2023-09-29 15:43:58
ASSASSINATION of former Interior Minister by Rwandan spies in NairobiSeth Sendashonga a Rwandan citizen was an outstanding moderate Hutu politician who was assassinated on May 16 1998 in Nairobi.
A man of principle and courage, Sendashonga was widely hailed as a leader of moderation. Leader of a student movement opposed to Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, Sendashonga left Rwanda in 1975.
Sendashonga, a Hutu, was recruited by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to serve as its liaison with the predominantly Hutu political parties within Rwanda that were opposed to the Habyarimana regime.
When the RPF established a government in July 1994, Sendashonga became Minister of the Interior, putting his considerable prestige at the service of the coalition government and so attracting many other moderate Hutu to its support.
Just over a year later, he left the government to protest abuses by the Tutsi-dominated army against civilians, most of them Hutu. He had asked the Rwandan Vice-President and Minister of Defense General Paul Kagame repeatedly to restrain his troops, noting their abuses in some 600 memoranda addressed to Kagame.
Several months after leaving government, Sendashonga fled Rwanda for exile in Nairobi with his family.
While in Nairobi he founded an unarmed political opposition group in exile, the Forces de résistance pour la démocratie (FRD), Resistance Forces for Democracy. The FRD regularly published statements describing ongoing abuses in Rwanda, including details of extrajudicial executions and “disappearances”. Seth Sendashonga had also reportedly indicated his willingness to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, as an expert witness for the defence in the ongoing trial of one of several people charged with participation in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
A first attempt at assassinating Sendashonga failed in February 1996, although both he and a nephew were wounded in the gun attack. Prior to the attack he was lured to a meeting by a family friend who claimed to be in possession of a document that showed a failed mutiny in the RPA. They met and in the end there was no document. The real reason he was called for the meeting showed itself in the form of two men who shot at him as he walked back to his car. He was wounded but not seriously.
A suspect, Francis Mugabo, was arrested nearby by Kenyan police with a pistol, a silencer and thirteen 9mm bullets. He was attempting to dispose of the gun in the toilet of a petrol station when he was apprehended. He was an attaché in the Rwandan Embassy in Nairobi at the time of his arrest and so the Kenyan government asked for a diplomatic immunity waiver so that he could be charged and tried. Rwanda refused the request and the case hit a dead end.
As a result of lack of cooperation, President Moi ordered the Rwandan Embassy closed and Mugabo, who had been in police custody for months, was expelled along with 4 other diplomats.
Following that attack, Seth Sendashonga began taking precautions for his safety and usually travelled with a bodyguard. However, on the day of his assassination on 16 May, he was reportedly alone in his car with his driver, who was also killed as they left a UN building.
On 16th May, 1998 at the junction of Limuru and Forest Road in Parklands, two gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles opened fire on a car killing the two men inside. The car, Reg NO. UNEP 108K, belonged to Dr. Cyriaque Nikuze, Sendashonga’s wife. The two dead men were Seth Sendashonga and his driver, Jean-Bosco Nkurubukeye.
The gunmen fled in a car reg NO. KAJ 426Z which they dumped 3 kilometres away. Nimish Shah and Agnes Ngina saw the gunmen hurriedly dumping the car and described them as being very tall. Spent cartridges that were recovered from the scene of the shooting were similar to those found in the abandoned car.
Sendashonga’s killers were never found.
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