FDLR coordinated July 26 grenade attack – suspects

The DR Congo-based Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) militia is responsible for the fatal July 26 grenade attack in Kigali’s commercial hub of Nyabugogo, which killed three people, the prime suspects have said. The two suspects, Jean de Dieu Ntakirutimana, a.k.a Rafiki, and Jean de Dieu Mugaboniki, confessed they carried out the attack on the instructions of a top FDLR commander. They were speaking to journalists today at the Kicukiro Police Station in Kigali. “The whole move was coordinated by Col. Enock Bizimana, also known as Matovu. He sent us the grenades and directed us to plant them in Nyabugogo taxi-park,” said Ntakirutimana, himself a former FDLR combatant. Ntakirutimana, 21, explained that Col. Bizimana had promised to reward them big once the militia finally captures Rwanda, something the latter allegedly claimed would happen not later than January next year. The grenade explosion, which occurred on Friday, July 26, at about 6:50p.m, near a popular Nyabugogo abattoir, killed three people – two of them on the spot –, wounding 31 others. The FDLR is largely composed of elements widely blamed for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which claimed the lives of an estimated one million people in a record spell of 100 days. The group, blacklisted by the United Nations and United States as a terrorist organisation, has been accused of committing gross human rights violations in eastern DRC and neighbouring countries for close to two decades now. The militia, which twice made incursions on Rwanda last year, crossed into the DR Congo in 1994 after then Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) rebels brought to a halt the former’s genocidal campaign and effectively took Kigali.

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FDLR coordinated July 26 grenade attack – suspects