KIGALI - When about Rwf 3billion was sent to help over 2000 orphans left vulnerable by the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, little did the intended beneficiaries know that genocide suspects would later access the funds.

The money was sent between 1998 -2003 by Italia Solidale, a Church-afflicted NGO in Italy, to help the vulnerable children go to school.

Instead, Agnes Mukamurara, now a Genocide convict, got the funds and used it for her own enrichment, leaving the orphans in the cold.

Guardians of the orphans had in the past accused Mukamurara of participating in the Genocide. She was also accused of using the orphans’ funds to help set up businesses for other genocide suspects.

They demanded that the Kigali based Italia Solidale office sack her., but before it could be implemented, a Gacaca Court in Gatsata, Gasabo District, on March 24, convicted and sentenced Mukamurara to 15 years imprisonment for her role in the Genocide.

She is currently serving her sentence in Kigali Central Prison commonly known as ‘1930’.

During the genocide, Mukamurara is said to have lured many Tutsi women to her house under the pretext of hiding them, but only to alert Interahamwe militias who would come and rape them.

"Justice has been done. She was a terror during the dark days,” says Pelagie Mukamurinda, a Genocide survivor who is among those who pinned Mukamurara in the Gacaca Court.

Mukamurara was heading Italia Solidale in Gatsata and Jari both in Gasabo District. She is also accused of creating ‘ghost’ orphans to cheat the NGO.

Augustin Nkusi, prosecution spokesperson described the incident as highly regrettable. He said it was a big irony for a genocide suspect to turn around and try to become a survivors’ benefactor.

"It was a mockery,” Nkusi said. "Some people and organizations have in the past turned the plight of Genocide survivors as a means of making ends meet.”

"She would ask children to choose between giving them money or bringing back their dead parents,” one guardian Jean Baptiste Ndoriyobigya living in Kigali remembered sadly.

The hearing of a case involving the mismanagement of orphans’ funds against Mukamurara together with twelve other members of Italia Solidale will start on May 7 in Nyarugenge Court of Higher Instance.

Investigations by The New Times indicate that Mukamurara’s husband, Dennis Sibomana, also benefited from the survivors’ funds before he fled to Kenya.

Sibomana was in 2006 convicted and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment by Gatsata Gacaca court, but he managed to escape before he was arrested.

The New Times has also learnt that Mukamurara and Sibomana used the orphans’ funds to buy 2,500 chickens. 

Kigali Italia Solidale was set up in 1997. Years later, the NGO’s bona fide beneficiaries accused those in charge of allegedly using orphans as a means of raising billions of francs for their own enrichment.

In 2006, guardians of the orphans petitioned the Supreme Court to institute an independent audit to unearth the alleged scam.

Last year, an audit by the Supreme Court indicated that about Rwf 3bn had been received from Italy with very little activities on the ground to justify how the money was spent.

In 2006, police arrested Gerald Ndamage and Faustin Ngendahayo, the then leaders of Rwanda Italia Solidale and dragged them to court but were later released provisionally pending investigations into their case.

Both Ngendahayo and Ndamage have pleaded not guilty.

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