News of the death of Lieutenant Colonel Aloys Simba, a convict of the Genocide against the Tutsi who died in Benin on Tuesday, July 4, is continuing to spread.

He was a top official in the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and was a member of the Comrades of the ‘Fifth of July’ who participated in a coup that brought former president Juvenal Habyarimana to power in 1973. He was a very close friend of Habyarimana and also a member of ‘Akazu’ – an inner circle of Habyarimana’s allies.

He died a day before ‘Fifth of July’ that would have marked 50 years since Habyarimana’s coup that he was part of.

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Simba was found guilty of playing a significant role in the genocide, where he participated in a joint criminal enterprise to kill Tutsis at Murambi Technical School and Kaduna Parish in the former prefecture of Gikongoro (now in the Southern Province) on 21 April 1994.

He was arrested in 2001 in Senegal and tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which sentenced him to 25 years in jail in 2005.

He was found Simba guilty of committing genocide and crimes against humanity.

However, International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) later granted him early release in 2018.

The trial chamber had found him to have been among the prominent people who supported and coordinated the Murambi Technical School attack, an operation conducted by the Interahamwe militiamen backed by the gendarmes on April 21, 1994.

The chamber described the attack as "a highly coordinated operation” involving the support of local authorities and prominent personalities such as Simba. The chamber noted that this operation was conducted for about 12 hours on a single day and involved the killing of thousands of Tutsis.

He was also found to have distributed weapons at Murambi Technical School and Kaduha Parish and gave encouragement and approval to the assailants by virtue of his prominent status in Rwandan society.

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After his release he was granted an early release in 2019, a decision that was opposed by the government of Rwanda in vain.

He went on to settle in Benin, where he has been living until his death. He was 85 years old at his death.

Simba was born on December 28, 1938 in Musebeya Municipality, Gikongoro Prefecture.

He joined the Kigali Military Academy in 1961. During Habyarimana’s regime, Simba served as the Minister of Information and a Member of Parliament.

He was discharged from the then Rwandan Armed Forces (Ex-FAR) and retired in 1992.