Augustin Ndindiliyimana | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 15, 1943 Nyaruhengeri commune, Butare prefecture, Rwanda |
| Allegiance |  Rwanda |
| Service/ | Rwandan National Gendarmerie |
| Rank | Major-General |
| Commands held | Chief of the Gendarmerie Nationale |
Augustin Ndindiliyimana (born April 15, 1943) [1] is a former Rwandan General and Chief of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie. He was convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda but he was acquitted by the tribunal upon appeal.
Ndindiliyimana was born in Nyaruhengeri commune in Butare prefecture. He joined the military in 1966 and enrolled in the military academy and following his graduation in 1968 he attended the Royal Higher Institute of Defence in Brussels from 1971 and 1974. [2] When Ndindiliyimana returned, he was assigned to work at the basic training centre in Kanombe and while stationed there he helped establish the Para Commando Battalion in 1975 and served as the unit’s director of intelligence and training. [2] In 1977, he was transferred to the Rwandan Superior Military School (École Supérieure Militaire), where he taught courses as well as commanding a group of trainees. [2] Subsequently, in 1979 he was transferred to the Staff Headquarters of the Rwandan Army and became the Chief of Personnel of the General Staff and was responsible for recruiting senior, junior and non-commissioned officers as well as enlisted soldiers until 1982. [2] Ndindiliyimana rose through the ranks of the Rwandan Army first as a Commander, then Lieutenant Colonel and then Colonel. [2]
Along with his military duties, Ndindiliyimana served in numerous ministerial positions in the Rwandan government beginning in February 1982 when he was appointed as the Minister of Youth and Sports. [2] Following that he was appointed Minister of Transport and Communication in 1990 and Minister in the President’s Office for Defence and Security Issues in 1991 and ended serving as Minister of Defence from December 1991 to April 1992. [2] He was also elected the chairman of the Rwandan Olympic Committee in 1992 and served until March 1994. [2] Along with that role in 1993 he was selected as the secretary of Zone 4 of the International Olympic Committee responsible for the Central and West African zones. [3]
In June 1992 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Gendarmerie nationale . [4] Following his appointment he began rebuilding the organisation’s command structure, reviewing the Gendarmerie’s capacity and in June 1993 he wrote a report on the integration of the RPF into the Gendarmerie. [2] On January 1, 1994, he was promoted to the rank of Major General under the provisions of the Arusha Accords. [2] On April 7. 1994 following the assassination of the Rwandan President, Ndindiliyimana became a member of the Crisis Committee, which was composed of a number of senior leaders of the Rwandan Armed Forces but ended on the 9th of April following the restoration of civilian rule. [2]
During the middle of the genocide on June 5, 1994, Ndindiliyimana was replaced as Chief of Staff of the Gendarmerie and was appointed ambassador to Germany. [2] On June 17, 1994, he departed Rwanda for Zaire en route to Belgium where he would arrive between the 1st and 2 July 1994. [2] Several senior Belgian military officers helped Ndindiliyimana travel and eventually arrive in Belgium and obtain temporary refugee status. [5] In 1996 the Belgian Commission on Refugees denied his official request for asylum due to "serious reasons to think that the subject committed crimes against humanity" but the ruling was overturned two years later by a review panel. [5] Ndindiliyimana lived in Belgium until his indictment and arrest in 2000. [5]
Ndindiliyimana was accused and acquitted by the ICTR of conspiring with other high-level FAR officers to plan the logistics of the Rwandan genocide. He was also accused and acquitted of the charge that in early April 1994, he informed interahamwe leaders of a plan by UNAMIR force commander Roméo Dallaire to search for a cache of weapons, a cache which never existed.
Following the death of President Habyarimana, Ndindiliyimana was one of the senior FAR officers to serve on the Crisis Committee, along with Théoneste Bagosora and Tharcisse Renzaho. [4] which committee lasted only two days. The judges of the ICTR found that his role on the Committee was a positive one and that he always tried to achieve a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Ndindiliyimana is mentioned frequently in Roméo Dallaire's chronicle of his time as UNAMIR force commander. Dallaire writes that he "had always found his [Ndindiliyimana's] loyalties an enigma" and initially assumed he represented a moderate voice in the crisis committee which was correct. [6] Dallaire admitted at the trial that the reason he called Ndindiliyimana an enigma was because he expected Ndindilyimana to mount a coup against the government but the coup never took place as Dallaire had expected. General Dallaire testified on his behalf at his trial and stated that Ndindiliyimana was essentially stripped of his command as of April 7, 1994 and that he worked with Dallaire throughout the war to try to stop killings and to protect civilians.
In his autobiography, Paul Rusesabagina says that Ndindiliyimana was more of a moderate who did not seem to entirely approve of the genocide. He also notes that Ndindiliyimana was responsible for dismantling a potentially disastrous roadblock in front of the Hôtel des Mille Collines. In fact, the evidence in the Military II trial was that Ndindiliyimana's gendarmes initially protected Tutsis at the Hotel Milles Collines assisted later, at Ndindiliyimana's request, by UNAMIR units. Dr. Alison Desforges testified at his trial in November 2006 that Ndindiliyimana was opposed to genocide, and acted to stop killings and was himself threatened because he had Tutsi officers and men in his close protection escort. The transcripts of these testimonies are available from his counsel, Christopher Black of Toronto, Canada and the ICTR.
