Rwanda’s National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) on Sunday confirmed that a Rwandan medical doctor who died in Ghana earlier this month reportedly from COVID-19 was a wanted genocide fugitive.
CNLG executive secretary, Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana told local media that the alleged fugitive identified as Dr Emmanuel Twagirayezu, died on July 9, at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital.
His body has been at the centre of a controversy, with some media reports suggesting that his remains had to be exhumed and handed over to his family.
According to judicial reports in Rwanda, Dr Twagirayezu Emmanuel was born in 1950 in Ndora commune in the former Butare prefecture, now in Gisagara District.
On 26/03/2010, the Ngoma Sector Gacaca Court convicted him of genocide crimes.
Criminal records indicate that between April and July 1994, he was especially attending genocide planning meetings, handing over Tutsis to soldiers to be killed at the hospital, inciting the execution of genocide, participating in attacks and killing of Tutsi individuals called Mujejende and Sebera, as well as raping Tutsi women including students.
Dr Twagirayezu was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia.
A document dated May 14, 2020 identifies the deceased among the many doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners who actively participated in the killing of Tutsis who had taken refuge in hospitals.
Others directly participated in the attacks and gave instructions to kill countrywide.
Some of them have been arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned in Rwanda, according to CNLG reports.
The document said, other medical personnel, including Twagirayezu, were still free in some foreign countries they fled to.
Some were already employed at different hospitals and clinics, regardless of the fact that they betrayed their professional standards.
Rwanda has so far issued many arrest warrants targeting medical personnel who played a role in the genocide.
One of them is Dr Eugene Rwamucyo, another Rwandan physician who has been declared wanted by Interpol since 2006, and was dismissed from his job in a hospital in northern France.
Another alleged genocide fugitive Sosthene Munyemana, a prominent Hutu doctor from Rwanda’s second largest city Butare has been living in France since 1994.
He sought asylum there but this was rejected in 2009.
CU/as/APA