Religious leaders yesterday joined other Rwandans in denouncing the recent arrest in Germany of the Director General of State Protocol, Rose Kabuye.

Kabuye was arrested over the weekend by German police at Frankfurt airport as she arrived in the European country on state duty.

The arrest was a result of a controversial warrant issued by French judge Jean Louis Bruguière.

In a joint statement by the Forum for Religious Organisations in Rwanda, the clerics called the arrest a malicious attack on Rwandan society and called upon the relevant authorities to act and bring justice to the Rwandan population.

"This innocent woman who was arrested is a mother who was on State duties at the time of her arrest and the document upon which she was arrested (indictment) is baseless and we had previously denounced it together with other similar indictments,” said Swalleh Habimana the Mufti of Rwanda who also chairs the forum.

He referred to a declaration by this forum released in June this year, which called upon the international community to disregard the indictments by foreign judges saying that they are engineered by individuals with a mission to tarnish Rwanda’s image abroad.

They had issued the declaration following Bruguiere’s indictments of nine officers formerly with the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) and other indictments by Spanish Judge Andreu Fernando Merrelles.

"We are dismayed by the fact that our plea to the international community to disregard these indictments fell on deaf ears, but we shall continue, through peaceful means,” said Habimana at a function held at the Episcopal Church in Biryogo in which all members of the forum were represented.

Father Vincent Gasana, who represented the Catholic Church at the forum, said that the International Community has deliberately refused to look beyond the indictments and focus on the root cause of the problem.

"The problem is some people, who for their own reasons, have persistently promoted divisionism among Rwandans and these are the people behind these indictments…the International Community should look at the actual problem,” said Gasana.

Other speakers included Monsignor Eustache Karangwa from the Alliance for Pentecostal Churches in Rwanda who is also its president.

He said that he was surprised at how a person holding a diplomatic passport can just be arrested without even due regard to her status.

"This is surprising for a person who was preparing the President’s visit to be arrested and worse still, over such fictitious allegations brought about by the so-called European ‘elites’” Karangwa said.

All the indictments are based on allegations that these officers, who were part of the RPA which stopped the 1994 Genocide of Tutsis that left over one million people dead, played a role in shooting down the plane that was carrying former president Juvenal Habyarimana.

The clerics said that the indictments should not only be protested by Rwandans, but the entire African Union because they have a connection with the colonialism to which they were subjected by the Europeans over the past years. 

They agreed to encourage their respective congregations to pray for this cause throughout the upcoming weekend.

The denouncement of Kabuye’s arrest by religious leaders follows Monday’s peaceful demonstrations by Kigali City residents who met in their thousands at the German Embassy in Kigali.

Others who have condemned Kabuye’s arrest include the Ugandan Government, which through their embassy in Kigali ‘condemned in the strongest terms the arrest and called for an immediate unconditional release of Kabuye by the German authorities.

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