Ex-Rwandan spy chief found dead in hotel
Dissidents accuse President Paul Kagame of ordering a string of assassinations
JOHANNESBURG— The body of Rwanda’s former spy chief was found, possibly strangled, in a hotel in South Africa, police said Thursday. Rwandan dissidents accused President Paul Kagame of ordering his assassination.
The suspicious death of Patrick Karegeya, a former Kagame ally who turned against him, follows a series of assassinations ordered by the Rwandan president, said Theogene Rudasingwa of the opposition coalition Rwandan National Congress. Kagame’s government vehemently denies it has targeted dissidents.
Karegeya’s body was discovered in a room at Johannesburg’s plush Michelangelo Towers hotel on New Year’s Day and many questions remain unanswered in a country with a high crime rate.
“He was found in the hotel room dead on the bed,” said a statement from South African police spokeswoman Lt. Col. Katlego Mogale.
“A towel with blood and a rope were found in the hotel room safe. There is a possibility that he might have been strangled.” She said a murder investigation had been opened into the death of the 53-year-old who reportedly fled to South Africa in 2007.
Rwandan High Commissioner Vincent Karega told local broadcaster eNCA that talk of assassination is an “emotional reaction and opportunistic way of playing politics.” He urged people to wait for a report from the South African police.
Gunmen twice tried to kill Kagame’s former chief of army staff, Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, while he was living in exile in Johannesburg in 2010. Nyamwasa told the Associated Press in 2012 that Kagame has hunted him and other dissidents around the world, “using hired killer squads.”
Karegeya, the former Rwandan intelligence boss, said in a conversation on Nov. 30 with an Associated Press journalist that he understood his organizing of opposition to Kagame was risky and could cost him his life.
Kagame’s spokesman and Rwanda’s foreign minister could not be reached by telephone and did not immediately respond to email requests for comment.
Rwandan exiles from the president’s Tutsi tribe say British, U.S. and Belgian law enforcers have frequently warned them that their government is plotting to kill them.
Two British legislators called for Britain to review its relationship with Rwanda in 2011when they said a Scotland Yard investigation led to the deportation of an alleged Rwandan assassin trying to enter Britain. Two Rwandan exiles said they received warnings from Scotland Yard that the Rwandan government posed an “imminent threat” to their lives.
Kagame’s government issued a statement then saying, “Never does the government of Rwanda threaten the lives of its citizens, nor use violence against its people, wherever they live.”
Kagame’s supporters, including the United States and Britain, point to his development achievements. Today, Rwanda has some of the best health, literacy and education rates on the continent and is a technology hub. But Rudasingwa said the international community has turned a blind eye to the assassinations and other crimes. Rudasingwa said he long has warned the United States, Britain and other Kagame supporters that their efforts to bring peace to eastern Congo will be for naught unless they address the problems in Rwanda. Most recently, Kagame has denied a UN report that his government has trained and supplied M23 rebels in eastern Congo.
Rudasingwa said international support for Kagame is helping “to put Rwanda on a course for another bloody conflict but the international community appears to not be interested in preventing another bloodbath in Rwanda.”