The world needs more Karugaramas, Rwanda needs a million Karugaramas to undo all the injustices. “The appeal trial started November 7, 2005. The High Court obviously had a bigger budget than the tribunal of Kigali. The tribunal was a group of one-storey buildings surrounded by a well tended garden. The courtroom where my trial was to take place was in the main building, with an entrance facing the visitor’s parking lot.
The High-Court setting was different from the provincial tribunals: my case was going to be heard by a panel of three judges. “I just learned that Karugarama himself will be presiding over your case,” Me Mutembe told me as we got settled in the room.
I was relieved to have my case handled by a judge with such experience and unquestionable probity.
Justice Tharcisse Karugarama was one of the sharpest legal minds in the country. He was previously at the Supreme Court, where he headed the commission in charge of reforming the country’s judiciary system so it could address the many legal challenges of a post-genocide country.
I admired his insightfulness and his independence of character—or stubbornness, as the narrow-minded called it. He had a reputation of being someone who never let anyone else influence his positions.
Everyone had expected him to become chief justice at the end of the transition in 2003, but President Kagame appointed him to the second highest tribunal, reserving the Supreme Court for the much less experienced but more politically manageable Aloysia Cyanzayire. It was clear that the ruling party didn’t want the Supreme Court to be presided over by someone they couldn’t control.
I have to admit that it did feel awkward to be tried by someone I knew. I had never met Judge Mbabazi, the judge in the Kigali tribunal, but I had met Justice Karugarama several times in various official functions. We had once chatted like friends, and now I was standing before him, accused of horrible crimes.
The two other judges on the panel were two female judges, Justice Isabelle Kalihangabo and Justice Angéline Rutazana.
I had thoroughly prepared for the appeal. This time I didn’t try to read my file as though it was the file of someone else. I had to face the fact that this was me, my life, and if I wasn’t able to defend it, I was going to be sent to jail for many years.
A joke was circulating in Kigali: apparently, the inmates in 1930, Rwanda’s maximum security prison, had prepared a room for me. They had no doubt I was going to join them, as there was no way anyone could defeat a case put together by the powerful RPF.
The government was represented by two prosecutors, a man named Jean-Bosco Mutangana and a young lady named Espérance Nyirasafari. They both worked in the prosecutor-general’s office in Kimihurura, the infamous place where my interviews were conducted earlier that year. I had never met them before, but they clearly had the same marching orders as Sudi Hirwa, the prosecutor in the first trial, at least Jean-Bosco Mutangana had. Mutangana was very virulent; from the get-go, he showed the same rage and contempt for me as Sudi Hirwa and all my detractors in the party.
What did I do to you people?”
Um’Khonde Patrick Habamenshi, ‘Rwanda Where Souls turn to Dust’, Memoirs, 2009.
