The hearing of the appeal case lodged by prosecutors against the acquittal of Dieudonne Ishimwe, the former chief executive of Rwanda Inspiration Backup, the organisation responsible for the Miss Rwanda beauty pageant, has been concluded and judges have set June 30 as the date for the verdict. Ishimwe, also known as Prince Kid, has been in courts of law since 2022 when he was arrested and charged with soliciting sexual favours, harassment, and rape. The intermediate court of Nyarugenge which tried him on first instance acquitted him in December 2022, having not found enough evidence pinning him to the charges. However, the prosecutors appealed against the decision. The appeal filed to the High Court was based on a number of reasons including the claim that the intermediate court judges disregarded some pieces of evidence including testimonies of witnesses and victims. One of the pieces of evidence that the prosecutors pointed out was a leaked audio of a telephone conversation between Ishimwe and one of the contestants of the Miss Rwanda pageant, where the former was allegedly asking for sexual favours. During the latest trial that took place on Friday, April 28, Ishimwe told the judges that the audio in question is not related to sex. He claimed that the prosecutors presented the audio in such a way that some parts of the conversation were omitted, which made it lose the context. However, the prosecutors said that the reason they omitted some parts is that they wanted to present to court only the information that was relevant for the case.
