Protais Mpiranya, a top fugitive of the Genocide against the Tutsi has been confirmed dead. According to a statement from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), following a challenging and intensive investigation, “the OTP (Office of the Prosecutor) has determined that Mpiranya died on 5 October 2006 in Harare, Zimbabwe.” A major in the ex-Rwandan armed forces, Mpiranya is believed to have been a very influential figure during the Genocide against the Tutsi. He commanded the Presidential Guard (PG), an elite unit that took immediate charge after the death of former President Juvenal Habyarimana on the night of April 6, 1994, and is blamed for the slaughter of top politicians as the Genocide unfolded. Among the politicians killed at the onset of the Genocide were then Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and her security detail of 10 Belgian peacekeepers. They were slaughtered a few hours after the downing of Habyarimana’s plane blamed on extremist elements within his party and military. The attack on the former Premier’s home was, according to reports, led by Mpiranya himself. In 2000, the ICTR indicted him for having instructed, supervised, encouraged, and assisted the crimes carried out by the PG. He was charged with eight counts of genocide and complicity in genocide, murder, extermination, rape, persecution, other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity, and murder as a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Mpiranya is the last of the major fugitives indicted by the ICTR, others being Augustin Bizimana, who was confirmed dead in 2020, and Félicien Kabuga who was arrested in Paris the same year. He was one of the subjects of the US Reward for Justice Programme, with a US$5 million bounty on his head. In September 2012, after years of denial, the Zimbabwean government admitted that Mpiranya could be hiding there and using various assumed names that include Theophase Mahuku and James Kakule to evade arrest. It was then reported that the fugitive coordinated his business empire, then said to also stretch to other countries in that region, from Harare. At the time, previous reports indicated that Mpiranya was being protected by senior officials within Zimbabwe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF. But Harare persistently distanced itself from such claims. In August 2020, Serge Brammertz, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said they were putting serious focus on working with different countries to look for Mpiranya and bring him to book. “The work regarding the remaining fugitives continues. We are actively looking for Mpiranya and he is our priority. We are following a number of leads in a number of countries and I am still calling on the international community, governments and countries to have those arrests take place,” he said then.
