Ignace Murwanashyaka

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ignace Murwanashyaka (2009)

Ignace Murwanashyaka (born May 14, 1963 in Butare ; † April 16, 2019 in Mannheim , Germany ) was a Rwandan rebel leader. He was a leader of the Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group of the Hutu ethnic group that operates on the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Known for crimes against humanity and war crimes in large numbers, the group was called upon by the United Nations Security Council to disarm and leave the country in 2004. Murwanashyaka was arrested in Germany in 2009 and sentenced to 13 years in prison on September 28, 2015.

Murwanashyaka spent nine and a half years in custody, longer than any other defendant in the Federal Republic of Germany before. He spent the time in solitary confinement .

Life

Training and asylum

Murwanashyaka spent the last years of his schooling at the Groupe Scolaire Officiel de Butare , which was founded by the Brothers of Love , his birthplace in Rwanda. He began his studies in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Murwanashyaka came to Germany in March 1989 as an economics student on a scholarship from Bonn University . He was also in Germany during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 . He moved to Mannheim, married a German there and had at least two children with her. In 2000 he did his doctorate at the University of Cologne on the subject of "Investigations into the demand for money in South Africa".

In February 2000, Murwanashyaka in Germany requested asylum . In his 25-page application, he stated that he was being politically persecuted. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) approved the application within six weeks. He received a permanent residence permit .

FDLR

Between 2001 and 2006, Murwanashyaka traveled back and forth between Germany and the Congo several times and underwent two-month military training in the forests. He was traveling with a Ugandan passport and a German passport that was not in his name. On his first trip to Kinshasa in 2001, he was unanimously elected President of the FDLR by 30 electors. In 2005 he was re-elected with 24 out of 27 votes in Lubumbashi , southern Congo .

Like a general, Murwanashyaka paid a visit to every battalion on his month-long forced march in 2005 from Bukavu to Rutshuru and presented the commanders with bundles of dollar bills, reports one of his 30 personal bodyguards who accompanied him on the month-long journey, the taz . According to US embassy dispatches published on Wikileaks , diplomats with whom Murwanashyaka met in Kinshasa at the time doubted that the latter actually had command of the FDLR. They had the impression that the academic known as the “professor”, who had lived in Europe for the past 14 years, had no real idea of ​​what was happening in Eastern Congo.

In autumn 2014 he was re-elected as FDLR boss, although he had been in custody for five years.

Investigations

In 2006, the Rwandan government, led by former Tutsi militia leader Paul Kagame and the main opponent of the FDLR, filed an extradition request for Murwanashyaka. After the Federal Prosecutor's Office initiated an investigation into “initial suspicion of involvement in crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo”, his right of residence was temporarily withdrawn. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. Due to doubts about the rule of law of the Rwandan judiciary, he was not extradited there. During his visit to Germany in April 2008, the Rwandan President Kagame once again urged the German government to “deal with this problem”. Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to look "at the matter very carefully".

Murwanashyaka was sentenced to six months imprisonment on probation by the Mannheim district court for statements that violated the ban on political activity imposed by the city of Mannheim .

Murwanashyaka was searched by Rwanda through Interpol . An extradition request by Rwanda for involvement in the genocide in Rwanda was not granted. In an interview with the editors of the ARD news magazine Fakt in November 2008, Murwanashyaka himself claimed that he was in control of his militia. According to a department head of the Rwandan Public Prosecutor General, Jean Bosco Mutangana, there are enough witnesses in Rwanda for the German federal prosecutor's office to initiate proceedings against Murwanashyaka under the German International Criminal Code of 2002. The German embassy in Kigali had been informed and had received relevant documents from testimony.

Arrest and War Crimes Trial

On November 17, 2009 Murwanashyaka was arrested in Mannheim on suspicion of having committed crimes against humanity. A UN report incriminates him. In December 2010, the federal prosecutor charged Murwanashyaka and his 49-year-old deputy, Straton Musoni, with war crimes and crimes against humanity. She charged them with 26 crimes against humanity and 39 war crimes allegedly committed by their militias in 2009 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, more than 200 people were killed, numerous women were raped, numerous villages were plundered and pillaged, innocent people were used as protective shields against military attacks and children were forcibly recruited as child soldiers for the militia.

On May 4, 2011, the trial against Murwanashyaka and Musoni began before the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court . It was the first and still only trial in Germany based on the International Criminal Code , according to which foreign war criminals can be brought to justice in German courts. The federal prosecutor responsible for the prosecution of crimes under the International Criminal Code accused the two defendants of failing to prevent crimes under international law committed by the FDLR in 2009 in the Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, contrary to an obligation incumbent on them as a superior ( superior responsibility according to § 4 VStGB; Section 13 (1) StGB). By the summer of 2015, there were over 300 main trial days. The two defendants remained in custody. The Berlin daily taz documented the course of this process with reports on the individual days of the meeting.

According to Murwanashyaka's defense, the trial was politically motivated. Behind this is Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who is hostile to the FDLR . He selected the interpreters for the German investigators during their interrogations in Africa. The statements could have been manipulated and are now no longer verifiable due to the lack of video recording and the names of the witnesses.

