Chris McGreal
Jean Kambanda was bathing when soldiers burst through his front door four years ago. Rwanda’s genocide was starting and he was sure death was knocking.
The soldiers nabbed him and offered him not a bullet in the head, but an invitation to lead the government – which came to oversee the slaughter of nearly a million people.
Kambanda (43) said he did not want the job. But refusal was not an option. The next day he was sworn in as prime minister.
On Friday, an international court in Arusha, Tanzania, trying the leaders of the 1994 genocide, sent Kambanda to prison for life. Many Rwandans wanted him executed, but that was not an option for the United Nations-created court.
Kambanda’s lawyer had pleaded for a two- year sentence by conjuring up the dubious prospect of one of the most hated men in Rwanda returning to tour the country and encourage “the healing process”. The judges doubted Kambanda’s remorse and said his crimes were too horrible for any extenuating circumstances.
Kambanda’s guilty plea and promise to testify for the prosecution in other cases must have sent a shudder through the list of accused killers. They include three of his Cabinet ministers, including the former minister of the family and women’s affairs who, with her son, is awaiting trial for genocide.
But the prize is Theoneste Bagosora, the army colonel who plotted the genocide. He put Kambanda into office, and now the former prime minister is set to put Bagosora away for life.
Kambanda may have been surprised four years ago, but his appointment was no accident. Rwanda’s first female prime minister, Agatha Uwilingiyimana, was opposed to the Hutu extremists planning the slaughter. She was murdered within hours of the start of the genocide.
Kambanda’s information minister, Eliezer Niyitegeka, delighted in telling how soldiers bayoneted her to death. With Uwilingiyimana disposed of, Kambanda was the obvious choice. The previous year he had been extremist candidate for prime minister.
Kambanda had no hand in planning the genocide, but he was tenacious in ensuring its success. At the height of the genocide, Kambanda appeared on Rwandan television, distributing weapons and manning the barricades at which the Hutu militias sentenced their victims to death by machete. One of Kambanda’s last radio speeches lured Tutsis from hiding by saying that the war was over and that it was safe to come out. Those who emerged were murdered.
But the war was lost, and Kambanda fled to Zaire. From his refuge in Bukavu, Kambanda wrote: “My government didn’t plan or execute these massacres. If there is any member of my government suspected of planning the massacres, he should be investigated, and if the facts are there, he should be tried.”
The president of the defeated regime, Theodore Sindikubwabo, had joined Kambanda in Bukavu, along with Niyitegeka. The tribunal still has a warrant out for Niyitegeka, but he is believed to have been killed during Rwanda’s invasion of the former Zaire two years ago. The court is also after Sindikubwabo, but he is thought to have died of Aids.
Kambanda, Bagosora and others among the most wanted had fled Zaire long before the invasion. The new government of Rwanda wanted to drag them back to Kigali to put them before a firing squad. The arrival of the Kenyan police at his new home in Nairobi must have been a relief – no more hiding, no more wondering if the Rwandans would get him first.