Wife ‘killed by hit men’ attends her own funeral

A WOMAN shocked her husband by turning up at her own funeral after he had paid hit men to kill her.

Noela Rukundo waited outside her house in Melbourne, Australia, where mourners had gathered for the chance to confront Balenga Kalala.

He tried to have her killed when she returned to her home country of Burundi, central Africa, last year for her stepmother’s funeral.

“When I got out of the car, he saw me straight away. He put his hands on his head and said, ‘Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?’,” Ms Rukundo told the BBC. She replied: “Surprise! I’m still alive!’ ”

She added: “Then he started screaming, ‘I’m sorry for everything.’ I felt like somebody who had risen again.”

Ms Rukundo said she was resting at her hotel last January when Kalala called her from their home in Australia and suggested she get some fresh air.

Moments after stepping outside, she was forced into a car and driven across the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, to a building where she was tied to a chair.

She heard the gang leader tell Kalala on the phone: “We already have her.” The phone was put on loudspeaker for Ms Rukundo to hear her husband reply: “Kill her.”

But after two days the kidnappers let Ms Rukundo go, throwing her an unlikely lifeline. They instead extorted more money from Kalala, telling him his wife was dead. They warned her against violent husbands, and provided memory cards with recordings of Kalala organising the contract killing and Western Union money transfer receipts.

The mother of eight returned to Melbourne in time for her funeral. Kalala later made a full confession to his wife, captured on tape, begging for her forgiveness.

Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison in Melbourne, after pleading guilty to incitement to murder.

‘When I got out of the car, he saw me straight away. He put his hands on his head and said: Is it a ghost?’