African Facts has investigated the background of Thaddée Kwitonda, a Belgian-Rwandan under investigation, who now shuttles between Belgium and circles close to the Congolese presidency. He operates in a murky environment where Rwanda’s former ruling clan and members of criminal armed groups intersect.
The resumption of conflict between Kinshasa and the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23, 23 march movement, backed by Rwanda) in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has reshuffled the deck in the region, offering a lifeline to those responsible for the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda now in exile. Their armed groups form the pro-government coalition’s spearhead. African Facts has previously revealed the links between Rwanda’s former inner circle of leaders and the militias fighting on the ground. Rwandan extremists could now have conduits into the highest echelons of power in Kinshasa.
Multiple security and diplomatic sources have confirmed to African Facts the presence of Thaddée Kwitonda in Kinshasa, within circles close to power. The 64-year-old Rwandan, who holds Belgian nationality, has been under investigation in Belgium since 2006 for his alleged involvement in the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, which resulted in the deaths of around one million people between April and July 1994. African Facts has been able to establish that he visits the Congolese capital periodically.
African Facts has investigated this man, who has a troubled past and appears to have links to Rwanda’s former inner circle of power and criminal armed groups formed by Rwandan genocide perpetrators in exile in the Congo. Such groups include the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR, Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and the Rassemblement pour l’unité et la démocratie – Urunana (RUD-Urunana, Rally for Unity and Democracy), which are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Kivu provinces.
An unrepentant adherent of Hutu Power
Thaddée Kwitonda, former chief of staff and deputy secretary-general of the National Bank of Rwanda, was one of the co-founders of the Coalition pour la défense de la république (CDR, Coalition for the defense of the republic, the most radical Hutu Power party), and a minority shareholder in Radiotélévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM, the private radio station from which the 1994 Rwandan massacres were coordinated). At the time, he lived in the Nyakabanda neighbourhood, where he was a neighbour of Callixte Mbarushimana, who was an IT specialist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Mbarushimana is currently under investigation in France for his alleged involvement in the genocide.
One month prior to the genocide, Thaddée Kwitonda and Callixte Mbarushimana were suspected of attempting to destabilise the UNDP representative in the country. At the end of April 1994, Kwitonda moved to Butare in southern Rwanda, where he is accused of having participated in the genocide against the Tutsi.
A man clearly drawn to politics, Thaddée Kwitonda did not cease his political activities whilst in exile. After the genocide, he reportedly lived near the Kashusha and Inera refugee camps north of the border town of Bukavu in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). While employed by the NGO Caritas International in the camps, he joined the Rassemblement pour le retour des réfugiés (RDR, Rally for the return of refugees, that later became known as the Forces démocratiques unifiées, Unified democratic forces), an organisation that brought together perpetrators of the genocide with the aim of returning to Rwanda by force.
Following the destruction of the camps and the outbreak of the First Congo War in 1996, he stayed in Nairobi, Kenya, where he campaigned for the RDR before moving to Belgium. There, he helped establish a large fundraising network under the guise of non-profit organisations to benefit the RDR.
Ties to Rwandan armed groups
On 12 January 2002, Thaddée Kwitonda played a part in establishing such an organisation in Ghent, in the Flemish region of Belgium. African Facts obtained documents relating to this meeting, which was attended by Rwandan extremists. Also present were five other RTLM radio shareholders, as well as the wife of the former Interior Minister (arrested in 1998 and sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda). Two of the participants are currently facing prosecution in Belgium: Marcel Sebatware, a former CDR member like Kwitonda and former head of the Cimerwa cement company; and Emmanuel Nkunduwimye, a former militiaman.
The meeting on 12 January 2002 also shed light on the true nature of the RDR and Thaddée Kwitonda’s associates. The armed wing of Hutu Power, the Forces démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), was founded four years earlier in Kinshasa and had been openly active for two years. It was gaining strength both on the ground and within the Rwandan diaspora. Three senior figures from this organisation were present in Ghent that day: Dominique Munyampeta, head of the local Belgian committee; Anastase Munyandekwe, spokesperson for the armed group; and Commander Joseph Nzabonimpa.
