A Swedish court on Friday, July 23, sentenced a Rwandan man identified as Jean Uwizeye, to life in prison for murdering his wife Diane Ingabire, in an incident that happened in November last year.
Both Uwizeye, 38, and Ingabire 31, had moved to Sweden in 2018. It has since been established that Ingabire had feared for her life and notified relatives and authorities. Her husband had threatened her on several occasions accusing her of infidelity.
Reports from Sweden also indicate that Uwizeye was the first to report the death of his wife on November 19, 2021, but later all evidence would link the homicide to him.
In delivering the ruling, the Nacka district court judge in Stockholm also ruled that Uwizeye be deported back to Rwanda where he would serve his sentence.
"It has been established that Jean Uwizeye has killed his wife through violence in their shared home," the judgement reads in part.
The couple had two children that lived with them in Sweden. By the time of Ingabire’s demise, the duo had separated rooms and according to Swedish police investigations, and Uwizeye on an ill-fated day used his spare keys to access the house and murdered his wife.
Following the ruling, Ingabire’s family lawyer, Jessica Sandberg, said it is a great relief to the family since justice has been served and that it was important for the family to know exactly what happened to their daughter.
How the murder happened
It was exactly 17:37 on November 19, 2021, when the man called Swedish police on 112. It was a Friday. The caller, who later identified himself as Uwizeye, claimed that he had returned home from a park where he had taken the children to play only to find his wife lying in a pool of blood in the hallway.
However, Uwizeye seemed calm and unfazed according to the rescue personnel who were the first responders on the scene.
At the exact scene, police found a ceiling lamp was broken and a bloody footprint was visible on the floor. Next to Ingabire's hand was an earring in the shape of a white pearl.
Ingabire was a statistician and the sole breadwinner at their home.
Both Ingabire and her husband had told people around them that they had problems in the relationship. For Ingabire, she had claimed that her husband was frequently spying on her and she described him as jealous and convinced that she is unfaithful.
Investigations retrieved Ingabire’s phone recordings of her calls and chats with the husband and her family members which the court referred to in deciding that her killer was indeed her husband.
After the murder, the police found an empty package for a wireless camera in an unplugged freezer. It emerges during the investigation that, without her knowledge, the man has installed a surveillance camera that allows him to film her.
Throughout the trial, Uwizeye denied having killed his wife.