On January 28, 2000 the ICTR issued an indictment against Ndindiliyimana along with three other Rwandan military officers, Augustin Bizimungu, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and Innocent Sagahutu, charging Ndindiliyimana with conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide or alternatively complicity in genocide, assassination as a crime against humanity, murder as a crime against humanity, extermination as a crime against humanity, persecution on political, racial or religious grounds as a crime against humanity, "other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity" and various war crimes. [5] [7] In their indictment prosecutors alleged that Ndindiliyimana played a central role in drawing up a blueprint to exterminate the Tutsi population as well as political opponents of the Hutu government along with ordering specific massacres and crimes against humanity upon the Tutsi population. Alongside those allegations, they alleged that Ndindiliyimana was complicit in the assassination of Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana by allegedly having been aware that the Belgian and Ghanaian soldiers protecting her were being beaten and then executed by Rwandan soldiers but to having done nothing to stop it. [5]
Following the indictment he was arrested in Belgium on January 29, 2000 and handed over to the custody of the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. [5] He was defended by Canadian lawyer Christopher Black. [4]
On February 11, 2014 he was acquitted of all other charges of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes though the judges of the Appeal Chamber later found that it was very doubtful that gendarmes were ever involved at Kansi Parish. The ICTR trial judgment recognised Ndindiliyimana's “consistent support for the Arusha Accords and a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the Rwandan government forces and the [Rwandan Patriotic Front] RPF his opposition to the massacres in Rwanda. and the fact that he had saved the lives of many Tutsis. The Tribunal also held that his arrest and indictment appeared to be politically motivated. He was sentenced to time served since his arrest eleven years prior to the judgment. The ICTR ordered his release but Ndindiliyimana was unable to return to his home in Belgium and was forced to stay in a UN safe house in Arusha, Tanzania. [8] In late September, 2014 the Belgian government permitted his return to Belgium to rejoin his family after almost 15 years in detention in Tanzania.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to adjudicate people charged for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994. The court eventually convicted 61 individuals and acquitted 14.
Roméo Antonius Dallaire is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire is a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 872 on 5 October 1993. It was intended to assist in the implementation of the Arusha Accords, signed on 4 August 1993, which was meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted from October 1993 to March 1996. Its activities were meant to aid the peace process between the Hutu-dominated Rwandese government and the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The UNAMIR has received much attention for its role in failing, due to the limitations of its rules of engagement, to prevent the Rwandan genocide and outbreak of fighting. Its mandate extended past the RPF overthrow of the government and into the Great Lakes refugee crisis. The mission is thus regarded as a major failure.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.
Théoneste Bagosora was a Rwandan military officer. He was chiefly known for his key role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 2011, the sentence was reduced to 35 years' imprisonment on appeal. He was due to be imprisoned until he was 89. According to René Lemarchand, Bagosora was "the chief organizer of the killings". On 25 September 2021, he died in a prison hospital in Mali, where he was being treated for heart issues.
Augustin Bizimungu is a former general of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR). On 16 April 1994, at the start of the Genocide against the Tutsi, he was appointed chief of staff of the army and promoted to the rank of major general.
The assassination of presidents Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira in the evening of April 6, 1994 was the proximate trigger for the Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the murder of approximately 800,000 Tutsi and a smaller number of moderate Hutu. The first few days following the assassinations included a number of key events that shaped the subsequent course of the genocide. These included: the seizing of power by an interim government directed by the hard-line Akazu clique; the liquidation of opposition Hutu politicians; the implementation of plans to carry out a genocide throughout the country; and the murder of United Nations peacekeepers, contributing to the impulse of the international community to refrain from intervention.
Protais Zigiranyirazo commonly known as Monsieur Zed, is a Rwandan businessman and politician and was governor of the Ruhengeri prefecture in northwestern Rwanda from 1974 to 1989. Zigiranyirazo was a member of the Akazu, an elite circle of relatives and friends of former President Juvénal Habyarimana who pushed the Hutu Power ideology.
Jerome Clement Bicamumpaka is a Rwandan politician. He is one of the 402 co-founders of the Rwandan political party MDR, a democratic opposition party, created in Kigali on July 1, 1991. He was born on November 4, 1957, in Mukono (Rwaza), in Ruhondo commune, Ruhengeri prefecture.
Léon Mugesera is a convicted genocidaire from Rwanda who took residence in Quebec, Canada. He was deported from Canada for an inflammatory anti-Tutsi speech which his critics allege was a precursor to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In 2016, he was convicted of incitement to genocide and sentenced to life in prison.
Casimir Bizimungu is a Rwandan politician.
Innocent Sagahutu is a former Rwandan soldier, who is chiefly known for his role in the Rwandan genocide.
François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye is a former Rwandan soldier, who is chiefly known for his role in the Rwandan genocide.
The United Nations Detention Facility (UNDF) is a United Nations detention center located in Arusha in Northern Tanzania. The other one is the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague, Netherlands. The facility is maintained by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), a UN organization.
On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as their jet prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda; both were killed. The assassination set in motion the Rwandan genocide, one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century.
Major Bernard Ntuyahaga is a Rwandan army officer convicted by a Belgian court for the murders of ten United Nations peacekeepers at the start of the Rwandan Genocide. He was released in 2018 and returned against his will to Rwanda.
Grégoire Ndahimana is the former mayor of Kivumu, Rwanda. Indicted and arrested for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Ndahimana is thought to be one of the key figures in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and is claimed to have had up to 6,000 Tutsi killed. In 2013, he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Emmanuel Rukundo is a Rwandan Roman Catholic priest who in 2009 was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his participation in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda is a Rwandan politician who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his role in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
Drew White (QC) is an international lawyer from Canada best known for his role in the conviction of Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, who the media dubbed "the mastermind" of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and who White referred to in his closing trial submissions as one of the "enemies of the human race".
And in '93, I was elected secretary of zone 4, that is, Africa, so the Supreme Council for Sports in Africa, under the aegis of the Organisation of African Unity – had appointed me to deal with zone 4 in terms of sports in the region of Central Africa and West Africa.[ dead link ]