In the summer of 2015, the taking of evidence in this international criminal law process was closed. After four years and 314 days of hearing, the Federal Prosecutor's Office applied for life imprisonment in its closing argument on July 15, 2015. The defense counsel for the defendant Murwanashyaka and his co-defendant Straton Musoni requested in their pleadings for acquittal and for the proceedings to be terminated.

prison sentence

After 320 days of trial, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court sentenced the accused to 13 years in prison on September 28, 2015. Previously, he had already spent six years in solitary confinement in the terrorist wing of the high-security prison in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison , without any contact with other prisoners.

The Higher Regional Court justified the sentence by stating that “there was no doubt” that the FDLR under Murwanashyaka's leadership had murdered civilians in the eastern Congolese villages of Mianga, Busurungi , Ciriba and Manje in 2009.

His deputy Straton Musoni was sentenced to 8 years in prison and was released while the verdict was being given.

In 2015 Murwanashyaka was relocated and the solitary confinement remained due to the risk of blackout . The Federal Prosecutor's Office and the court rejected all requests from the defense and suggestions from the prison administration to treat him like a normal prisoner on remand. According to his defense attorney's later assessment, they wanted to "break" Murwanashyaka.

On December 20, 2018, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the judgment on appeal of the defendant and the Federal Public Prosecutor General. As far as Murwanashyaka was convicted of aiding and abetting and as far as the higher regional court had not examined § 7 VStGB, the main hearing should have been repeated. In the opinion of the appellate court, the findings of ring leadership were free of legal errors, so that a new conviction would have been in the room. The verdict against Musoni remained, however. The new process should have started in May 2019.

At the end of January 2019, Murwanashyaka said he suffered from the spine. According to his own statements, he was denied prescribed x-rays in mid-March 2019, as was treatment outside the prison. Murwanashyaka died on April 16, 2019 in the University Hospital Mannheim , where he had already been transferred from the infirmary of the Mannheim correctional facility on April 11 . Two weeks before his death, the Catholic's stricter conditions of detention - including going to the courtyard and being banned from contact during church services - were lifted. In the last weeks of his life he could not get up, could neither walk nor sit. An end to the pre-trial detention was not in sight.

Fonts

  • Investigations into the money demand in South Africa. Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2001, ISBN 3-8288-8232-3 .

Movies

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interpol wanted profile
  2. ^ A b c d Dominic Johnson: Judgment in the FDLR trial in Stuttgart: imprisonment for the president . In: the daily newspaper . ( taz.de [accessed on September 28, 2015]).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Beate Lakotta : Ehrgezeiges Projekt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 2019, pp. 38 f . ( online - April 20, 2019 ).
  4. ↑ 6. Individual Profiles on FDLR leaders in the political branch. , francegenocidetutsi.org, pp. 61/62, accessed on April 19, 2019
  5. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: Controlled from Germany. ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ziviler-friedensdienst.org 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. 2010, p. 60.
  6. ^ A b Simone Schlindwein: Terror in the Eastern Congo. The orders come from Germany. In: taz.de , October 9, 2009.
  7. ↑ David Hecht: Africa's rags. 2012, pp. 22-23.
  8. ↑ http://www.morgenweb.de/nachrichten/sudwest/anklage- sucht-hohe-strafen- 1.2338213
  9. ↑ David Hecht: Africa's rags. 2012, p. 23.
  10. ↑ Mannheim police arrest leaders of Hutu militias
  11. ↑ taz.de: Rwanda's militia leader in Germany
  12. ↑ David Hecht: Africa's rags. 2012, pp. 23–24.
  13. ↑ Is that what a warlord looks like? In: The time. July 30, 2009.
  14. ↑ Search advertisement ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2011 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 / www.interpol.int
  15. ↑ JURIST - Paper Chase: Suspected Rwanda was criminal arrested in Germany
  16. ^ ARD Magazin FAKT: Wanted Congolese militia chief in Germany. , November 3, 2008; Manuscript for the article (PDF)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.mdr.de  
  17. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: The orders come from Germany . In: The daily newspaper . October 10, 2009.
  18. ↑ German police arrest Hutu militia leader. In: Spiegel Online . November 17, 2009 (online)
  19. ^ Dossier of horror. In: Spiegel Online , December 4, 2009 (online)
  20. ^ Federal Prosecutor's Office brings charges against Rwandans. In: Spiegel Online . December 17, 2010.
  21. ↑ cf. First international criminal law trial in Stuttgart started at de.reuters.com, May 4, 2011 (accessed on May 4, 2011).
  22. ↑ taz.de
  23. ↑ The nice man from Mannheim and the bad war in Africa. In: Stern.de , May 4, 2011.
  24. ↑ http://www.morgenweb.de/nachrichten/sudwest/anklage- sucht-hohe-strafen- 1.2338213
  25. ↑ taz.de
  26. ↑ http://www.taz.de/!5589026/
  27. ↑ Dominic Johnson : Ex-FDLR leader has to leave. taz.de from February 16, 2018, accessed on December 21, 2018
  28. ↑ BGH overturns judgment against militia leaders in the Congo. In: tagesschau.de. December 20, 2018, accessed December 20, 2018 .
  29. ↑ taz.de: President of the FDLR rebels is dead , accessed on April 17, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Murwanashyaka, Ignace
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Rwandan leader of the Forces Démocratiques de la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR)
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Butare , Rwanda
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 2019
Place of death Mannheim