A Four Corners and Guardian Australia investigation has identified two men wanted by Rwanda.
A man in his late 60s gets out of a car emblazoned with yellow L-plates on a suburban street in southern Brisbane.
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The man is a driving instructor here, helping local residents get their licences.
He crosses the road and checks the bus timetable as people walk by.
This man is also wanted by authorities in Rwanda over allegations he participated in multiple murders there.
A year-long Four Corners and Guardian Australia investigation has identified two men Rwanda is seeking in Australia over their alleged involvement in the 1994 genocide.
Both have previously been convicted in absentia by Rwanda’s Gacaca community courts of participating in the brutal campaign — which saw members of the majority Hutu group murder their Tutsi minority neighbours, as well as many moderate Hutus.
More than half a million people were slaughtered in just over 100 days.
Gacaca, which translates from Kinyarwanda to “grass” courts, were part of a truth and reconciliation process in Rwanda.
The courts have been criticised by groups including Human Rights Watch, with concerns raised about the lack of legal representation for the accused, untrained judges, allowing hearsay, and the potential for corruption.
No assumptions
Rwandan authorities have sent indictments to Australia for both men.
Four Corners and the Guardian do not suggest the men are guilty, and if they are arrested and extradited they would be entitled to a new trial in a Rwandan court.
One of the men — the driving instructor, Froduald Rukeshangabo — has previously said he was aware of false allegations and a smear campaign against him and declined to be interviewed.
The second man — Célestin Munyaburanga — was not able to be reached.
Rukeshangabo — whose first name is also spelled Froduard and Frodouard — is now an Australian citizen and is well-known within Queensland’s small Rwandan community.
He entered Australia on a humanitarian visa in 2009 before being listed on a database of alleged fugitive genocidaires held by Rwanda’s National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA), which Rwanda says has been accessible by international authorities since 2012.
Two years later, he became a citizen.
Four Corners and the Guardian have not seen the indictment for Rukeshangabo but understand it was compiled by the NPPA’s Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit and a copy of it was received by Australia’s Attorney-General’s Department last month.
The second man, Munyaburanga, is also believed to be in his 60s. The Rwandan government believed him to be living in Canberra, according to his indictment issued in 2017.
Our investigation has since identified Munyaburanga’s immediate family at a property in south-western Brisbane, a few suburbs away from where Rukeshangabo lives.
A man of approximately Munyaburanga’s age has been seen at the house but we do not know their identity.
A member of his family has said Munyaburunga is not in Australia and that he was innocent.
Munyaburanga’s indictment accuses him of being part of a mob that went to “hunt down and kill Tutsi” and being complicit in the deaths of at least 20 civilians.
The investigation
The Rwandan Government has been accused by some members of the diaspora of using the search for alleged genocide perpetrators to silence dissidents overseas, and Four Corners and the Guardian are treating the allegations against the two men carefully.
We travelled to Rwanda to investigate.
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Standing among the banana plantations in the rural district of Ngoma, Yoweri Gatarayiha points to where the body of his younger brother, Bizimungu, was found.
The genocide claimed the lives of most of his immediate family.
“It hurts me so much … I live with pain in my heart,” he says.
We show Gatarayiha a recent photo of Rukeshangabo in Brisbane. It’s been almost three decades, but he recognises him immediately.
“This is Rukeshangabo. It’s him for sure … but he’s old,” he says.
Gatarayiha didn’t witness how his brother died but lives in the same village as someone who says he did; Alphonse Hategekimana.
Content warning: contains descriptions of violence
Hategekimana is a timid man who speaks haltingly about the violence of the genocide — and the part he played in it.
Before the genocide, Rukeshangabo was an education inspector in Ngoma and people we meet remember him initially as a respected man. But Hategekimana claims he beat Gatarayiha’s brother Bizimungu on Rukeshangabo’s orders, a day after the genocide began.
“Rukeshangabo told me to beat him, and I beat him,” he says.
“I beat him three times with a stick, but Rukeshangabo said that that was not enough. He hit him with the stick, and he fell down.”
The stick Hategekimana used had been cut from the eucalyptus plantations, he says.
“They had cut them that same morning.”
Hategekimana says other men then continued to beat Bizimungu.
“He died like that.”
For Hategekimana’s involvement, he says he served four years in prison.
As is often the case in Rwanda, he today lives side by side with his victim’s brother, united in a harmony of forgiving but never forgetting.
He’s angry that the man he says ordered him to beat Bizimungu has never faced court.
“If we committed a crime together and you were the one leading and I get punished alone, anyone would be hurt.”
The second wanted man
The second man Rwandan authorities are seeking, Munyaburanga, used to be the headmaster of a school in Hanika, in the country’s south.
According to his indictment, it’s alleged that during the genocide he set up and manned a roadblock with militia, where at least 20 Tutsis were murdered with “traditional weapons” such as machetes and clubs.
Sitting in a low-slung bungalow in the southern district of Nyanza, Marie Golithi Uwisenga describes losing 14 members of her family – some of whom are listed in Munyaburanga’s indictment.
She was only 12 when the killing started and says she witnessed Munyaburanga – whose school she had attended — giving orders of who to kill and who to leave.
“Take that one back, we’ll kill them later,” she says, her voice quavering between sorrow and anger. “[Or] finish this one at once.”
“I knew it, because I was one of the people targeted. I’d see it from a distance when I was hiding in the sorghum plantations, although he didn’t see me.”
Three decades on, Uwisenga says she is still frightened of Munyaburanga.
Uwisenga’s cousin Chaliroti Mutegarugori has visible scars of the genocide. Her thumb was chopped off by a militia group.
She too says she saw Munyaburunga target her family.
“Munyaburunga did a lot of harm to us. Once I saw him with my own eyes taking my brother.
