‘Zim harbouring Rwandese fugitive’

A Rwandese newspaper has claimed that Zimbabwe was harbouring a 1994 genocide suspect, Ramathan Muhire, who is believed to have set up businesses and accumulated assets in the southern African country.

According to Rwanda’s English daily, The New Times, Muhire was a leading figure in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi before he relocated to Malawi after the fall of the Hutu regime, before settling in Zimbabwe.

The newspaper claimed Muhire was a member of the Interahamwe militia which executed the genocide, killing over a million Tutsis in cold blood. Media reports said just before the genocide, Muhire used to live in the then Kibungo Prefecture, where he worked as a driver.

But Home Affairs minister Kazembe Kazembe yesterday denied the report.

“I am not aware of this. I am hearing this for the first time, I don’t even know this person,” Kazembe said.

“Muhire is remembered as a violent extremist. He once hacked a man simply because he was a Tutsi. Many people who knew him and spoke to local media, identify the man as Muhire, the same person who appears in the picture,” the newspaper reported.

The genocide against the Tutsi was stopped after the then rebel movement, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, led by now President Paul Kagame, drove the extremist government out of power.

Revelations that Muhire participated in the genocide against the Tutsi are coinciding with the arrest of one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, Félicien Kabuga, a leading figure in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

Kabuga, who has been living under a false identity, was arrested by French police on Saturday in a sophisticated and well-coordinated operation near Paris, France. News Day