RWANDAN KAGAME ACCUSED OF PLOTTING TO KILL HIS ENEMIES

The Kagame regime has been accused of plotting to kill two prominent Rwandans living in Britain.

According to a UK newspaper, The Independent, the Rwandan government is masterminding an alleged assassination plot in Britain against dissidents, who are said to be critical of the country’s increasingly authoritarian regime.

However, Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs minister Mushikiwabo Louise has dismissed the allegations.

“These allegations are completely without foundation.  The government of Rwanda does not threaten the lives of its citizens, wherever they live,” she said.

Ms Mushikiwabo said they had passed on information to the UK government about genocide-bent individuals with criminal minds who were a danger to Rwanda.

“The Metropolitan police have not approached us with evidence of these allegations but we are ready as always to work with them to ensure that nobody, be they Rwandan or not, is the victim of violence on British soil,” she said.   

“What we know rather are threats to our country’s security from genocide-bent and disgruntled dissidents engaged in serious criminal activities, and we have shared the information with the UK.”

Detectives from Scotland Yard last week visited the two -Rene Mugenzi and Jonathan Musonera -and warned them of reliable intelligence that the country’s government posed an imminent threat to their lives.

The two men on Thursday told of their shock and fear after being told to improve security at their homes, change their daily routines and that the “threat could come in any form”.

According to Whitehall sources, the movements of two Rwandans with diplomatic accreditation in Britain, who have travelled regularly between London and Kigali in the last nine months, are being closely monitored.

However, they were told that the police could not offer round-the-clock protection.

Rene Mugenzi, 35, is a survivor of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide who is a British citizen, residing in south east London . He left Rwanda when he was 17, and now runs a London-based social exclusion think-tank.

“I am not a political figure in Rwanda. How can it be that in Britain a foreign government can be allowed to threaten the life of a person?” wondered Mugenzi.

He recalled how he had personally challenged Mr Kagame over claims of despotism in a BBC World Service phone-in this year.

“I have no idea if my encounter with Mr Kagame is linked to the threat I now face,” he said.

Mr Jonathan Musonera, 46, is a former member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) army led by Mr Kagame which halted the genocide.

He is also one of the founding members of the Rwanda National Conference (RNC), a new political party led by exiled military officers which poses a threat to the President.

Mr Musonera said: “I am terribly scared. We know what the Rwandan government can do. Their killers are not bothered about observing the laws of the countries in which they carry out their activities.”

Claims that schisms among Mr Kagame’s former comrades are leading to reprisals were strengthened last year when there was an attempt on the life of a former head of Rwandan intelligence, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, another founder of the RNC, in South Africa, where he had fled.

The murder plot claims come after an investigation by The Independent last month alleged that MI5 had warned the Rwandan High Commissioner to London to halt an alleged campaign of harassment against critics of Mr Kagame living in the UK.
The alleged assassination threatens to tip relations between London and one of its closest African allies.