The South African police forces, together with the Belgian public prosecutor’s office, are investigating whether there is a connection between the deaths of two Flemish people in South Africa in barely a month’s time. Thomas Ngeze, of Rwandan origin, was found dead in a hotel room in Johannesburg on June 16th. Pieter-Jan Staelens was found lifeless on July 29 in his burnt-out car in Hermanus in the Western Cape. In both cases, there is no conclusive yet about how they died.
In South Africa, two Flemish people have died in suspicious circumstances in the past month. The South African police investigate the deaths together with the Belgian public prosecutor’s office.
The death of 27-year-old jurist Thomas Ngeze, graduated from Ghent University and work in South Africa, was attributed very quickly by his family to a death squad of the Rwandan regime. Father Hassan Ngeze was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the Arusha Tribunal because of his role in the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
The man had filed a request for provisional release after he had served one third of his sentence. The Rwandan regime has responded with anger. Father Hassan Ngeze wrote after the death of his son that this was a revenge from the current rulers in Kigali. It is certain that Thomas Ngeze had an appointment with people from the Rwandan embassy in South Africa on the night of his death.
(Read more under the photo.)
Thomas’ father Hassan Ngeze2003 AFP
Second dead
The South African researchers and the Belgian justice authorities did not initially seem to attach much importance to that story. Until the death of Pieter-Jan Staelens.
He too is a young lawyer, eight years older than Thomas Ngeze. During his years as a lawyer in Bruges, he concentrated mainly on immigration law and, among other things, successfully pleaded the file of Ojong Scott Manyo, the 19-year-old Cameroonian refugee who threatened to be sent back even though he was very well integrated.
Three years ago, Staelens and his Gabonese wife and their three children went to South Africa to start a new life in the renewable energy sector. Everything seems that the young family, Pieter-Jan was only 35, had no major problems.
(Read more under the picture)
Pieter-Jan Staelens in office as a lawyer in 2015Photo Kurt bvba
But on Sunday, July 29, he was found dead in his burnt-out Volkswagen Amarok, just next to the road in the valley which, o irony, is called Heaven and Earth, just outside the city of Hermanus. The family and the police stood and stood before a riddle. An accident? A raid?
Pieter-Jan knew Thomas
In the environment of the critical Rwandan diaspora, the news quickly circulated that Pieter-Jan Staelens had also been the victim of the same Rwandan death squads that Thomas Ngeze had eliminated. But proof of this is lacking.
It is certain that Staelens, although not formally working as a lawyer in South Africa, was investigating the suspicious death of Thomas Ngeze at the request of the family. He knew the Ngeze family from Bruges, had formerly acted as their counsel and according to direct witnesses was very excited by the tragic death of the young Thomas Ngeze. Pieter-Jan Staelens contacted the South African police to find out more and helped to complete the procedures for the repatriation of the body of Thomas Ngeze to Belgium. (read more under the photo)
Thomas Ngeze
The key question is, of course, whether Staelens was in the sight of those who had the death of Thomas Ngeze and wanted to erase every trace.
Rwandan death squads
That the Rwandan secret services, including death squads, are active in Africa and in some places in Europe and North America, is no longer a secret. Especially in South Africa Patrick Karegeya was murdered on New Year’s Eve 2013, strangled in his hotel room in Johannesburg. And on his companion and also dissident Kayumba Nyamwasa, once a loyal ally of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, four attacks have already been committed, according to South African justice on behalf of Kigali.
Elsewhere in Africa, including in Uganda, Kenya and Zambia, dozens of Rwandans have been murdered or disappeared over the past decades who were known to be critical of the Paul Kagame regime.
And even in countries such as Canada, England and … our country, people who may be endorsed by the Rwandan secret services regularly receive special protection. Some suspicious deaths of Rwandans in various places in Europe have so far never been clarified.
Of course, this does not constitute proof that Thomas Ngeze and Pieter-Jan Staelens have fallen victim to these death squads. However, an informant has already contacted the Belgian government within that environment. He claims that he knows exactly who the (Rwandan) clients were and how the murders happened. The competent Belgian services would have received this information in the meantime.
It is now waiting for the results of the autopsy on the body of Pieter-Jan Staelens and the further South African and Belgian research.