Rwandan rebel deputy chief transferred to DR Congo capital

Kinshasa (AFP) – The deputy leader of Rwandan rebels blamed for atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been brought to the capital following his arrest, a Congolese minister said Friday.

Leopold Mujyambere, deputy chief of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), was brought to Kinshasa three or four days after being detained in Goma, the main city in North Kivu province, Minister for the Media Lambert Mende told AFP.

Mende gave no details of the arrest, which follows the detention in March of Ladislas Ntaganzwa, another leader of the FDLR, an ethnic Hutu force including veteran fighters wanted for their suspected role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Congolese authorities handed Ntaganzwa to staff of a United Nations “residual mechanism” set up in December 2010 to complete the tasks of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which passed him on to Rwanda itself.

The FDLR established itself in eastern DRC after fleeing across the border when a rebel army led by Rwanda’s current President Paul Kagame in July 1994 put an end to three months of massacres, estimated to have claimed 800,000 lives.

The killers are accused of targeting moderate Hutus as well as people from the Tutsi minority and are regularly blamed for serious human rights violations against civilians in eastern DRC.

Rwanda’s Justice Minister Johnston Busingye called the arrest of Mujyambere “a step in the right direction” and asked that he be “transferred” to Rwanda to face justice there.

The DRC minister in charge of media relations, Lambert Mende, told AFP that Mujyambere’s case would go before a Congolese court “to begin the process of transferring him to Rwanda”.

The Congolese army last February announced a broad offensive against the FDLR, not just in North Kivu, but in South Kivu and the northern part of Katanga province in a bid to sweep them clear of national territory.

The Rwandan government, however, charges that DRC authorities are doing nothing to tackle the rebels, whom Kigali presents as a major strategic threat even though the FDLR has not launched a big offensive on Rwandan soil in years.

Kigali has meanwhile backed a succession of ethnic Tutsi uprisings, leading the Congolese government to accuse the Rwandans of seeking to destabilise eastern territory.