In the same year, Thaddée’s former neighbour and friend Callixte Mbarushimana settled in France, where he was granted asylum. He too had joined the FDLR, becoming its finance commissioner in 2004 and executive secretary in 2007 — one of the organisation’s most senior leaders. From that time onwards, Thaddée Kwitonda was thus connected to at least four senior FDLR figures.
Three figures in the orbit of the former regime’s inner circle
Moreover, Thaddée Kwitonda, Anastase Munyandekwe and Joseph Nzabonimpa are all linked to the inner circle of politicians and business figures who once ruled the Land of a Thousand Hills unchallenged and were nicknamed the Akazu (“the little household” in Kinyarwanda). To understand this connection, one must look at their wives.
Thaddée Kwitonda married Pauline Nyiramasuhuko’s elder sister. Nyiramasuhuko was the Minister for Family and Women’s Development in the genocidal government and was sentenced to life imprisonment, reduced on appeal to 47 years, by the ICTR. She was a close friend of Rwanda’s First Lady at the time, Agathe Kanziga, and African Facts has previously revealed the close ties that continue to bind these two families to this day.
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko also has a younger sister, whose husband is none other than Anastase Munyandekwe. Joseph Nzabonimpa, a former Rwandan army commander seconded to the internal intelligence service in 1994 and a United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) liaison officer, married a niece of the late dictator Juvénal Habyarimana.
About Anastase Munyandekwe. Munyandekwe was a senior official at the National Post Office and lived in the Rugunga neighbourhood, less than three kilometres from Kwitonda and Mbarushimana. He was also active in a rival political party, the Mouvement démocrate républicain (MDR). Within the party, however, he was nicknamed Kimwamwanya (a Kinyarwanda term suggesting duplicity) as he was regarded as an infiltrator acting on behalf of the presidential clan. After the genocide, he also lived in the Kashusha camp in South Kivu. Since 1996, he has been on the list of individuals whom Rwanda considers to be “first-category” perpetrators of the genocide whom it wishes to prosecute. He served as the FDLR’s information commissioner and was a key financial link between the diaspora and the armed group, but was expelled around 2008 following allegations of embezzlement.
About Joseph Nzabonimpa. Accused of having been one of the main architects of the mass round-ups targeting Tutsis labelled “ibyitso” (“accomplices” in Kinyarwanda) in late 1990, he is said to have subsequently served in both the Service Central de Renseignement (SCR, Central Intelligence Service) and the notorious Centre de Recherche Criminelle et de Documentation (CRCD, Centre for Criminal Research and Documentation). Although he does not hold an official position within the FDLR, he is repeatedly mentioned in United Nations investigation reports as a financial facilitator working on behalf of the FDLR, and is said to have participated in crucial meetings. He has left Belgium and now runs a logistics company in Mozambique.
A shadowy middleman
Thaddée Kwitonda’s name has periodically resurfaced in connection with Rwandan armed groups active in the Congo. Between July 2007 and September 2008, for example, he facilitated a rapprochement in Brussels between Rwandan political dissidents and the Rassemblement pour l’unité et la démocratie – Urunana (RUD-Urunana), a splinter group of the FDLR with its own armed wing in the Congo: the Imboneza (“the clear-sighted” or “the good shooters” in Kinyarwanda).
This is not the first time that Thaddée Kwitonda has returned to the region while facing prosecution in Belgium. Arrested in Uganda in July 2012 while staying under a false identity, he was extradited to Brussels and briefly imprisoned before being released in September of that year. Was he merely seeking to evade Belgian justice, or was he carrying out another mission in this country bordering the Congo? No official explanation has ever been given.
African Facts was unable to contact Thaddée Kwitonda, Anastase Munyandekwe and Joseph Nzabonimpa. The presence of Thaddée Kwitonda in the corridors of power in Kinshasa, with links to both Rwandan armed groups in exile and Rwanda’s former ruling clan, raises questions. This is especially pertinent when considering the crucial role played by Rwandan Hutu fighters and their Congolese Hutu auxiliaries on the front line. How much influence do these networks currently wield within the Congolese government? This is a question that must be asked.
