Pages

Saturday, 4 January 2014

[RwandaLibre] Leah Karegeya: "I always worried about his safety"

Leah Karegeya: "I always worried about his safety"

January 4 2014 at 12:15pm
By Sheree Bega
AP

Slain ex-spy scrapped SA security detail


Johannesburg - By the time the clock struck midnight on New Year's
Eve, Leah Karegeya knew something was wrong. There was no message from
her husband to welcome in 2014 and her increasingly frantic calls to
him remained unanswered.

"We skyped and talked every single day," said the US-based Leah of her
relationship with her husband, Colonel Patrick Karegeya, Rwanda's
former spy chief, who had been living in exile in South Africa since
2007.

"We skyped that morning. I told him I was going to have a meal with
our boys and he told me to drive safely and SMS him when we arrived."

He never replied. "It was unlike him. We started thinking something
was wrong. Then when there was no message from him on New Year's Eve,
I knew something bad had happened to him."

Hours later she would hear of the painful details of his murder in a
hotel room at the luxury Michelangelo Towers hotel in Sandton.

His killers reportedly spiked his drink with poison and, when that
failed, strangled him with a rope from a curtain in the hotel room.
But in some ways, Leah said, she had always braced herself for this
moment.

"It's a big shock but I always worried about his safety, that
something bad was going to happen.

"They tried several times… to end his life. They had been trying for
quite some time.

"But we always managed to escape. It's shocking but at the same time
it's expected… I'm just so sad at the way they killed him. I wish they
would have just shot him, not killed him so brutally," she said, her
voice quivering.

Karegeya was a key figure in the Rwandan opposition, and Leah believes
he was murdered by agents of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, his former
ally. Her turning point came when former Rwandan army chief and
friend, Lieutenant-General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, another Rwandan
dissident, survived two assassination attempts in Joburg in June 2010.
"After that we were taken to safe houses… I had to leave my husband
alone in South Africa and take my children away from there."

She fled with the couple's three children to a small town in Tennessee.

"This is how the president (Kagame) works. He always has people
monitoring you. But I feel safe here. I didn't in South Africa. I
can't go anywhere else… I know it is him. This is what he does to
anyone who opposes his government. It is a terrible life we have to
live."

She and other Rwandan dissidents believe a man named Appollo Kiririsi
Gafaranga, a Rwandan businessman, is linked to the murder. Karegeya
was meeting Gafaranga at the hotel. "I saw him once. He was a friend
of my husband, a businessman from Rwanda. We knew him from working
with the government.

"He had known my husband for a long time. I think Rwanda was using
him, for my husband to think he was fine, but he was monitoring my
husband's movements and waiting for the right opportunity to murder
him," she said.

She wants to bury her husband in Uganda, his birthplace.

The couple were married for 25 years and she said she would miss his
laugh the most.

"He was a man of integrity. He fought for justice, he wanted people to
live in harmony, to have rights. They have taken his life but I am
grateful that he died for what he fought for. I'm glad people know
that about him," she said. - Saturday Star

http://www.thepost.co.za/i-always-worried-about-his-safety-1.1628531


--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
Google+: https://plus.google.com/110493390983174363421/posts
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B4024D0AE764F3D
http://www.youtube.com/user/sibomanaxyz999
***Transmission Time Interval (TTI) on Saturday January 4th, 2014:
TTI=13H54-20H30, heure de Montréal.***Fuseau horaire domestique: heure
normale de la côte Est des Etats-Unis et Canada (GMT-05:00)***


------------------------------------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
.To post a message: RwandaLibre@yahoogroups.com
.To join: RwandaLibre-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
.To unsubscribe from this group,send an email to:
RwandaLibre-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
_____________________________________________________

More news:

http://amakurunamateka.blogspot.co.uk/

http://ikangurambaga.blogspot.co.uk/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------Yahoo Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RwandaLibre/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RwandaLibre/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
RwandaLibre-digest@yahoogroups.com
RwandaLibre-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
RwandaLibre-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo Groups is subject to:
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/
-

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

“Uwigize agatebo ayora ivi”. Ubutegetsi bukugira agatebo ukariyora uko bukeye n’uko bwije.

"Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre."

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile."

KOMEZA USOME AMAKURU N'IBITEKEREZO BYA VUBA BYAGUCITSE:

RECOMMENCE

RECOMMENCE

1.Kumenya Amakuru n’amateka atabogamye ndetse n’Ibishobora Kukugiraho Ingaruka ni Uburenganzira Bwawe.

2.Kwisanzura mu Gutanga Ibitekerezo, Kurwanya Ubusumbane, Akarengane n’Ibindi Byose Bikubangamiye ni Uburenganzira Bwawe.