“They struck him on his shoulders and the blood spilled out, I was afraid, and I ran away.”
Uwisenga says she’s hurt by the news Munyaburanga could be in Australia and has a message for the government.
“My request to them is to help us and bring him to this country … so that the court does its work”.
The records
Four Corners and the Guardian have seen Gacaca records stating that in 2007 Rukeshangabo was convicted of involvement in the genocide and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
But these documents, which are handwritten, are not always a full record of trial. We’ve only seen two pages relating to Rukeshangabo.
They say he was found guilty of “being well-known for murder; dragging dead bodies and burning them”.
The documents say Rukeshangabo was accused of participating in attacks that killed at least 10 people but it’s unclear which deaths he was convicted of – and they don’t mention Gatarayiha’s brother Bizimungu or Hategekimana.
The NPPA said Munyaburanga was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008.
It must be noted that a sentence of either 30 years or life was common in the Gacaca system when the accused was tried in absentia.
The Gacaca system was set up in 2002 out of necessity to deal with the caseload of thousands of alleged genocide perpetrators and trials were overseen by lay judges elected by their community.
There were no lawyers and anyone could speak in a process that emphasised forgiveness and reconciliation as much as justice.
But Nicola Palmer, who teaches international criminal law at King’s College London, says the information Gacaca trials provide “is as robust as any other testimony”.
International courts such as the UN’s tribunal have referred to Gacaca evidence in their judgements.
The NPPA claims both Rukeshangabo and Munyaburanga fled the country before their Gacaca trial.
‘Smear campaigns’
We sent Rukeshangabo a detailed list of the allegations against him and several requests for an interview.
“I respectfully decline to participate in [the] interview and the process / project,” he said in a statement.
In an earlier message, he referenced previous allegations about him being involved in the genocide that were published in Rwandan news articles.
“I am aware of false allegations and smear campaigns that have been aimed at myself, my family, and the extensive Rwandan refugee community over the past few years,” he said.
Four Corners and the Guardian understand no-one has ever entered Australia under the name Célestin Munyaburanga.
We attempted to send him a detailed list of questions through his immediate family but did not receive a response.
Pursuing suspects
Graham Blewitt was formerly the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and ran Australia’s Special Investigations Unit — established in 1987 to investigate the presence of alleged Nazi war criminals here.
He points to Australia’s immigration screening process failing on past occasions and argues Australia has been apathetic for decades when it comes to investigating and prosecuting international crimes such as genocide.
“It’s just a lack of a political will to do something about it, and frankly, that has to change,” he says.
Unlike the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, Australia does not have a permanent war crimes investigation unit.
Rwanda’s NPPA says it has pursued more than 1,100 genocide suspects across 33 countries.
While Australia has never extradited someone back to Rwanda, some countries such as Germany and Sweden have.
Other countries have been reluctant to agree to extradition requests from Rwanda, citing concerns there would be no guarantee of a fair trial in a country that has faced international criticism for its human rights record, including allegations of politically motivated accusations.
In the case of two men in New Zealand, its authorities concluded there was insufficient evidence to substantiate allegations the Rwandan government had made against them.
Those who argue the Rwandan system does treat genocide suspects fairly cite a recent case of the Rwandan High Court acquitting a genocide suspect who had been extradited by Denmark.
Trauma today
Some members of the Rwandan community in Australia want to see alleged perpetrators brought to justice.
Melbourne-based Frida Umuhoza was only 14 when the genocide reached her doorstep in Nyanza — the same district Munyaburanga is from. Neither he nor Rukeshangabo are alleged to have any involvement in the attack she describes.
She says her family was marched to a ditch by armed Hutu attackers — people who just weeks prior had been their trusted neighbours.
“The one image that tormented me for years was my mother’s head being chopped off.”
Umuhoza was hit in the back of the head and later awoke to find herself buried alive alongside her murdered family.
“My four siblings, my cousins, my grandparents, my parents; the whole family had been killed,” she says.
“To this day, I don’t know how I survived. I only know that I was supposed to.”
Umuhoza says the discovery of alleged genocide perpetrators in countries where survivors have settled has been traumatic in the past.
“We’ve had stories of people meeting perpetrators on the bus or on the trains, and what that does is trigger … those pains and the trauma,” she says.
“A lot of people live with monsters in their sleep, in their everyday life.
“Do they watch us? Do they know where we are?”
A spokesperson for the AFP says alleged crimes against humanity and genocide are among the most serious matters it has responsibility for investigating and it “has committed significant resources to supporting domestic and global efforts to hold those responsible for these heinous crimes to account”.
It said questions about extraditions should go to the Attorney-General’s Department.
The attorney-general declined our interview request.
A spokesperson said: “The Australian government is committed to tackling serious international crimes and takes allegations of genocide very seriously.”
Four Corners and the Guardian understand the Attorney-General’s Department sought more information from Rwanda after receiving the indictment for Munyaburanga in 2017.
A prosecutor from the NPPA says the first time they heard from the Australian government on this matter was this month, following inquiries for this investigation.
They said the “office of extradition” in Australia asked them for Munyaburanga’s assumed address in Australia.
A spokesperson for the minister for home affairs said: “As is longstanding practice, we do not comment on individual cases”.
Thirty years after losing her family during Rwanda’s genocide, Umuhoza says it’s crucial alleged perpetrators face trial.
“It doesn’t matter what age you are.
“Genocide isn’t a crime that grows old.”
The full Four Corners documentary, The Wanted, is available to watch tonight from 8:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV.
Do you know more about this story? Contact ben.doherty@theguardian.com
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Credits
Editing and production: Kate Sullivan
Photos: Amos Roberts, Ben Doherty, Mat Marsic
Credit: Source link