Karegeya ‘Advised’ SA, Tanzania On How To Beat M23

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David Batenga, Col Karegeya’s nephew, who discovered the body almost 24 hours later, says: “There had been a bit of scuffle, everything was just a nightmare. We found the towel, and the towel was full of blood, and the rope. They literally used a rope to hang him tight.”

Dark secrets

Col Karegeya was once one of the most powerful figures in Rwanda. He fled to South Africa in 2008, after falling out with the regime. There he helped set up an opposition movement, the Rwandan National Congress.

His friends and family are in no doubt that he was murdered on the orders of the Rwandan president.

“There are so many reasons why he may have been murdered,” says Mr Batenga. “Because of the job he did and because of what he knew, given his position for all those years when he was part of the Kagame regime.”

Almost certainly, Col Karegeya would have known some dark secrets from his time at the heart of the Rwandan establishment. But even in exile, he maintained close contacts inside Rwandan intelligence. His murder may have had more to do with whom, rather than what he knew.

The BBC has learned that from around the middle of 2013, Col Karegeya held a series of meetings with South African and Tanzanian intelligence officials.

At the same time, South Africa and Tanzania were sending troops into the Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of a United Nations force battling the M23 rebel group, which is widely believed to have received support and funds from Rwanda, although this is denied in Kigali.

Could Col Karegeya’s meetings have contributed to the defeat of a Rwandan proxy army? And could that, in part at least, explain his death?

Shortly after the murder, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame did little to distance himself from the killing, while officially denying any involvement.

“You can’t betray Rwanda and not get punished for it,” he told a prayer meeting on 12 January. “Anyone, even those still alive, will reap the consequences. Anyone. It is a matter of time.”

Living in hiding

Col Karegeya’s death served as a stark warning to his colleagues in the Rwandan opposition, in particular Gen Kayumba Nyamwasa, the former chief of staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces.

Six men, three of them Rwandan, are currently on trial in Johannesburg, accused of his attempted murder in 2010. Since then, Gen Nyamwasa has survived two more assassination attempts, the most recent earlier this month.

“I ran away from somebody I thought was going to harm my life. And that person is the president of Rwanda,” he says at a secret location outside Johannesburg.

“[President Kagame] said that Patrick and I are like flies, and if it requires him to use a hammer to kill a fly, he will do it.”

I ask Gen Nyamwasa, given their formerly close relationship, whether he had ever considered President Kagame as a friend. He is emphatic.

“Never. First of all he is a very violent person, beating people, very many times in my life I have seen him do that,” he says.

Gen Nyamwasa also maintains close ties to serving officials in the powerful Rwandan military. He concedes it is possible President Kagame considers those contacts a potential threat to his rule.

But history and the dark shadow of Rwanda’s genocide also hang over this murky affair.

Adapted From The BBC