Rwanda sends alleged Murekezi genocide evidence
The Rwandan Government has sent to Malawi what it claims to be evidence of alleged crimes committed by Vincent Murekezi, a Rwandan genocide suspect in Malawi custody amid an on-going court battle for his extradition.
According to senior State advocate Steven Kayuni, the evidence will aid the State’s case in court.
“The evidence arrived this week through Foreign Affairs Ministry and was quickly transmitted for urgent attention to the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions,” said Kayuni.
Asked whether the withdrawal of the petition by some CSOs to demonstrate that the State could have erred in the arrest of the suspect, Kayuni cast doubt on such possibility based on the weight of the evidence.
As reported by our sister newspaper The Nation, Rwanda government has been seeking extradition of Murekezi from as early as 2009, but controversy reigns over how the Rwandan, who was found guilty of crimes related to the 1994 genocide and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment, has been allowed to live in Malawi freely for many years.
Reports also suggest that Murekezi has been able not only to acquire business licences, but also to secure Malawian citizenship with a passport.But following his arrest over the extradition matter, Malawi government has added a charge of jumping bail when he was arrested for alleged corruption.
Civil society groups, which initially supported his extradition, this week walked away from their previous petitions during a press conference held in Lilongwe.They claimed that while they want Murekezi to defend himself in court, they doubt the basis of their own allegations following investigations.
The development comes as a civil society group that lobbied Parliament to probe Murekezi’s alleged links to genocide withdrew controversially its petition to the National Assembly on the matter.
Meanwhile, Murekezi, who is contesting an extradition order, remains in custody until January 2017.n
It is not only shocking but also absurd that a genocide suspect accused of mass killings in Rwanda has managed to live and hide in Malawi for so many years despite the Rwandan govt alerting the Malawi govt of the atrocities that this man is accused of in his homeland.
I am not naïve to believe that our govt and our security officials in Malawi did not know about this man’s dark past.
It is obvious that someone was protecting him……..how can the Malawi govt issue a passport and give a citizenship to an individual who is being accused of committing a very serious crime on the planet by a foreign government ?
How come our intelligence service, the NIB which knows every single detail of what the opposition party leaders are doing in private during the middle of the night……….. fail to know about this Murekezi dark past……is this not proof that our inteligence agency is just a political tool to suppress opposition decent and not to provide securing to the country?
What we need once this man is deported is a public enquiry to establish who knew what in govt and who was protecting him……………….God knows how many more genocide suspects we are still harbouring in Malawi.
This is really embarrassing…………….can the govt get a grip on this issue instead of wasting time on public television to explain ourselves every time international organisation accuses our country of being one of the most corrupt in the world.
How can you deny being the most corrupt country with stories like these………..
I agree with you totally! And something fishy is going on here. I suspect this man will “disappear” again, under a different Malawian passport.