A murdered former Rwandan intelligence chief was advising South African and Tanzanian intelligence as they prepared to send troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo to battle the Rwandan-backed rebel group M23, the BBC has learned.
On New Year’s Eve, Rwanda’s former chief of external intelligence, Col Patrick Karegeya, went to his suite at the Michelangelo Towers – an expensive hotel in Johannesburg’s business district -to meet an old informant.
The friend, Apollo Kiririsi, appears to have been used as bait. The killers themselves are thought to have rented a suite across the corridor. It is not clear exactly who or how many they were, but Col Karegeya seems to have put up quite a fight.
David Batenga, Col Karegeya’s nephew, who discovered the body almost 24 hours later, says: “There had been a bit of scuffle, everything was just a nightmare. We found the towel, and the towel was full of blood, and the rope. They literally used a rope to hang him tight.”
Dark secrets
Col Karegeya was once one of the most powerful figures in Rwanda. He fled to South Africa in 2008, after falling out with the regime. There he helped set up an opposition movement, the Rwandan National Congress.
His friends and family are in no doubt that he was murdered on the orders of the Rwandan president.
“There are so many reasons why he may have been murdered,” says Mr Batenga. “Because of the job he did and because of what he knew, given his position for all those years when he was part of the Kagame regime.”
Almost certainly, Col Karegeya would have known some dark secrets from his time at the heart of the Rwandan establishment. But even in exile, he maintained close contacts inside Rwandan intelligence. His murder may have had more to do with whom, rather than what he knew.
The BBC has learned that from around the middle of 2013, Col Karegeya held a series of meetings with South African and Tanzanian intelligence officials.
At the same time, South Africa and Tanzania were sending troops into the Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of a United Nations force battling rebel group M23, which is widely acknowledged to have received support and funds from Rwanda. FULL STORY