Théoneste Bagosora

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Colonel Théoneste Bagosora (born August 16, 1941 in Giciye in northeast Rwanda ) is a former Rwandan military man . Bagosora belongs to the Hutu ethnic group . He is considered the leading military planner of the genocide in Rwanda , in which around 500,000 to one million people were murdered from April to July 1994. He was arrested in 1996 and sentenced on December 14, 2011 to 35 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for his role in the genocide.

Military career

After attending Catholic mission schools, Bagosora began military training. He received a diploma from the Kigali Officers School in 1964 and left it with the rank of sub-lieutenant . As one of the first Rwandan officers, he continued his military studies in France and Belgium .

In parallel to his training in Europe, Bagosora was promoted to lieutenant in April 1967 . In 1970 he rose to the rank of captain . Seven years later he was promoted to major . In 1981 Bagosora was promoted to lieutenant colonel. 1 October 1989 the appointed him the Rwandan military to colonel .

Bagosora was deputy commander of the École Supérieure Militaire in Kigali and commander of the Kanombe barracks, east of Rwanda's capital , before being appointed chief of staff in the Ministry of Defense in June 1992 . After retiring from military service on September 23, 1993, Bagosora continued to serve as chief of staff for the defense minister. He held this position until mid-July 1994. August Bizimana , Rwanda's defense minister, brought him back to active military service during the genocide on May 21, 1994.

Planning and preparing the genocide

Impending loss of power and planning of genocide

Bagosora belonged to the inner circle of the country's political elite around President Juvénal Habyarimana , to whose wife Agathe he is related. This circle almost exclusively consisted of Hutu who, like Habyarimana, came from the north or northeast of Rwanda.

As early as the late 1980s, national and international demands for democratization and pluralism were putting the one-party state of Habyarimanas under pressure. This pressure has increased since October 1990 because the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel force , which was composed mainly of exiled Tutsi , repeatedly launched successful attacks on state and military facilities in Rwanda from Uganda .

Like other radical Hutu, Bagosora was an avowed opponent of the Rwandan Tutsi. He considered them illegal intruders and accomplices in the rebel army. According to the indictment before the International Criminal Court for Rwanda, he formed a criminal association with like-minded radicals from late 1990 to mid-1994 in order to develop and implement a plan to annihilate the Tutsi and at the same time to eliminate Hutu oppositionists. In this way the power of the Habyarimana circle should be preserved. Elements of this plan were the promotion of ethnic violence and hatred, the formation and training of Hutu militias , the purchase and distribution of weapons to Hutu, and the preparation of extensive death lists.

Memorandum for declaration of enemy

Extract from Bagosora's diary (February 1992). Here he outlined elements of a program for "civil self-defense".

On December 4, 1991, Habyarimana set up a military commission to draft a memorandum. The central question was: What must be done to defeat the enemy in military, media and political terms? Bagosora took over the chairmanship of this commission. From September 1992, the decisive part of the memorandum was distributed within the Rwandan army in a targeted and broad way. The decisive passages of the memorandum were also found on leaflets of a radical Hutu party in September 1992. After these passages, the "main enemy" was composed of the following groups:

  • Tutsi refugees
  • Members of the Ugandan Army
  • Tutsi living in Rwanda
  • Hutu who are dissatisfied with the Habyarimana regime
  • Unemployed people inside and outside Rwanda
  • Foreigners married to Tutsi women
  • Nilohamite peoples living in the region
  • criminal

“Anyone who supports the main enemy in any way” was also defined as a secondary enemy. The memorandum assumed that the “enemy” already held influential positions in politics and administration. In the document, several well-known people were also named as enemies. According to the indictment against Bagosora, the content and use of the memorandum by the army leadership encouraged and encouraged ethnic hatred and violence.

From October 1990 to April 1994, Tutsi and Hutu oppositionists were repeatedly victims of violence and massacres, which were declared as revenge for the RPF's military successes. The authorities either encouraged or tolerated the violence. The perpetrators were never punished. "These attacks, in which around 2,000 Tutsi and several Hutu were massacred, were the forerunners of the genocide of 1994." According to human rights groups, Bagosora is said to have played a leading role in the formation and control of death squads .

Death lists and distribution of weapons

In 1992, Bagosora instructed members of the General Staff to compile lists of "enemies" and their supporters. These lists were drawn up and then regularly updated. They were used by militias such as the Interahamwe , among others, during the genocide .

Bagosora helped arm militias and selected civilians who were later directly involved in the genocide. This assistance in the arming of non-military groups of people related, for example, in February 1993 to his homeland Giciye.

Resistance to the Arusha Agreement

Bagosora took part in negotiations under the Arusha Agreement . However, he strongly opposed any concession to the RPF. He finally left the negotiating table for Rwanda, saying that he would "prepare the apocalypse". Bagosora spoke several times in front of witnesses that the solution to the conflict would lie in such an "apocalypse" in which all Tutsi would be destroyed; only then can a lasting peace be expected. Just a few days before the start of the genocide on April 6, 1994, Bagosora repeated that the only solution to the country's crisis was to destroy the Tutsi.

