While the role and importance of Rwandan génocidaires and their ideas in the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are increasingly being relativised and downplayed, African Facts reveals the links between Rwanda’s former presidential family and various armed actors, including the FDLR, the FLN, and a Congolese general who coordinates the Wazalendo militias.
For three years, war has torn apart the Kivu region in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The conflic opposes the forces of the Kinshasa government and a coalition of armed groups gathered under the banner “Wazalendo” on one side against the Alliance of the Congo River (AFC) and its main fighting force, the political-military organisation Movement of 23 March (M23), supported by Uganda and Rwanda, on the other. Among other things, the M23 demands respect for the fundamental rights of several communities, including the Rwandophone Congolese, who have been victims of a bloody wave of persecution throughout the eastern Congo since 2017.
According to Kinshasa and a numerous Western “experts” and journalists, the Congolese rebellion is, in reality, nothing more than a puppet controlled by Kigali to serve obscure economic interests. The persecution suffered by the Congolese Tutsis is said to be exaggerated in order to provide a pretext for this enterprise. And those responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, which caused a million deaths in 1994 and whose presence on its borders Kigali denounces, are said to be in fact no more than shadows of their former selves and play an anecdotal role in Kivu. This narrative is now gaining ground in the media landscape.
However, in the shadows, far from the tumult of arms, one actor could well be playing its own part. The former ruling clan of Rwanda, whose influence was thought to have waned in exile until it disappeared. This is an illusion that suits its members well, but which is contradicted by facts.
In direct contact with the founder of FDLR
On 3 June 2020, the Paris Court of Appeal considered the extradition of Félicien Kabuga, suspected of being the chief financier of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, who was due to be tried by the International criminal tribunal for Rwanda. His son-in-law, Léon Habyarimana, attended the hearing. He is the fifth of eight children of former Rwandan dictator Juvénal Habyarimana and his wife Agathe Kanziga.
On that day, Léon was in the company of the Executive secretary of the Forces démocratiques de libérations du Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group formed by Rwandan genocidaires in exile and responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in eastern DRC. The two men held numerous confabs in front of the palace.
Was this apparent affinity between a son of the former Rwandan presidential couple and a senior FDLR leader a coincidence, or did it stem from a real closeness that existed elsewhere?
To discover a direct link between the former presidential family and the armed group FDLR, you need to go to Orléans. A man of vital importance is holed up in the city: Colonel Aloys Ntiwiragabo, the founder and first supreme commander of the FDLR. This presence remained secret for more than fourteen years before being revealed in 2020 after a long investigation by Mediapart. He is now the subject of a judicial investigation for his alledged role in the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994.
According to Paul Rwarakabije, a former FDLR military leader who testified in a 2008 Rwandan investigative report, te former Rwanda first lady Agathe Kanziga sent substantial sums of money to the organisation in the early 2000s through a french intermediary. According to Rwarakabije, the recipient of this cash was none other than Aloys Ntiwiragabo himself.
The Ntiwiragabos couple’s private phone number appears in a handwritten directory seized by the French gendarmerie during a search of Agathe Kanziga’s home in 2016. African Fact was able to consult this document. Could the former First Lady have been unaware that the highest-ranking Rwandan officer still escaping justice had been living in this apartment since at least 2006, i.e. 10 years before the document was seized by the French gendarmerie?
In any case, the Habyarimana family is very well connected to the Rwandan community in Orléans, of which the Ntiwiragabo couple are an integral part. Since 2016, Clémentine, a niece of Agathe Kanziga, has sat on the board of the Association des Rwandais de l’agglomération orléanaise (ARAO), which was co-founded fifteen years earlier by Aloys Ntiwiragabo’s wife. Clémentine is the daughter of Protais Zigiranyirazo (aka “Monsieur Z”), the elder brother of Agathe Kanziga, who is widely regarded as the mastermind behind the president’s clan. Five other members of the Orléans association, including the president, were also among the former Rwandan first lady’s contacts.
African Fact also had access to correspondence from Agathe Kanziga’s youngest son, Jean-Luc Habyarimana. It leaves little doubt that he knew where Aloys Ntiwiragabo was hiding. One of the computers seized by the French investigators at the Habyarimana villa contains an email exchange between Jean-Luc Habyarimana and one of his cousins in February 2014. The interlocutor mentions a certain “Omar”, a former gendarmerie officer in Kacyiru, and then adds another detail in brackets: “Orléans, you know”. Until 1994, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, a colonel in the gendarmerie, lived in the military camp on Kacyiru hill in Kigali. “Omar” was the code name he gave himself during his time in Sudan and later as supreme commander of the FDLR.
A family friend in the MRCD-FLN
African Facts was able to get a hold of the guest list and budget for a reception organised by the Habyarimana family in 2012. The event brought together the presidential clan and members of Rwanda’s former elite, some of whom are themselves being prosecuted or suspected of genocide, or whose relatives were convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Some of the participants were involved with armed groups active in Congo, such as Jean Chrysostome Nyirurugo. Originally from the same village as the First Lady, Giciye, he was the Director General of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in Rwanda before the genocide and was also involved in an association chaired by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora (the main leader of the genocidaires sentenced to 35 years in prison by the ICTR) which brought together local members of the Akazu.
