Police detain two following Rwanda grenade attacks

By AFP
February 20, 2010

KIGALI (AFP) – Two suspects have been detained in relation to simultaneous grenade attacks in the Rwandan capital Kigali that killed one person and injured some 30 others, police said Saturday.

"Two suspects were apprehended, they belong to the Interahamwe militia," police spokesman Eric Kayiranga told AFP, referring to the extremist Hutu militia responsible for Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

The attacks took place at rush hour Friday evening on a train station, a restaurant and a building housing city centre businesses, he said.

Earlier Radio Rwanda reported the casualty toll at one dead and 18 injured, with five seriously wounded.

"Those who commit these kinds of crimes want to sow chaos, intimidate people and kill the genocide survivors," Kayiranga said.

"We are continuing the investigation and questioning the two suspects," notably on whether any link exists between the blasts and the August presidential election, he added.

President Paul Kagame, who heads a Tutsi-led government and has been in power since the end of the genocide, is widely expected to seek and secure re-election in the August poll.


Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the harassment of political opposition figures in Rwanda saying they faced increasing "threats, attacks and harassment" ahead of the poll.

The group cited an incident in which Joseph Ntawangundi -- a member of the FDU-Inkingi, a new opposition party critical of government policies -- was attacked in front of a local government office.

Ntawangundi has since been jailed after being 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 genocide.

The attacks come just days before a visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Rwanda, aimed to cement newly renewed diplomatic ties between Paris and Kigali after years of mutual recriminations over Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Sarkozy's trip next week will be the first by a French president since the massacre by extremist Hutus of around 800,000 people in Rwanda, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus. A new French ambassador to Kigali was accredited in January.

The two countries announced in November the resumption of relations severed in 2006 after a French judge issued warrants against Kagame's top aides on suspicion of being behind the death of a Rwandan ex-president.

For its part, Kigali alleged French forces had trained extremist Hutu militia which carried out the killings, a charge Paris has repeatedly denied.

A grenade was launched last April in Kigali as the country marked a week of national morning to commemorate the start of the 1994 massacres. Grenade attacks are more frequent outside the capital, where they are used to settle family disputes or against genocide witnesses.

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