By Frank Steven Ruta
The Rwandan government has deployed 1,000 men in a joint force including 700 Rwandan Special Forces as well as 300 policemen from elite units.
According to Colonel Ronald Rwivanga, the RDF (Rwanda Defence Force) spokesperson, the Rwandan contingent is made up of members of the police forces and troops well trained “to face terrorism and problems linked to the security”.
This contingent is under the command of Major General Innocent Kabandana, a Rwandan criminal renowned for his war crimes committed on Rwandan soil and abroad.
Major General Kabandana is seconded by Brigadier General Pascal Muhizi (promoted from the rank of colonel, two months ago) who at times has ordered the killing of civilians in Rubavu and Rutsiro Districts, accusing them of being members of genocidaires families, friends or relatives to FDLR members, fraudsters and those suspected of being thieves ( (cfr: Human Rights Report “All thieves must be killed” Appendix Page 1-5 : https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/rwanda0717_web_1.pdf )
While RDF Commander in Rubavu and Rutsiro districts, Brigadier General Pascal Muhizi used to have people killed, mostly by shooting them, others slaughtered or tortured to death.
The third criminal is Chief Superintendent of Police Silas Karekezi, the commander of the Rwandan police battalion sent to Mozambique alongside RDF troops. CSP Karekezi is not only a serial killer but also an instigator of several arbitrary arrests in Rwanda, and is one of the main key officers who coordinate the killings in Kigali secret safe-houses, where people are tortured day and night, in order to confess guilt to the crimes they never committed.
CSP Karekezi is in charge of an illegal famous detention centre known as “kwa Gacinya”, which was previously lead by another serial Killer Gacinya Rubagumya. CSP Karekezi led the operation that brutally kidnapped from her home the Rwandan Social activist Mrs Idamange Iryamugwiza in February 2021.
Back to General Kabandana, he is mainly accused of the assassination of Catholic Bishops in Gakurazo, Southern Province, in June 1994.
General Kabandana left irreparable wounds behind him throughout his career in the 157th Battalion of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (armed wing of the RPF) then, commanded by another war criminal, General Fred Ibingira.
For a five year-term Major General Innocent Kabandana served as a military attaché at the Rwandan Embassy in Washington, where he coordinated the manhunt of Rwandan dissidents exiled in the United States of America and Canada.
In 2019, in capacities of the Rwandan special forces commander, Gen Innocent Kabandana planned, prearranged and commanded operations of the Rwandan special forces sent to South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a triple mission: First: to eliminate all Hutu refugees (men) and repatriate by force women and children, the second mission being to create and fight in the name of RED Tabara, destabilizing Burundi from the DRC, and the third mission being to displace Banyamulenge from their territory, camping into Minembwe highlands, with a view to uproot all resistance groups suspected of being allied with General Kayumba Nyamwasa and/or other Rwandan armed groups.
This time around, Gen. Kabandana, the great dissident hunter, is the commander of a joint Rwandan special forces mission sent to Mozambique, one of the southern African countries that is home to large numbers of Rwandan refugees and / or businessmen.
Rwandans living in Mozambique and other countries in southern Africa fear that the deployment of Rwandan forces in Mozambique will be a faster and tricky way to hunt them down.