A report published by a Rwandan human rights NGO in September 1994 named Jean Chrysostome Nyirurugo as responsible for the extermination of an entire family in Kigali. A crime he allegedly committed in the company of his two sons. Now 85 years old, he lives in the Metz region (Moselle, France) and has never been called to account.
The old man does not seem resigned to giving up politics, or even to resorting to violence. Jean Chrysostome Nyirurugo’s name appears in a document listing those responsible for “mobilising” support for the Parti démocratique du Rwanda (PDR), which at the time was, along with other organisations, part of the Mouvement rwandais pour le changement démocratique (MRCD), whose armed wing, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), has committed crimes in Congo and Rwanda, including the indiscriminate killing of civilians. These documents were seized by the Belgian federal police during a search carried out on 21 October 2019 at the home of the president of the MRCD.
And Jean Chrysostome Nyirurugo is not the only member of this group linked to the Habyarimana clan. Agathe Kanziga’s contacts in the Rwandan extremist community in Orléans, mentioned above, also include one of the co-founders of the PDR in 2006.
Between 2018 and 2020, the FLN carried out a series of attacks targeting civilians in Rwandan territory leaving nine people dead and many wounded. Following this, the group was partially decapitated by the arrest and subsequent conviction of some of its leaders by Rwanda. It has since split into three groups that remain active in Uvira and Fizi territories in the DRC as well as in neighbouring Burundi, and continues to wreaking havoc.
Longstanding links with a Congolese general leading the Wazalendo militia
From their golden exile, could the former presidential family be linked to the dramatic situation in eastern Congo in any other way than through their links with FDLR and other armed groups leaders in Europe? In any case, they have had an important contact on the ground for at least eight years.
Agathe’s diary contains another important piece of information. It reveals that the First Lady has the telephone number of a senior officer in the Congolese armed forces whose activities are, to say the least, shady: General Janvier Mayanga wa Gishuba.
In 1993, General Mayanga was one of the founders of the very first militias of Congolese Hutu “combattants” in Masisi (North Kivu). These groups were closely linked to the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, and some of their members even took part in the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda the following year. Reintegrated into the congolese regular army, where he became the highest-ranking Hutu officer, he was then one of the main instigators between 2007 and 2009 of the armed coalition Patriotes et résistants congolais (PARECO), made up mainly of Hutu militiamen. Working closely with the FDLR and the Congolese military, part of the PARECO opposed the Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), the forerunner of today’s M23. An other part of them joined CNDP.
Throughout his life, Janvier Mayanga wa Gishuba remained closely linked to armed groups, some of which regularly collaborated with the FDLR. So much so that on two occasions, in 2008 and in 2009, the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo informed the Security Council of close contacts between General Mayanga and the FDLR. The officer is suspected of having helped finance this criminal organisation.
In December 2023, the President of the DRC appointed General Mayanga as national coordinator in charge of organising and providing intelligence for the Wazalendo militias, meaning “patriots” in Kiswahili. This designation, which was legalised by presidential decree the previous month, has since referred to a diverse range of armed groups whose members are now officially considered “reservists”. Among them, the spearhead of the coalition troops is made up of the FDLR and their local auxiliaries, the Nyatura militias.
Since the debacle of the pro-government forces in February 2025 after the M23 rebels captured the two provincial capitals of Kivu, Goma and Bukavu, General Mayanga has been stationed Uvira with part of his forces.
War as a boon ?
Defeated and exiled for thirty years, the Habyarimana clan was believed to have been relegated to the margins of politics and condemned to remain there forever. But they seems never to have completely given up hope of playing a role again. So when war broke out in Kivu in 2022 and the government camp succumbed to the temptation to use the old political tactics of division, hatred and racism, Rwanda’s former elite could not fail to see an opportunity.
This was all the more true given that the Kinshasa government seemed to be gradually losing control of eastern DRC following a series of crushing defeats and “strategic retreats” by its army. It turned out that the main military force opposing the M23 on the ground was the FDLR fighters and their Nyatura auxiliaries. The Congolese government must therefore deal with these Rwandan génocidaires, who are once again dreaming of returning to the land of a thousand hills by force.
According to our information, confirmed by several regional security sources, Jean-Luc Habyarimana travelled discreetly to Kinshasa at the beginning of June 2024. There, he reportedly met with close associates of the president and Congolese security officials. While the purpose of these meetings and his agenda remains unknown, it is notable that he simultaneously acted as a spokesperson for the FDLR’s demands on social media.
The months following this meeting were also marked by a diplomatic incident concerning the fate of six Rwandans tried by the International Criminal Tribunal and were living in Niger. Several “confidential” documents issued in July and September 2024 by the DRC presidency and the United Nations judicial institution reveal that Kinshasa was planning to welcome these controversial individuals onto its soil. Among them was Protais Zigiranyirazo, Jean-Luc Habyarimana’s uncle, nicknamed “Monsieur Z”. Once it became public knowledge, the plan appears to have been abandoned.
We were unable to reach Janvier Mayanga or Jean-Chrysostome Nyirurugo. We also tried to contact Agathe Kanziga, Jean-Luc and Léon Habyarimana. “Neither of them want to talk to you”, we were told affably by another of Agathe’s sons, who invited us to contact their lawyer. We put our questions to their lawyer, who did not reply. Following our discovery, we also left a voicemail message for Aloys Ntiwiragabo to suggest an interview. He did not respond. His lawyer asked us to “stop bothering” his client.