Court remands Minicofin director over rape charges

KIGALI -A Ministry of Finance (Minicofin) director has been detained on allegations of defiling his 14-year-old housemaid.Jean Jacques Nyirubutama, the Director of External Financing, is accused of raping Grace Itangishaka. On Tuesday, he appeared before Nyarugenge Court of Higher Instance and was sent on remand at Kigali Central Prison for thirty days. Prosecution charged that Nyirubutama raped Itangishaka on August 18 at his home in Niboyi, Kicukiro District while his wife was in hospital attending to their sick child. Itangishaka was reportedly given Frw200 by her colleagues Jean Damascene Rusakaza and Kubwimana Bosco for transport to report the case to police. Nyirubutama denied the charges but Judge Marciana Mukagasana ruled that “basing on information given by witnesses and reports from medical examinations conducted, there are strong reasons to believe that he may have committed the crime.” The judge ruled: “Two house workers, Bosco Kubwimana and Jean Damascene Rusakaza, reported to the investigation department that Nyirubutama seduced Itangishaka to get inside his room where he raped her from before giving her Frw5,000 not to tell anybody about it.” “We have also found out from the doctor’s report that the complainant’s female organ was damaged. We have decided and ordered that Nyirabutama be sent to serve a provisional detention of thirty days in Kigali central prison as investigations into his case go on,” he said. Through his lawyer Athanase Rutabingwa, Nyirabutama dismissed the allegations as false saying that the accuser is the only provider of the information and that there is no any witness. “We are going to appeal against the court order today (yesterday), because this is not true,” Rutabingwa said yesterday. If found guilty, Nyirubutama risks getting a 25-year jail term.Ends

National

Court remands Minicofin director over rape charges