KIGALI - Four men are in police custody in connection with the assassination of a taxi driver, Augustin Bugingo who was found strangled on March 12 in a Kigali suburb.
Jean Baptiste Yafashije and Emmanuel Uwayisaba confesed to murdering the deceased, saying they wanted to steal his car. The other two in custody are Claude Musabyimana and Jean Marie Imanaturikumwe, who were contracted to look for a client to buy the car. The quartet was arrested Sunday night. Police spokesman, Inspector Willy Marcel Higiro, said that Yafashije and Uwayisaba would be charged with assassination while investigations proceed on the other two to establish whether they had any role in the homicide.

He revealed that Remera police station was tipped off that there was a dead body in Masoro village in Gasabo

District. The body was immediately taken to Kanombe Military hospital.
"Police used evidence from the crime scene to conduct investigations. It took time to make the arrests but when we got the first suspect, we managed to get all of them in a short time,” Higiro said. Bugingo’s body which was laid to rest on March 13 in Nyawera, Kayonza district,.He was strangled using a wire.

Uwayisaba said that they took the dead body out of the car and Yafashije drove it off. They left the car in Jali in Gasabo district after it ran out of fuel.

"We killed him, I left Umutara (Eastern Province) after Yafashije convinced me that there was a ‘job’ in Kigali that would earn me Frw200,000, he later told me that we would kill someone to get the money,” said Uwayisaba.

Both the duo and the deceased hail from Kayonza District in the Eastern Province.
Bugingo left a wife after eight months of marriage. He has been working in Remera, stationed at Total petrol station.

The deceased’s wife, Olive Uwamurera, said that more investigations should be carried out since both her brother-in-law and an uncle have received apologies over the phone  from an anonymous person who confessed to killing Bugingo because of a debt he owed him.

"There is someone we are suspecting…we have given the phone number (which was used to send the messages to the two people) to police to trace the owner,” Uwamurera said.
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