SOMALINET NEWS ...Archives
RWANDA: EX-MINISTER FOUND DEAD IN BELGIUM December 25, 2005
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) Remains of a former Rwandan government minister indicted on charges of involvement in the 100 –day 1994 genocide which killed more than half a million Tutsi, was found floating in a Brussels canal, officials said.
Juvenal Uwilingiyimana, former trade minister had been cooperating with the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal, which was trying him. He faced a variety of genocide charges when he disappeared from his home on Nov. 21.
His badly decomposed body was recovered from the canal last Saturday, officials said Friday. The cause of death was not announced.
"This individual, although an indictee of the Tribunal, voluntarily agreed to cooperate in the search for truth and justice for the Rwanda genocide of 1994. I convey my sincere condolences to his family," tribunal prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow said.
After he was indicted on June 13, Uwilingiyimana cooperated with the investigators, the tribunal said, and had a last interview three days before he disappeared.
The court said he often expressed concern to the investigators "about the dangers that he and his family would face from powerful persons in the Rwandan exile community when he told the truth about these persons' responsibility for the Rwanda genocide."
The 1994 Rwandan genocide killed more than half a million Tutsi, as well as political moderates from the Hutu majority.
The slaughter was unleashed by the extremist government that took power after President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down as he returned home from peace talks with Tutsi-led rebels in 1994.