihigo published a song titled “Igisobanuro cy’urupfu” (The meaning of death) which drew a terrible anger to the government’s authorties which quickly banned it. And all his songs as well. The song contained some ideas showing that the justice should be to every one evenly, and whoever committed crimes should be punished. I can here mention a part of the song that might have driven mad the authorities of Rwanda: “…Though the genocide orphaned me let it not make me loose empathy for others, their lives too were brutally taken but not qualified as genocide.
Those brothers and sisters them too are human beings. I play for them, I comfort them, I remember them. Death is never good: be it by the genocide, war or slaughtered in revenge killings…” The government of Rwanda never toralates anybody who claims, who advocates for the victims of massacres of people killed by RPF forces(Rwanda Patriotic Front: ex rebels who seized power after 1994 war and genocide in Rwanda) and those died in revenge killings.
3. In 2014, the year victims were arrested coincided with the death of former chief of intelligence of Rwanda Patrick Karegeya, exiled in South African Hotel. During that time the government crackdown was growing and trying to silence or simply eliminating whoever it thinks is dissident and have any influential background in the country. Cassien and his colleague were considered among those with a threat to national security.
Cassien used to chat with an old classmate who had fled to South Africa and joined the RNC, the two used Skype and Whatsapp to authorities such contact was not acceptable or considered to forming a criminal gang since they refer to RNC as criminal gang.
The independent people and international non-governmental organizations that followed their case, found it as a case politically motivated and with unfair judgment: check Human Rights watch report 2014.
More on this story to follow
What happened and how Cassien escaped from the most secure Rwandan prison to end up with Titus Seruga #theInformant
Where Credibility Matters.
Seruga Titus