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Ingabire's Assistant beaten-up

After her assistant Joseph Ntawangundi was put in police custody following revelations by the New Times that he was a ‘Gacaca fugitive’ already sentenced to 19 years jail, the opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, chair of the UDF-Inkingi alias FDU-Inkingi issued a statement stressing that this is another shameful propaganda based on lies in the Gacaca system.
Here follows Ingabire�s press release:

NEW TIMES, A JUDGE AND JURY, EXPLOITING FORGED GACACA EVIDENCE, TO MAKE MORE VICTIMS.

We read with utmost concern, the New Times of Saturday, 6th February 2010. The fire spitting media has unveiled its true colors. The title on the front page �Ingabire�s assistant a Gacaca fugitive� alleging that Joseph Ntawangundi was sentenced to 19 years in absentia, is sheer lies.

Joseph Ntawangundi left Rwanda in 1986 for studies in Poland (Wroclaw), returned to Rwanda in 1992 and worked in Kigali (CESTRAR). In 1993, he left Rwanda for ICFTU – AFRO (international confederation for free trade unions, African Regional Organisation, NAIROBI, Kenya) as a Research and Training Officer until 2002. During the genocide, Mr. Joseph Ntawangundi was attending, on behalf of the ICFTU � AFRO, a 2-month training course in Sweden (GANGNEF) and returned to Kenya.

He never officiated in the education sector in Rwanda, in any capacity whatsoever. He has never been school director in Gitwe during the genocide, as claimed by the paper. Either the reporters have been mislead, or they deliberately want to mislead the readers for their own agenda.

Since Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza returned to Rwanda, this paper has been recklessly issuing fabricated stories without giving any chance of counter evidence, in total disregard of media ethics.

I challenge the paper to produce any evidence of its allegations, at least for the sake of the readers’ respect. Else, let it give a right of answer to Mr. Joseph Ntawangundi.

Even if our position about GACACA has not changed, we hope that it has not fallen this low to condemn an innocent who was not even in Rwanda during the genocide, and for crimes committed in a place he has never been to.

Meanwhile, we’ve just learnt that Mr Joseph Ntawangundi has been picked up by the police and is currently held at Remera police station. This shows the kind of relationship between New Times and security forces which rely on libels from this paper.

We would like to recall that Mr Joseph Ntawangundi is still recovering from injuries sustained on 3rd February 2010, following attacks in government premises in Kinyinya sector. He is expecting justice, not mob justice.

UDF INKINGI
Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
Chairperson

The New Times newspaper of spreading false propaganda about her aide, Joseph Ntawangundi.

A few days after Victoire Ingabire and her assistant Joseph Ntawangundi were nearly lynched by a rowdy group of local militia in the administration offices, the New Times newspaper – mouthpiece of the ruling RPF party of President Paul Kagame – reported that Ntawangundi was a fugitive long wanted by the Gacaca court on charges related to the 1994 genocide.

Here is what The New Times (http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=14163&article=25610) publishes in an article titled:

Ingabire�s assistant a Gacaca fugitive:
� Handed 19 yrs in absentia

KIGALI – Victoire Ingabire�s assistant, Joseph Ntawangundi, the man who came to the limelight in the saga at Kinyinya Sector, is a wanted Genocide fugitive who, in 2007, was sentenced in absentia to 19 years in prison by a Gacaca Court.

Ntawangundi was found guilty by the Gacaca court in Rusenyi cell, Gitwe sector in the former Kibungo Province, present day Ngoma, for killing two young people only identified as Nsabimana and Hategeka.

The two were students of IAVE Gitwe Secondary School in Kibungo where he was a director at the time. He was also found guilty of conspiring with militias to murder eight other people.

According to Beline Uwineza, the coordinator of Gacaca in the Eastern Province, Ntawangundi fled in 1994 to Benaco Refugee Camp in Tanzania before finding his way to Europe.

�His file and arrest warrant have been around. His case was a category two type. We were surprised when we saw his pictures in the news media after all these years,� she said.
�The arrest warrant is still valid of course. The next step will be to make sure he serves his jail term. Gacaca will do everything within its means to bring him to book�.

Witnesses testified that Ntawangundi being the director of the school, many students ran to him for protection during the Genocide, but that he kept turning them away and they would then be killed by militias lurking outside.

The two children he killed had also run to him for protection.

He is one of the thousands of people whom Gacaca has sentenced in absentia.

This is the second time that someone connected to the presidential aspirant is discovered to have links to the killings of innocent people during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

Ingabire�s own mother, Therese Dusabe, had also been found guilty earlier on two separate occasions and sentenced to 30 years and life respectively.

According to FDU-Inkingi’s chair Victoire Ingabire, this Gacaca story is a pure lie as Joseph Ntawangundi had left Rwanda in 1993! Read Victoire Ingabire’s press release explaining why in the article: Kigali � Case of Joseph Ntawangundi: Another Evidence of Gacaca Courts Farce in Rwanda.
This is again another proof that the Kagame regime would continue to recourse to any sort of of lies and character assassination propaganda, in order to bar the opposition from fairly challenging him in the upcoming presidential elections.

KIGALI – The National Electoral Commission (NEC) has released an updated calendar of the upcoming presidential elections detailing dates for the series of events that will lead to the August 9 Presidential Polls.

The electoral code that is currently in parliament is expected to be promulgated soon and published in the official Gazette.

Here are the key dates for the events that will lead to the August 9 Presidential Polls:
– Between June 24 and July 02: Nomination of presidential candidates
– July 07: Declaration of the final list of candidates approved by NEC.
– July 20: Nominated candidates will start campaigning
– August 08: End of electoral campaign
– August 09: Presidential polls.
– No later than August 17: Final declaration of presidential election results and announcement of the winner.

Note that one newcomer in the Rwandan politics, Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, has already been designated by her still-to-be-registered FDU-Inkingi party as their presidential candidate and is already in Rwanda, trying against all odds to register her party in order to challenge the redoutable RPF candidate Paul Kagame.