The United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is training the Rwandan police force.

Two senior FBI officers are training forty Rwandan police investigators on modern interviewing and interrogating techniques.

Michael Stephens, the Chief Security Officer from Washington and Scott Bean, the Supervisory Special Agent from the Washington Field Office are conducting the training.

Assistant Commissioner General of Police, Cyprian Gatete, said there is a mutual cooperation between the two institutions.

Gatete, the Director of the Police Training Department said: "It (FBI) is a reputable institution the world over and Rwanda Police Force is glad to share experience with them.”

He said the training is a result of the good cooperation the Rwandan government and the USA.

The US Ambassador to Rwanda, Michael Arriet, who officially opened the training session yesterday remarked: "Rwanda is developing a professional police force and the FBI Academy is sharing it’s experience on modern techniques of interrogating and interviewing.”

He said that three different specific training sessions have already been conducted on counter-terrorism, criminal investigation and cyber crimes investigation.

The ongoing training, according to Gatete, is also intended to equip the police force with FBI skills to obtain facts on crimes for the justice department.

"This will ease the justice system because our crime files will be having details and facts obtained by our investigators,” Gatete said.

Also attending the course are two Burundian police officers.
Gatete said this is another cooperation Rwandan police has with Burundi.

"This is a country emerging from conflict and they are our neighbours, we have to help them in such issues.”

Ambassador Arriet said the move intends to reduce excessive force to obtain information, a technique that is widely used in Africa and other Western countries.

"In the modern world, the society is a partner to the police and it respects the police force because they know the police will treat them like a family,” the Ambassador remarked.

The FBI is a well-known institution with skills of dealing with terrorist and foreign intelligence threats in the US. 

FBI has field attaché (legal offices) in several African countries.

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