Three KIM students discharged as driver’s case goes to prosecution

KIGALI - Three students of Kigali Institute of Management (KIM) who sustained injuries when a speeding minibus rammed into a Genocide commemoration procession last Thursday, have been discharged from Kigali Central Hospital (CHUK). Another, identified as Clementine Mukasekuru, is still hospitalized. The four were among five victims of the “accident” which claimed the life of Fred Gasasira, The students were part of a procession of mourners who were walking along the Kigali-Kayonza road after that had laid wreaths on graves of Genocide victims near the school, located 12km outside the city centre. Chris Rulisa, an administrator at KIM, said Mukasekuru had undergone an abdominal operation. The incident occurred just five minutes before an unidentified attacker hurled a grenade at Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, killing a policeman Ignace Munyantamati on spot and injuring his colleague, Jacques Ntimugura. Ntimugura, who was injured on the leg, is still admitted at King Faysal Hospital. Police arrested the driver responsible for the KIM incident, Emmanuel Gashirabake, but until yesterday no arrests had been made in connection with the Genocide museum attack although Police Spokesman Inspector Willy Marcel Higiro insisted that investigations were still continuing. Meanwhile, Higiro said CID has forwarded Gashirabake’s dossier to the Prosecution. He is accused of violating traffic rules for crossing from his lane and knocking the students on the sidewalk of the opposite lane. “We have completed the investigations and we have placed him in the hands of Prosecution. It is up to them to determine whether or when to produce him before court,” Higiro said yesterday. The Commissioner General of Police, Andrew Rwigamba, last Friday said that the driver had attributed the accident to not able to control the vehicle due to over-speeding. However doubts remain over his confession with many wondering why he chose to take the opposite side of his lane and yet there was no other car in sight. Police also said the driver had no driving licence. Suspicions were even heightened by the fact that the incident was immediately followed by the Genocide site grenade attack, which provoked Ibuka –a Genocide survivors’ umbrella – to say both incidents were coordinated with the intention of disrupting the fourteenth anniversary of the Genocide. But some officials have either disputed that or avoided linking the two incidents to the genocide ideology. The mourners in the procession also included staff from the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC), local leaders, and police and military representatives. Higiro said yesterday the person responsible for the grenade attack would be identified and brought to justice. Rwandans observed a week-long mourning week from April 7-13 in remembrance of the over one million people killed during the 1994 Genocide. Ends