Cape Town South Africa (Commonwealth Union)_He is believed to have ordered the deaths of at least two thousand people seeking refuge while in a church, during the genocide that rocked the landlocked country of Rwanda in 1994. Fulgence Kayishema however was arrested in South Africa hiding in a grape farm under a nom de guerre on five charges including two for fraud. He had made an application under a false name seeking asylum and refugee status in South Africa falsifying his nationality as Burundian.
It is estimated that about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu were killed during the Rwandan genocide, which was orchestrated and meticulously executed by the Hutu regime. Kayishema is believed to have ordered the Hutu militia to lob grenades into the Nyange church in which 2,000 Tutsis were hiding in fear of their lives. The church was then doused in fuel and set ablaze and if that was not enough torture for those who could not get out of the blazing church, bulldozers were brought in and the church was razed to the ground. Very few survived the carnage.
Kayishema has been on the run for two decades but having suspected the identity of the man, the prosecutor persuaded former Rwandan soldiers who were refugees in South Africa to provide information. It was this information that broke the camel’s back.
On entering the court carrying a bible that said, “Jesus First’ on its cover, the 62-year-old didn’t seem remorseful or sorry but simply said, “We were sorry to hear what was happening!” Although the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) indicted Kayishema in 2001, he denied all allegations of his role in the murders stating that it was a war and he had nothing to do with it.
He had been fleeing from justice for a number of years, moving to the Democratic Republic of Congo initially and then onto a refugee camp in Tanzania, all the while pretending to be a refugee. He moved then to Mozambique and two years later to Eswatini before finally ending up in South Africa in the late 1990s.
Bail will be vehemently opposed; Kayishema who will be at Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison will eventually be extradited to Rwanda.
