Théoneste Bagosora, the mastermind of the Rwandan genocide, has died

The retired colonel Théoneste Bagosora, condemned as the “mastermind” who orchestrated the Rwandan genocide of 1994, died today at the age of 80 in Mali, where he was serving a 35-year prison sentence for his role in the massacre, his family reported.

“RIP (Rest in peace) daddy,” wrote the deceased’s son Achille Bagosora in a brief message posted to his social media account Facebook, if you provide more details.

Bagosora was arrested in March 1996 in Cameroon and in 1997 he was transferred to a detention center in Arusha (northern Tanzania), where the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was created.

The former soldier was in 1994 director of cabinet of the Rwandan Ministry of Defense and, according to the prosecution, assumed “de facto” the direction of military and political affairs in Rwanda after the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana.

The genocide began on April 7, 1994 after the assassination the day before of Habyarimana (Hutu) and the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira (Hutu), when their plane was shot down over Kigali.

The assassinations (which the Rwandan government accuses the Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, of Paul Kagame, current president of Rwanda) triggered the massacre of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a hundred days, one of the worst ethnic massacres of the country, recent history.

“I don’t believe in the theory of genocide. Most reasonable people think that there were excessive massacres, the explanation for which must be sought, “Bagosora told the ICTR in 2005.” They called me and continue to call me the ‘brain’ of the massacres which followed the attack of April 6, 1994 and now I testify to deny the lies spread about me, “he alleged. “The accusation that I was the mastermind of genocide is malicious,” said Bagosora, charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit it, incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity, among other charges.

Bagosora has also been accused of ordering the assassination of ten Belgian soldiers from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), which served as an interposition force between rival factions after the civil war the country has waged. known between 1990 and 1993. The ten Belgian soldiers were in the custody of the then Rwandan Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyamana, who, along with several ministers and other senior government officials, was assassinated in the early hours of the genocide.

The former chief of staff was sentenced to life in December 2008, along with two other former senior military officials, although the sentence was reduced to 35 years in prison in 2011.

Last April, Bagosora, imprisoned in Mali since 2012, applied for parole, but a judge refused it due to the gravity of his crimes and “lack of sufficient evidence of his reintegration”.

In reaction to the death of Theoneste Bagosora, the former minister and current Rwandan ambassador to the Netherlands, Olivier Ndihugerehe, recalled today that he had never regretted his crimes. “The main reasons against Bagosora’s request for early release were that he never accepted responsibility for the genocide, showing no signs of remorse or regret.”Nduhungirehe said in a post on his social media.

It also weighed on him, the ambassador added, to behave like “a man with an energetic personality” who at times was “unable to control himself”.

With information from the EFE

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