2 held over Rwandan journo killing

2010-06-29 09:42

Kigali - The Rwandan authorities said on Monday they have arrested two people in connection with the killing of a journalist critical of President Paul Kagame's government, and that one of the two has confessed.

Jean-Leonard Rugambage, who had accused the Rwandan government of being behind an assassination attempt on a dissident general in South Africa, was gunned down in Kigali on Thursday.

"Two people implicated in the killing of the journalist Jean-Leonard Rugambage are now in the hands of the police. One of them has admitted guilt," Internal Security Minister Moussa Fazil Harelimana told journalists.

"He told the police he committed the act to take revenge against this journalist who killed his brother in the 1994 Tutsi genocide," the minister said.

Rugambage did appear in 2005 before the Rwandan grass-roots courts tasked with trying those who carried out the genocide, but he was acquitted the following year after serving a jail sentence of several months for criticising the way the gacaca functioned.

The Rwandan government has rejected allegations made by Rugambage's colleagues and by the press watchdog Reporters without Borders that it was behind Rugambage's killing.

- AFP