Leading position during the genocide

Chair of the crisis team

After President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on the evening of April 6, 1994, Bagosora took advantage of the absence of other leading members of the Rwandan army to install himself as head of a “crisis team” made up of senior officers. In this situation, Bagosora also sought to take over political power, but this was rejected by the majority of the crisis team. He repeatedly refused to consult Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana , who held the highest office in the state after the president's death.

Government members and Belgian UNAMIR soldiers are murdered

In the hours when the crisis team was established under Bagosora, Agathe Uwilingiyimana was murdered by members of the military. Other members of the government were also killed in the first hours of the genocide. The first victims also included ten Belgian soldiers who were part of the contingent of the UN peacekeeping force UNAMIR . They were killed trying to protect the prime minister. Bagosora was in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene at the time of the crime and knew that the Belgians were in danger, but did not intervene. The murder of the Belgian soldiers led to the rapid withdrawal of almost the entire UNAMIR mission from Rwanda.

Establishment of a transitional government

On the morning of April 8, 1994, Bagosora gathered a select group of politicians to form a transitional government and appoint a president. The transitional government was composed of people who all belonged to the radical Hutu and Habyarimana supporters. As president was Théodore Sindikubwabo appointed. With these decisions the Arusha Agreement, which provided for a division of political and military power between the Habyarimana supporters, the Hutu oppositionists and the RPF, became obsolete. The interim government implemented the existing plans to carry out the genocide of the Tutsi and to eliminate the Hutu oppositionists.

Orders to Genocide

Mummified bodies in the Murambi Technical School in the Murambi district of southern Rwanda

According to the prosecution, Bagosora issued orders for genocide, knew that it was being carried out and refused to intervene against these acts.

The presidential guard, the parakommandos and the reconnaissance battalion received direct orders to carry out the genocide through Bagosora. He is also said to have personally commissioned the Interahamwe in Remera , a town in western Rwanda, to start the murder. On April 7, 1994, he also radioed the Rwandan people to stay in their homes. According to the prosecution, this call facilitated the killing of those on the prepared death lists.

According to witnesses, Bagosora was there on April 11, 1994 when the Interahamwe and units of the Rwandan army surrounded the École Technique Officielle in Kigali to get Tutsi who had fled there. A large group of these Tutsi were forced to walk and massacred in the process.

Escape and trial

After the victory of the rebel army RPF, Bagosora fled the country in July 1994. First he settled in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo ). There he arranged for weapons to be obtained for the Hutu militias who had fled to Zaire and sought to recapture Rwanda. According to a UN report, the weapons are said to have been delivered from South Africa via the Seychelles to Goma , a city in Zaire on the border with Rwanda. In 1995 Bagosora settled in Cameroon . On March 9, 1996, he was in Yaounde , the capital of Cameroon, arrested and on 23 January 1997 to Arusha ( Tanzania spent).

The indictment charged Bagosora with twelve counts of genocide , crimes against humanity and serious war crimes . Since the beginning of April 2002, Bagosora and three other senior military officials (Gratien Kabaligi, Anatole Nsengiyumva and Aloys Ntabakuze ) have been tried in the 1st Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Bagosora pleaded not guilty on all charges. He also denies that genocide took place in Rwanda.

After a total of 408 days of negotiations, the process was completed at the beginning of June 2007. On December 18, 2008, Bagosora was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison . On appeal, the sentence was reduced to 35 years.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The number of genocide victims fluctuates in literature and reporting. The most common is 800,000 to a million. Occasionally there is talk of more than a million dead. Alison Des Forges gives a more cautious estimate in her study, which was commissioned by Human Rights Watch . She names a number of around 500,000 dead. However, she also assumes that around three quarters of all Tutsi were killed.
  2. ↑ Plain facade . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1996, pp. 120 ( online ).
  3. ↑ The information about Belgium comes from Biedere facade . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1996, pp. 120 ( online ).
  4. ↑ See first instance judgment of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda against Bagosora et al. of December 18, 2008, Section 45.
  5. ↑ On the posts Bagosora held during his career, cf. the first instance judgment of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda against Bagosora et al. of December 18, 2008, sections 46-50.
  6. ↑ Indictment against Bagosora, page 18. ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / unictr.org
  7. ↑ Alison Des Forges : No witness is allowed to survive. The genocide in Rwanda , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002. ISBN 3-930908-80-8 , p. 143.
  8. ↑ Cf. on Bagosora as the chairman of the commission, the indictment against Bagosora, page 19. ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. There also the quoted key question for the Commission. For the contents of the memorandum and its effects, see Alison Des Forges: No Witness May Survive , pp. 91–93. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / unictr.org
  9. ↑ Alison Des Forges: No witness is allowed to survive. , P. 119.
  10. ↑ See Colonel Apocalypse , in: Time , European edition, June 10, 1996.
  11. ↑ Indictment against Bagosora, page 21. ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / unictr.org
  12. ↑ Plain facade . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1996, pp. 120 ( online ).
  13. ^ Rwanda: Bagosora Case - Lawyers Close Arguments . Reported in The Times (Kigali) June 5, 2007.
  14. ↑ Life sentence for mass murder of Tutsis , report in the newspaper Die Welt from December 18, 2008.
  15. ↑ Rwanda genocide: Bagosora's life sentence reduced , (accessed December 18, 2011).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on July 1, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Bagosora, Théoneste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Rwandan colonel, military planner of the Rwandan genocide
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Giciye , Rwanda