Genocide suspects working in South African hospital

A Rwandan couple wanted for Genocide crimes is working in a hospital in South Africa, The New Times has learnt. According to an article by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Dr Pierre Mugabo and his wife Felicité Musanganire, are illegally working at the pharmacology department of the University of Western Cape.

Monday, February 15, 2010

A Rwandan couple wanted for Genocide crimes is working in a hospital in South Africa, The New Times has learnt.

According to an article by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Dr Pierre Mugabo and his wife Felicité Musanganire, are illegally working at the pharmacology department of the University of Western Cape.

SABC quotes a government official as saying the two have not renewed their work permits since 1997.

Musanganire, who works with the University in an HIV/AIDS Centre and where she also studied, was sentenced in absentia to twenty five years in 2006 by a Gacaca court in the Southern Province.

Reports indicate that she was found guilty of establishing a road block opposite FAUCON Hotel in Butare town, where she always checked identity cards of Tutsi, and those identified were killed near the National University Library.

A daughter of Rwanda’s first President Dominique Mbonyumutwa, Musanganire was also pinned for complicity and conspiracy in the killing of Prof.

Claver Karenzi and conspiring with Dr. Eugene Rwamucyo in the death of one Cecile Nyirasikubwabo, an employee of CUSP-the University Centre for Public Health.

Her husband is reported not to have clean hands either. He was accused with nine others in the famous ‘trial of doctors’ by the Gacaca court of Ngoma Sector, Southern Province last year.

They were found guilty of Genocide crimes committed at the hospital and sentenced to terms ranging from 19 to 30 years in jail.

Other doctors that were convicted and sentenced were; Pascal Habarugira, Jean Népo Nsengiyumva, Séraphin Bararengana, Ignace Bigirimana, Dr Munyemana, Alphonse Karemera, Bruno Ngirabatware, Geoffroy Gatera and Charles Sijyeniyo.

Another newspaper, The Guardian, quotes the South African university as saying that it will continue to employ Mugabo on grounds that charges against him had yet to be brought before court.

By press time yesterday, efforts to reach the President of the Gacaca court, Ngoma Sector, Jean Bosco Nkuruzinza for a comment on the cases of the couple were futile. 

The couple joins a long list of Genocide fugitives still at large with many of them enjoying safe haven in various parts of the world.

Ends