High-profile activist killed
Publish date: 18 March 2019
Issue Number: 815
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: Rwanda
A close aide to leading Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire has been killed. Anselme Mutuyimana's body was found in a forest, in the northwest region of the country. CNN reports that it appears she had been strangled. Ingabire leads the FDU-Inkingi party, an unregistered coalition of opposition parties against President Paul Kagame, who has been in power since 2000. Placide Kayumba, a vice-president for FDU who lives in exile in Belgium, told CNN that Mutuyimana was freed last year after serving a six-year prison sentence for 'political activism'. Ingabire returned to Rwanda to contest in the 2010 presidential elections after years of living abroad but was barred from running and jailed for eight years on charges that included collaborating with a terrorist organisation and 'genocide ideology'. She was one of the more than 2 000 prisoners granted a presidential pardon last September.