The Rwandan gendarmerie was mandated to ensure public security and conduct preliminary police investigations to identify "troublemakers” and refer them to the Prosecutor for legal proceedings. Instead of upholding this mandate, the Rwandan gendarmerie was involved in establishing a repressive system that targeted Tutsi solely for their ethnicity, lending support to the pogroms instigated by extremist politicians.

Let's begin with October 1990. Among the individuals that the gendarmerie falsely accused and arrested for alleged RPF complicity, none had a pre-existing detention file before being placed in prison or crammed into football stadiums, which were turned into detention centres. For some detainees, these files were fabricated months later by intelligence agents, then forced upon prosecutors, gendarmes, and police inspectors for their signatures. Notably, the police inspection service was under the gendarmerie, notorious for its practice of torture to obtain confessions. Major Laurent Munyakazi led the "criminology” unit where these atrocities occurred. French officers also worked at this unit under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Michel Robardey.

The tragic plight of Tutsis arrested and falsely imprisoned at that time under the guise of being RPF collaborators is extensive. When reading the files written by the Rwandan gendarmerie against these individuals, it is evident that they are all accused of collaboration with the enemy without any concrete material evidence of complicity. Such was the case for 13 employees of the SIEVA printing press owned by Evariste SISI.

The intelligence service first arrested Philippe Nkeramihigo, Head of Personnel, accusing him of holding pro-RPF meetings in his office. They then arrested four other employees: