KENYA-RWANDA: Envoy’s Detention Could Sour Ties Even Further

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 4 1996 (IPS) - The detention of a Rwandese diplomat here is likely to further cool the already chilly relations between Kenya and Rwanda.

Francis Mugabo, an administration attache in his country’s mission here, has been detained in connection with the shooting of Rwandan opposition leader Seth Sendashonga in a Nairobi suburb on Feb. 26 and is being held at a police station in the capital, a source at the Rwandan embassy told IPS Monday.

Mugabo was arrested at the scene of the crime and found to be in possession of a ‘Jerico’ pistol, a silencer and 13 rounds of 9mm ammunition, Kenyan Attorney-General Amos Wako told journalists Saturday.

Sendashonga told the press from his hospital bed here that he had been lured by a family friend who had offered him a document relating to a failed mutiny by Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) soldiers who had since fled to neighbouring Burundi.

When he realised that his contact did not have the document, Sendashonga said, he walked back to his car where he found two men in their 20s, who spoke to him in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda. As he reached for his car keys, the men opened fire, wounding him in the left shoulder, while his cousin, Simon Nsengiyumva, sustained serious injuries.

“Two of the assailants escaped, but … Mr. Francis Mugabo was arrested at the scene,” Wako told journalists Saturday, adding that his country was waiting for Rwanda to waive Mugabo’s diplomatic immunity to facilitate criminal investigation and prosecution.

A former interior minister, Sendashonga went into self-imposed exile after he was fired last year from the government.

Sendashonga claimed that his problems with Kigali peaked after he called an extraordinary cabinet meeting in which he demanded a response to 700 letters he had written to Defence Minister, Maj- Gen. Paul Kagame, detailing attrocities allegedly committed by RPA soldiers against Hutu civilians.

“As soon as I finished reading my statement, Kagame stormed out of the meeting without responding to the issues I had raised,” he told IPS before his shooting. Three days later, he and three sympathisers were sacked, he said.

Sendashonga then moved to Kenya and occasionally visited Rwanda, but stopped after being subjected to “a series of humiliating searches” at the airport in Kigali. He had been scheduled to link up this week in Belgium with other Rwandan politicians pressing for political change in the central African country.

The attempt on Sendashonga’s life has been slammed by the ‘Daily Nation’, Kenya’s largest independent newspaper, which, in an editorial, warned refugees not to abuse the hospitality they enjoy in Kenya.

“Kenyans do not give them succour and sanctuary in order that they may continue their wars here. If they want to kill each other they should go back to their country and do it there,” the paper warned, noting that “the former minister … naturally, suspects the culprits are agents of the RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) government in Kigali”.

However, Rwandan Charge d’Affaires Pierre Hakizimana disassociated his government from the incident: “The embassy of Rwanda … condemns, in the strongest terms, any act of violence against Rwandese nationals and cannot condone any other form of action which might threaten security in Kenya,” he said in a statement to the press.

Hakizimana also claimed that police looted Mugabo’s residence when they searched the building and he queried Wako’s version of the shooting incident.

“The abovementioned violations and the way the police handled the case casts a doubt on the allegations against Mr. Francis Mugabo,” Hakizimana said, slamming Mugabo’s arrest as “a serious transgression of the Vienna Convention in its articles 29, 30 and 31”.

The incident has highlighted the tension between Rwanda and Kenya, which stems from the presence in Nairobi of a considerable number of exiled Rwandan politicians, some of whom are wanted in Rwanda in connection with the massacre of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus by extremist Hutus in 1994.

In mid-1995, Kenya’s government refused to hand over suspects to an international tribunal investigating the genocide. It also expelled the Rwandan ambassador earlier in the year.

The shooting is the second attempt on the life of a Rwandan opposition figure in recent months. Late last year unidentified gunmen wounded an aide of exiled Hutu tycoon Felicien Kabuga in Nairobi.

Some Hutus here insisted the real target had been Kabuga, who is high on a list of suspected genocide perpetrators circulated by the Kigali government.