Albert Rudatsimburwa
US Senate should know unrepentant Ingabire was in leadership of blacklisted terror group. Victoire Ingabire is manipulating the ignorance of an American pastor, Innocent Justine, a resident of North Carolina.
In his May 18, 2020 “Letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy Expressing Concerns of Human Rights”, the misinformed pastor throws his weight behind terrorism, purportedly advocating for promotion of human rights, especially in his choice to believe every word that comes out of an unrepentant convict who refuses to denounce genocide and terrorism.
Like recently captured genocide linchpin Felicien Kabuga, Ingabire’s story is akin to a wanted criminal who keeps changing their identity to try to avert capture.
Ingabire’s entire life has been dedicated to promoting genocide ideology and terrorism. Perhaps not that surprising, as she was born in a family of genocide perpetrators.
In 2009 her mother, Therese Dusabe, was convicted in absentia for killing women at Butamwa health centre where she worked as a nurse.
Her father, Pascal Gakumba, was a bourgmestre for Kibilira commune between 1994 and 1996 and had been active in inciting people in his commune to carry out genocide. He was jailed for genocide and in 2004 committed suicide.
In 1995, Ingabire herself was among the founding members of RDLR (Rassemblement Démocratique pour la Libération du Rwanda) that was the defeated genocidal regime in exile in the then Zaire (now DR Congo).
She was recruited to the RDLR by Lt Col Bahufite Juvenal, the chief of external intelligence of the genocidal regime, who saw her as an asset that could not be directly linked to the genocide, despite her family’s active participation.
At the time it was reorganizing to launch a war to return to Rwanda and “finish the job” of eliminating the Tutsi who had survived them. In 1997 RDLR changed its name to PALIR (Partie pour la Libération du Rwanda with the armed wing of ALIR (Armes de Libération du Rwanda). ALIR was prescribed as a terrorist Organisation by US State Department.
Since 1998 Ingabire was the representative of the terror group even as it changed names, mainly to escape the tag of genocidaires and establish themselves as legitimate opposition to the government in Rwanda.
However, this didn’t go well. In March 1999, ALIR fighters murdered eight tourists in Uganda’s Bwindi Forest, which borders the DRC.
Among the victims were four British citizens, two American citizens, and two citizens of New Zealand. They finally got the international attention they were looking for by changing names every so often.
The International media heavily covered the killings of tourists. The US State Department immediately slapped ALIR with sanctions and designated it as a terrorist organization.
The American sanctions, let alone the genocidaire label, forced ALIR to rebrand once again. On 1 May 2002 ALIR became FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) with FOCA (Force Combattante Abacunguzi) as its armed wing.
Nothing was working for Ingabire’s group. It was like running away from one’s shadow. The FDLR continued to lug its genocidal origins. Rather than fully disband the FDLR, in April 2006 an umbrella organization, UFDR (United Democratic Forces of Rwanda), was created, which then also morphed into FDU-Inkingi (United Democratic Forces- Inkingi), with Ingabire still as its head. Ingabire recruited fighters from the FDLR and also directly from inside Rwanda.
She was able to recruit senior FDLR fighters like Lt Col Tharcisse Nditurende and Maj Vital Uwumuremyi. Ingabire travelled from Europe to meet the two recruited FDLR commanders Kinshasa.
This was confirmed by the air tickets to Kinshasa of her three co-accused – all of which was part of the evidence that was obtained and provided to Rwandan prosecution by the Dutch Police after a judicial search at Ingabire’s home in the Netherlands.
A witness, Mujawayezu Specioze, testified to Dutch Police that she had wired money by Western Union to Maj Vital Uwumuremyi, aka Dieudonne, and that she had done so on Ingabire’s behalf.
The Dutch Police also discovered a document titled “24 February” with minutes of the meeting including military deployment plans. Ingabire confirmed to court that it was indeed her handwriting in those minutes.
Needless to say, Dutch authorities’ judicial cooperation with Rwandan prosecution was vital in collating the evidence that helped convict Ingabire in 2012.
After the authorities had searched their home and aware of how incriminating the evidence they had gathered, Ingabire’s husband, Lin Muyizere, went on an offensive to complain to the media that the Dutch Police had violated his family’s privacy.
In summary, Ingabire is a terrorist masquerading as a politician. She was granted presidential pardon in 2018 only to lie that she hadn’t asked for it, although she had written a letter of clemency to the President requesting to be pardoned and promising not to return to her criminal past – an undertaking she has proceeded to violate almost immediately after her release on Presidential clemency.
