They are placed at the center of a judicial and diplomatic chessboard. Seven Rwandans who appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a court created in 1995 by the UN in Arusha (Tanzania) to try those responsible for the genocide of the Tutsi, are currently living in Niger under the threat of an eviction. Although they are now free from any prosecution by the UN justice, their heavy past makes them undesirable.

Protais Zigiranyirazo (brother of former first lady Agathe Habyarimana and considered a figure of the extremist Hutu regime), François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye (former commander of an elite unit), Alphonse Nteziryayo (ex-prefect), André Ntageruda ( Minister of Transport in 1994) were acquitted on appeal by the ICTR. As for Prosper Mugiraneza (civil service minister during the genocide), Anatole Nsengiyumva (former head of military intelligence) and Innocent Sagahutu (ex-captain of the Rwandan army), they have finished serving their sentences.

Arrested in Denmark in February 2000, the latter had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison for having “aided and abetted” the murder of at least two Belgian blue helmets, at the start of the massacres which left nearly a million dead between April and July 1994. After obtaining his early release in 2017, the former captain tried to reach Burundi, but he was unable to leave Tanzanian territory for lack of official documents. He therefore returned to Arusha where he lived with other Rwandans in a residence perched on the heights of Themi Hill, a chic district of the city. Some have lived there for more than ten years.

Housed, fed and laundered, they cost the United Nations 1,200 euros per person per month. On June 25, 2020, the UN Security Council finally adopted a resolution stating that it was important “to find rapid and lasting solutions to the question of their resettlement”. A commitment to this effect was reached with Niger in November 2021. In this agreement, article 5 specified that the Nigerien authorities were to undertake to offer them “without requiring payment, permanent resident status and issue them identity documents within three months of entering the territory”.

“Not Small Fry”

In Niamey, Rwandans, now aged between 61 and 85, are placed under house arrest. Their destiny changed once again on December 27, 2021, when a decree signed by the Nigerien Minister of the Interior announced that the former ICTR defendants must be “definitively expelled from the territory of Niger with a permanent ban on residence for diplomatic reasons”. Although they have no travel documents, they are given a week to leave the country.

“The Arusha Court Residual Mechanism did not tell us the truth until they arrived. It had been reported to us that Rwanda agreed to this transfer but a month later, when the agreement was published, this was not the case. So far, we are waiting for us to find a base for them, which is not easy. These people are responsible for the genocide, not the small fry, ”explains Hassoumi Massaoudou, the head of Nigerien diplomacy.

“The government did not deport them but they continue to live in prison since they are permanently under police control, denounces Kadidiatou Hamadou, their lawyer. They live in a big besieged house, they are not allowed to go out. These men are old and most suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure… Last week, Tharcisse Muvunyi [a former Rwandan army lieutenant-colonel, sentenced to fifteen years in prison in 2010 and who was part of the group] was found dead in his bathroom. He died far from his family. »

Their family lives mainly in Europe (Belgium, Great Britain and France) but the European Union refuses to welcome them. Protais Zigiranyirazo was denied his visa in 2012 on the grounds that he presented “a threat to public order”.

Fear of reprisals in Rwanda

Finding them a new land of asylum has become a real headache. “This situation risks turning them into stateless persons, while Niger has undertaken not to extradite them”, worries Kadidiatou Hamadou. On the side of the Niger authorities, it is retorted that these personalities remain under the responsibility of the International Mechanism responsible for exercising the residual functions of the ICTR, pending the finding of a new home for them.

The only country to have offered is none other than… Rwanda. “It is useless to have been acquitted or to have served your sentence if it is to then be sentenced to not having a place to settle, assures Marcel Kabanda, president of Ibuka France, the main association of survivors of the Tutsi genocide. This return will be psychologically difficult because of the monstrous crimes they committed there, but it would be the only way for them to return to the community of Rwandans, to be reborn definitively in history. If they made a clear request, the UN, which failed at the time of the genocide, should facilitate their reintegration. Their situation is a call to return home, to come and participate in the reconstruction of a country that they helped to destroy. »

But these former dignitaries fear reprisals in their country. Many of the acquitted are afraid of having to be retried by a court in Kigali. “Rwanda is far from being a model in terms of fundamental freedoms and human rights,” their counsel pointed out. However, these Rwandans have paid their debt to society. »

The Rwandan authorities as well as the International Mechanism, the UN structure responsible for completing the work of the ICTR, did not wish to respond to requests from the World.