Minister's body found in canal
2005-12-23 08:13
Brussels - A decomposed body discovered in a Brussels canal a week ago is that of a Rwandan former minister, indicted by a UN tribunal on charges of genocide, a family lawyer said on Thursday.
"It's his (Juvenal Uwilingiyimana's) body," the lawyer Sven Mary told AFP. "We have been informed by the investigating magistrate."
"What complicates things is that we have not been given any information on the cause of death. We would like to light shed on this," he said.
The 54-year-old Uwilingiyimana, who went missing in Belgium in November, had been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, for an alleged part in the 1994 genocide.
The former minister, who ran Rwanda's national parks at the time, was indicted on June 10, but the indictment was only made public in November.
The ICTR issued an international arrest warrant in mid-August but did not act on it pending discussions with the prosecution.
The charges against him include genocide, incitement to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and murder.
Uwilingiyimana was, however, informed of the charges against him and agreed to co-operate with the court, meeting its investigators over the course of several recent weeks.
The last such meeting took place on November 18, three days before he vanished at dawn from his home in the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht, according to ICTR chief investigator Stephen Rapp.
The naked body, in an advanced state of decomposition, was discovered by a passer-by in the Brussels-Charleroi canal, at the heart of the Belgian capital.
A first post mortem had failed to identify it.
Also according to Rapp, a letter purportedly written by Uwilingiyimana appeared on the internet on November 21, saying that he would no longer co-operate with the prosecutor's office.
The letter accused the ICTR investigators of intimidating Uwilingiyimana so as to force him to falsely incriminate other members of the Rwandan Hutu regime that orchestrated the 1994 slaughter of some 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, notably former first lady Agathe Kanziga.
The ICTR has convicted 22 people in connection with the genocide.
- AFP