Why Pastor Innocent chooses to believe a criminal and a liar over the government of Rwanda regarding the true picture of the country’s socioeconomic progress is simply beyond comprehension.
The Pastor – probably unaware of the kind of people he has entangled himself with – is being lured into a criminal network. It is the same network that is feeding him with scuttlebutt that Kizito Mihigo was assassinated.
According to the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), 48,344 Americans committed suicide in 2018, the equivalent of 10.9 suicides per 100,000 residents. In his hometown of North Carolina alone 1,362 suicide cases were reported in 2016, for a suicide rate of 44.2 per 100,000 men and 11.3 per 100,000 females.
Yet, the Pastor seems to think Rwanda should somehow be different and free of suicides, seeming to suggest the idea of such an occurrence of suicide in Rwanda is unbelievable. Rwandans wish it were so.
Unfortunately, suicide is as possible in Rwanda as it is in the US or anywhere else. The appeal by Kizito Mihigo’s mother, sister and the rest of his family for people to stop using her son’s unfortunate death in their anti-government campaign has simply fallen on the deaf ears of the likes of Ingabire, her political associates and their foreign supporters.
Ntirutwa’s attempted murder
Ms Ingabire is also a suspect in the attempted murder of Theophile Ntirutwa, a member of her political-terror organisation, FDU-Inkingi, earlier this month on May 11.
Pastor Innocent Justine, who calls Ingabire’s patent falsehoods “reliable information from a human rights activist” says that the “killing squad” that had been sent to assassinate Ntirutwa “mistakenly murdered” the wrong person and that after he “narrowly survived the murder” he “called the police to report the incident.”
It is not clear what threat Ntirutwa poses to the government of Rwanda (he is barely known outside his organization) that it would want him killed.
Similarly, if the government wanted him killed, why then would he call the police which, together with Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), the pastor says are “part of the goons that serve as a government tool to crush all opposition.”
If what the pastor claims is true, why would Ntirutwa not be worried that by reporting to the police, the assassins would be alerted that they had missed their real target and return to finish him off?
The only plausible answer is that Ntirutwa didn’t think it was the government that was after him. So, who might have wanted him killed?
It remains curious that Ingabire was on call with Voice of America describing the attack in real time before the authorities knew there had been an attempted assassination in Rwamagana, eastern Rwanda.
How did Ingabire know about it since it is not her Ntirutwa contacted when he thought he was in danger? Ingabire’s interview with VOA, even as the attack was taking place, makes her a prime suspect in the crime.
But then one might also ask, why would Ingabire want to kill her colleague?
The answer to that question is related to another incident that took place on the night of 3-4 October 2019.
That late night, assailants belonging to RUD-Urunana, the armed wing of Ingabire’s FDU-Inkingi terror organization, attacked Kinigi sector (Musanze district, northern Rwanda, on the borders of Uganda and DRC) killing 14 innocent people and injuring eighteen.
Five of the assailants were captured by the Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) that carried out a hot pursuit of the killers. Exactly a month after that bloody event, on November 3, 2019, a panicky Ingabire announced a new political organization, DALFA-Umurinzi (Development and Liberty for All) in a maneuver aimed at distancing herself from the Kinigi attackers (belonging to the armed wing of the FDU-Inkingi, which she leads).
In fact, a December 2018 United Nations Report on the Congo had confirmed this terror organization as part of the “P5” armed coalition against the Rwandan government.
Following the Kinigi attacks, Ingabire had been (and continues) reporting to Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) as part of its investigations.
Ntirutwa is a custodian of a lot of Ingabire’s secrets, including her links to the Kinigi attack. Her liberty is, therefore, literally in Ntirutwa’s hands; a powerful motive for her to commission an attempt on his life.
Another plausible explanation for Ntirutwa calling the authorities is that he and Ingabire had on numerous occasions approached Pastor Theoneste Bapfakurera, the deceased, to recruit him to join their terror organization.
He had refused citing its terror links, including the Kinigi attacks. Therefore, Ingabire’s eagerness to call VOA and Ntirutwa’s call to the authorities as the murder was taking place, the two hoped the investigations would handle them as witnesses rather than suspects.
If Pastor Justine is interested in justice, he should think about the 14 innocent people that Ingabire’s terror outfit killed and the 18 who were seriously injured.
These are the people he should be pleading for at the US Senate and to remind it that Ingabire has been part of groups that the United States State Department has blacklisted as terrorists and that she has evaded accountability through identity laundering.
editor@newtimesrwanda.com
