A member of the South African elite police unit, known as Hawks, has withhold pieces of evidence in the murder of the Rwandan former spy chief and opposition leader, Colonel Patrick Karegeya, sources close to the family have told AfroAmerica Network. According to the sources, the police officer allegedly tried to get bribes to falsify or make the evidences, including fingerprints, disappear. No information is available regarding who was going to pay the bribes, but it is believed it could be Rwandan government intelligence operatives based in South Africa.
Colonel Patrick Karegeya was assassinated on December 31, 2013 in a luxurious hotel in Johanesburg, South Africa. His lifeless body was found on January 1, 2014. He appeared to have been strangled. For more than a year, the assassins have still to be found and the trial has to begin. However, early investigations have appeared to lead to the involvmenet of the Government of Rwanda.
Among the alleged suspects, often cited in Rwandan exiled opposition circles and social media, are Major General Jack Nziza, the military adviser to the Rwandan dictator, General Paul Kagame, Colonel Francis Mutiganda, director of Rwandan External Security, Lt Colonel Charles Matungo, head of General Paul Kagame’s presidential guard, as the ring leaders and Colonel Grancis Gakwere (see our article: Rwandan Alleged Assassins of Patrick Karegeya Arrested in Mozambique of January 15, 2014) and Captain Tuyisenge General Paul Kagame’s personal body guard as those who may have executed the plan.
South African Prosecution Impatient
Fourteen months after the assassination, the investigations are still on-going and the trial is yet to begin. Recently, revelations about potential corruption within the Hawks has angered both the prosecution and Patrick Karegeya's famility. The prosecutor, Shawn Abrahams, after learning that a police officer in charge of investagion may have tried to falsify the evidences, has given the Hawks two weeks to complete its investigation into the assassination of the former Rwandan spy chief.
Shawn Abrahams, already known in other cases of attempted assassinations of Rwandan opposition figures in South Africa has already concluded that the assassination is also politically motivated. He was instrumental in prosecuting Rwandans and Tanzanians implicated in the failed assassination of General Kayumba Nyamwasa, a former Rwandan Army Chief of Staff, now in exile in South Africa (see here).
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