American intelligence officials were yesterday struggling to explain the failure of a dramatic operation to snare one of the main instigators of the Rwandan genocide which led to the death of their key informant, a Kenyan businessman vying for a $5-million bounty.
US investigators in Nairobi had enlisted the help of Kenyan security services to arrest Felicien Kabuga, a Rwandan tycoon charged with financing the 1994 murder of 800 000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The investigators had long suspected that Kabuga was hiding in Kenya, sheltered by corrupt senior officials in former President Daniel arap Moi’s regime.
Last week officials at the American embassy were approached by 27-year-old William Mwaura Munuhe with information about Kabuga’s whereabouts, embassy sources said.
Munuhe was known to embassy staff as a fixer for one of Moi’s most notorious cronies.
On January 15, the American investigators asked Kenyan detectives to stake out Manuhe’s house in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, to await Kabuga’s arrival for a bogus business meeting. But the stakeout was called off after seven hours when Kabuga failed to show.
Two days later, the detectives broke into Munuhe’s house at the Americans’ request, and found him lying on his bed with a bullet hole in his head, according to Kenyan police sources. A preliminary post mortem examination put the time of his murder at several hours before the stakeout began.
”A Kenyan citizen who did have information related to the past whereabouts of Felicien Kabuga was, in fact, killed here in Kenya last week,” American ambassador Johnnie Carson said yesterday. ”The circumstances surrounding that death have not been completely released and are unknown.”
Kenyan police sources say Munuhue was an associate of Kabuga and a senior government official linked to him. Munuhue approached the American investigators after a disagreement with the government official, they say.
An American embassy official said yesterday it was unclear how the operation had gone wrong. He added: ”We do suspect the murder of Munuhue is linked to Kabuga’s efforts to evade capture. Clearly he is an unscrupulous criminal.”
Zakayo Cheruiyot, a former civil service chief and one of Moi’s closest advisers, was last month accused by America of harbouring Kabuga.
”Our information indicates that this individual, Cheruiyot, has used the government infrastructure to maintain the fugitive status of Kabuga,” said America’s special ambassador for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper. ”In the last few months information has really come in pretty concretely and focused on Cheruiyot and his apparatus.”
Cheruiyot, who was one of only two civil service bosses sacked by the new government of President Mwai Kibaki this month, has denied the allegation.
Moi has not been accused of protecting Kabuga. But, according to the International Crisis Group, a thinktank focused on the region, Kabuga found safe haven in houses belonging to several of his closest aides, including one of his nephews.
Kabuga (67) is a Rwandan Hutu who accrued a vast fortune from smuggling coffee. He was also, according to the Tanzanian-based Rwandan genocide tribunal, ”the main supporter and financier of the Interhamwe militia,” who carried out most of the killing.
According to charges brought against Kabuga in 1998, he made ”massive purchases” of machetes, hoes and other agricultural tools to arm the militiamen.
Kabuga was also a part-owner of the Mille Collines radio station used to broadcast a hate campaign against Tutsis in the runup to the genocide. The station was described by Human Rights Watch as ”the voice of genocide.”
Kabuga was expelled from Switzerland shortly after the genocide was ended by an invading army of exiled Tutsis, led by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. He is believed to have moved directly to Kenya.
Until last week, the closest Kabuga had come to arrest was in 1997, when Kenyan detectives raided a Nairobi townhouse where he was alleged to be hiding. But they found only a note written by a Kenyan police officer, warning Kabuga of his impending arrest.
Prosper said efforts to capture Kabuga and six other fugitive organisers of the genocide had been boosted by an American bounty scheme introduced last year. The Rewards for Justice scheme offers up to $25-million for information leading to the arrest of some of the world’s most infamous criminals, including Osama bin Laden.
”We have credible information as to the whereabouts of five or six [other] individuals and we think we are closing in on them,” Prosper said. Referring to the countries believed to be harbouring them, Prosper added: ”With a little more work and cooperation from Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville as well as Kenya, we will be able to bring these individuals into custody.”
Even if Prosper succeeds, the surviving victims may be slow to see justice. Almost eight years after the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established in the small Tanzanian town of Arusha, it has managed only eight convictions.
Stories of corruption and incompetence at the tribunal are legion. Last year, lawyers were found to be bribing defendants to request their services. Three judges were also filmed laughing as a witness described being gang-raped repeatedly over several weeks. – Guardian Unlimited Â