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Official Responses

The Rwanda National Police state they are committed to serving the people of Rwanda and on their website announce various ways of lodging complaints about abuses by police officers.⁵⁹ In the one instance in which a complaint was made in the case of the killing of a detainee—that of Alphonse Nshikili killed in April 2006—appeals by the family of the victim to both the commissioner general of police and to the prosecutor general of Rwanda remained unanswered at the time of this writing.

Human Rights Watch, Rwandan human rights organizations, and several representatives of the diplomatic community have repeatedly pressed Rwanda National Police officers for explanations of the police killings of detainees. On June 4, 2007 Commissioner General Rwigamba sent a three-page statement to Human Rights Watch (attached as an annex to this report) listing 10 incidents between November 2006 and May 2007 in which police officers had shot and killed 20 detainees.⁶⁰

The explanations in this statement, like that offered by Deputy Mary Gahonzire in an interview with a Human Rights Watch researcher in December 2006,⁶¹ were all variations on a single theme: the detainees had been shot while trying to escape. 

The statement said that all the police officers involved had been questioned and that investigations were underway. It also indicated that police officers needed further training in the use of firearms, better facilities in police stations (to eliminate the need to take detainees outside the building to use latrines), and more handcuffs.

All the detainees were killed within days and in some cases within hours of their arrests. In no case had trials begun, far less verdicts been reached, yet in the opening paragraph of the statement, several of the detainees are referred to as “killers,” not suspects. In its final paragraph, the statement acknowledges that some of those killed by the police had no involvement with genocide but nonetheless it declares that “the suspects involved in these cases were of extreme criminal character ready to die for their genocide ideology.” It concludes that these detainees were “terroristic in nature and don’t care about their own lives leave alone others.”⁶²

Deputy Commissioner Habyara also seemed convinced that the detainees were necessarily guilty of the crimes for which they had been arrested. He told a public meeting on May 25, 2007:

However someone who rapes a baby, someone who kills a child, someone who sexually mutilates a girl, a member of the clergy who kills his colleague. . .what is he not capable of doing? Would it be surprising if he tried to grab the rifle from a police officer? These are exceptional cases. Just as these killings are exceptional, they are done by extraordinary people who could do anything at any time. . . . These are not extrajudicial executions, rather they are exceptional cases committed by exceptional criminals.⁶³

The assumption that the detainees were criminals—and even exceptionally dangerous criminals—shows a regrettable disregard for the presumption of innocence. The readiness to try to shift the blame for their death on to the victims throws into question the likelihood of independent, impartial investigations.