Isaac Kamali, a genocide suspect living in France, was last week September 16, charged by a French anti-terror prosecutor for involvement in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, in Rwanda.
The naturalized French citizen is one among the many genocide fugitives living in France, having obtained citizenship there in 2002. He is wanted by Rwanda for participation in the 1994 Genocide, in the prefecture of Gitarama.
According to 50-year-old Jean Marie Vianney Kabega, a genocide survivor from Kamali's home region of Nyabikenke in Gitarama, the former was very decisive when clarifying that the Tutsi were to be targeted for elimination.
Kabega recalls a day in April 1994 when Kamali along with other influential people including the then Minister for youth and coordinator of the Genocide in Gitarama prefecture, Callixte Nzabonimana, convened a meeting at the Remera trading centre in the then Nyabikenke Commune.
"He (Kamali) arrived in a red car. I remember his car. At the end of their meeting he came outside and announced loudly that ‘let’s not mince words anymore. Let’s go out and sensitize the masses. Let people know who the enemy is so they don’t fight each other yet the enemy is known’.”
Kabega told The New Times that by clarifying who the enemy was, Kamali was pointing at the Tutsi as the enemy that all the Hutu in the area had to eliminate.
That night, soon after Kamali’s announcement, police fired gun shots at the Tutsi who had gathered in the area.
"That was the night of April 14, towards April 15. The next morning, it was clear that his message had been clear because all hell broke loose. We were attacked and people fled,” Kabega said.
Kabega fled to Kabgayi where he hid until June 2 when the RPA rebels rescued him.
Kamali, according to Kabega, actually left Kigali and returned home to coordinate the killings in Nyabikenke.
Paul Butwatwa Paul, 45, a survivor from Ndiza area in former Gitarama prefecture, recalls Kamali as "a feared Interahamwe who organised meetings to plan massacres.”
"His sister was Bagosora’s wife and he was also from our area only that he worked in Kigali before returning to coordinate genocide,” Butwatwa told The New Times.
In March 2003, Kamali was tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison by a Rwandan court. He was initially sentenced to death, but since capital punishment was abolished in Rwanda, his sentence was commuted to life.
He was arrested in France, in June 2007, after being sent back from the United States, under the terms of an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda in October 2004.
Before rendering its decision in February 2007, the prosecution in France asked the Court of Appeal of Paris to have the Rwandan government specify the charges against Kamali.
Rwanda requested for his extradition for his alleged participation in the genocide in the prefecture of Gitarama. The other reason was so that he can serve his life sentence.
In 2008, the Paris Appeals Court rejected his extradition to Rwanda.
Kamali, an in-law to Col Théoneste Bagosora, the principal architect of the 1994 Genocide, was employed at the ministry of transport (MINITRAPE) during the genocide.
Right from 1990, Kamali is known to have harassed the Tutsi in collaboration with Minister Joseph Nzirorera and other Hutu extremist leaders. The extremists were led by Alphonse Ntilivamunda, an in-law to then President Juvénal Habyarimana who recently died in Belgium.
Sources say that Kamali first got involved in harassing and killing the Tutsi as early as in the 1970s when he worked as a teacher at a technical school.