The holiday season ended with a thud in the Republic of South Africa where a former Rwandan intelligence officer, Patrick Karegeya, was murdered in a hotel room in Sandton, an upscale enclave of Johannesburg at the end of 2013. Mr Karegeya was an alumni of the NRA Bush War and like President Paul Kagame, had served as an intelligence officer in NRA prior to the 1990 invasion of Rwanda.
South Africa is an important haven for other high profile fugitives from Rwanda, including the former army chief Kayumba Nyamwasa. Different countries have evolved different methods of dealing with high risk fugitives. A fugitive is not an ordinary asylum seeker whose claims for relief are tied to an individual incident or a group threat that targets members of a particular political, social or religious group. Fugitives are fleeing from an active threat of prosecution or even liquidation or other intolerable circumstances. For fugitives, the flight does not end with arrival on dry soil.
The death of Karegeya has received a lot of international press due to a number of reasons. First was the sophistication with which his killers prepared to liquidate him. He had been cultivated by the alleged assassin for more than four years. Second was the shock factor. South Africa is in a different profile from countries like Uganda where refugees are routinely abducted and transported to the border, the last being that of Lt. Joel Mutabazi last year. Kenya is no different. A former minister – Sendashonga – met his death in Nairobi after fleeing from Kigali. FULL STORY
