Ingabire questioned by police
2010-02-10 15:27
Kigali - A Rwandan opposition leader who returned from exile last month to run in the August presidential elections was taken in for questioning by police onWednesday, her party and police said.
"The criminal investigation department (CID) ... today summoned Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza without giving any reason," Ingabire's Unified Democratic Party (FDU) said in a statement.
"Obviously, this branch of the executive is carrying out the injunction of the president ... (made) the day before yesterday," the FDU said, referring to comments by President Paul Kagame.
The Rwanda News Agency quoted Kagame as saying that Ingabire "is making comments and doing all her activities illegally and as an 'individual' because her party has not been registered".
"She's at CID and she's in the process of answering questions," Rwandan police spokesperson Eric Kayiranga said.
Ingabire returned to Rwanda to ensure the FDU was formally registered.
Her questioning follows the jailing of her assistant Joseph Ntawangundi who was sentenced in absentia in 2007 to 19 years by a gacaca court, one of the grassroots tribunals set up to try the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.
Last week, Ingabire and Ntawangundi were attacked in front of a municipal office in a district of the capital.
Ingabire escaped. Ntawangundi earlier told Human Rights Watch he was "attacked for about 45 minutes by scores of young men who punched him, kicked and scratched him, threw him into the air, and ripped his clothes."
President Kagame, who has been in power since the end of the genocide, has been regularly accused of muzzling the opposition and is widely expected to seek and secure re-election in August.
