A decomposed body discovered in a Brussels canal a week ago is that of a Rwandan former minister indicted by a United Nations tribunal on charges of genocide, a family lawyer said on Thursday.
The naked body was discovered by a passer-by in the Brussels-Charleroi canal in the heart of the Belgian capital, and was in such an advanced state of decomposition that investigators took five days to identify it.
”It’s his [Juvenal Uwilingiyimana’s] body,” lawyer Sven Mary said. ”We have been informed by the investigating magistrate. We have not been given any information on the cause of death. We would like to light shed on this.”
Uwilingiyimana, who went missing in Belgium in November, had been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, for an alleged part in the 1994 genocide.
The massacre saw about 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in a government-orchestrated extermination campaign.
The 54-year-old former trade minister, who ran Rwanda’s national parks at the time of the genocide, was indicted on June 10, but the charge was only made public in November.
The ICTR issued an international arrest warrant in mid-August, but did not act on it pending discussions with the prosecution.
The charges against Uwilingiyimana include genocide, incitement to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and murder.
He was, however, informed of the charges against him and agreed to cooperate with the court, meeting its investigators over the course of several recent weeks.
The last such meeting took place on November 18, three days before he vanished at dawn from his home in the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht, according to ICTR chief investigator Stephen Rapp.
Many in Brussels’ Rwandan community believed Uwilingiyimana committed suicide because of the pressure of the inquiry, explained by the fact the body was found with neither clothing nor jewellery, a source close to the inquiry said.
Others suspect Hutu extremists had a hand in the murder, fearing the revelations he could make to genocide investigators, while some say it could have been a revenge attack by Tutsis.
Rapp said a letter purportedly written by Uwilingiyimana appeared on the internet on November 21, saying that he would no longer cooperate with the prosecutor’s office.
The letter accused investigators of intimidating Uwilingiyimana to force him to falsely incriminate other members of the Rwandan Hutu regime that orchestrated the 1994 slaughter, notably former first lady Agathe Kanziga.
The tribunal has convicted 22 people in connection with the genocide. — Sapa-AFP