The Testimony Of Abdul Ruzibiza That Shed Light on RwandaII

The Testimony Of Abdul Ruzibiza That Shed Light on RwandaII
Third stage: since the attack of Byumba at the beginning of June 1992 to April 6, 1994

The attack of Byumba was launched by way of test. The FPR wanted to know if it were able to occupy at the same time a greater extent of the territory, because with the development of the negotiations, it wanted to make a show of force so that its claims are granted to him by the pressure of its growing military power. I point out that all the times that there were negotiations; Kagame never said to its army that they could lead to something of good. He repeated unceasingly that the arrival in Kigali was not possible

unless using the fire of the gun. These attacks of great scale led us until Rukomo, beyond Byumba in direction of Kigali. It was the same thing on the left and on the right: Mukarange, a party of Kinyami, Buyoga, Rushashi, one starts from Ngarama, Cyumba, Kivuye, ; in all these localities, people who had not had the possibility of fleeing these attacks were massacred. This point also constitutes an enigma, because the FPR made a serious error there. It also turned over to Uganda to encourage the populations to come to Rwanda to collect the abundant harvest left by the displaced, and to help them to occupy this vast territory, which RPF had just conquered for them. People answered the appeal massively to return to Rwanda. The news was spread quickly at displaced, what corroborated the propaganda of the government, which taught that Inkotanyi had come to kill, to despoil the properties of their former occupants, to restore feudal monarchy, to forward the Hutu to the tutsi domination and the known slavery of the old tutsi regime. Here is another way by which the hatred of the Hutu was poked until reaching the genocide (5).

During this stage, the FPR realized that it was able to conquer greater extents of the

territory and to occupy them. So that it is possible, it was necessary to carry out a second test to increase their territory, but it was necessary to find convincing reasons for them.

Firstly, the negotiations and the mechanisms of implementation of cease-fire had been just signed. For the moment, the FPR or rather Kagame and its army planned that in spite of the result of the negotiations on agreements of peace, it was necessary to seek occasions to reopen the hostilities. It is here that it was conceived to create a special squadron, which was under the only orders of Kagame and his closest collaborators: Kayumba Nyamwasa, James Kabarebe and Charles Kayonga. This squadron changed name with the liking of the circumstances, but here the no exhaustive list of the names that it had to carry: NETWORK COMMANDO, or TECHNICIANS, or CDR COMMANDO.

These names adapted to the small groups, instead of the execution of the mission, or with the various objectives. Those, which were assigned to the supervision of the activities of

party CDR were baptized CDR Commando. Those which supervised the activities of the men who split the firewood in the army of Habyarimana, boys of city in Kigali, servants of the high personalities in charge for the country, technicians were baptized, etc.

What is important to know is that this squadron was designed in a sophisticated way, so much so that even those who formed part of it did not know, except for those who were formed together or for those who came from the same unity. The creation of this special squadron had as an aim of:

A. To sow the disorder and anarchy inside the country to cause occasions to show the government to be responsible for the crimes of assassinations having to be used for the resumption of the hostilities;

B. To plant the mines through the country in a more organized way;

C. To establish cells of the FPR inside the country, to diffuse its ideology, to recruit

accomplices, to poison drinking water consumed by displaced people, spy on  the enemy inside his line of face;

D. To organize assassinations of the political personalities targeted by the FPR.

Meanwhile, there was the attack of February 8 1993 which aimed to test the capacity to go on Kigali, to evaluate the work achieved by Network in the research of the reasons to reopen the hostilities, even if the negotiations were in hand.

Atrocities were made at this time, because where I was in certain communes of Ruhengeri, I remember that at "Base" in February, the soldiers who were there killed out of people of which they burned the corpses. Not having been able to be buried, these

bodies broke up along the road and of the river "Base", until the moment when soldiers of the GOMN had suddenly passed. They were indignant at this state of decomposition of the bodies and of allowed to go to ask whether we did not have shame to live with

corpses in a state of decomposition. We called the population to help to bury these corpses, but when the GOMN was withdrawn, these people were also killed.

It is at the same time that we began from the cruel acts of destruction of infrastructures like the electric pylons of Ntaruka, attacks of the dwelling houses of the authorities to the grenade; I remember that the houses of Rucagu and Colonel Gasake were thus destroyed, it was in Nyarutovu and Cyeru... Nobody can forget the made atrocities with Ruhengeri when Inkotanyi were found in impossibility of occupying the city. People know what occurred to Musanze, with the ITIRU and Karwasa, Kigombe and Kinigi, the inhabitants of this area will never forget what occurred in this locality. And nobody is unaware of the atrocities made by Inkotanyi in Ngarama, Buyoga and elsewhere.

BIRTH OF THE INTERAHAMWE, IMPUZAMUGAMBI-RTLM

Kagame had planned to put the negotiations in failure and to invade Kigali, while Habyarimana planned how to face what he called his enemies, which we really were. He created an armed militia, which received a military drive of the armed forces, communal police force, gendarmerie, and of the same services of the Presidency. This youth that will make the tragedy was omnipresent in all the country. And yet all were not of equal virulence in their eagerness to kill Tutsi. This point must be made available of the public, because it is an authentic fact. Any individual who lived in Rwanda during this period can attest it.

At the beginning of the attacks of Interahamwe with Bugesera, Kibirira, at Bagogwe, attackers arrived each time in the buses of the ONATRACOM coming from

the camps of war displaced people of Ruhengeri or Byumba. These same people knew already the APR persecutions and cruelty. Other youths Hutu from other region did not understand yet the inhuman behavior their comrades who killed people wildly as one kills out of the flies with a great fury. The majority of the attacks identified before the genocide were launched by these young people, whose cruelty is to be sought in two origins: Government and the FPR. That is why who wants to know how the genocide was possible can also think of these facts (6)

For the FPR, the MRND acted without the knowledge in accordance with the wish of

the FPR, because when the MRND involved Interahamwe, the FPR found the occasion to plant mines and to reject the responsibility for it on the Government, and found there the justification to take again the hostilities, while the International Community blamed the Habyarimana regime. I do not deny that Interahamwe like the other extremists planted

mines. For the FPR, it was also the occasion to train the commandos of Network, because, when the negotiations were going on, RPF took the opportunity to train more troops and to organize sessions of formation. During only 1993, the FPR trained its forces in the following fields:

- It trained two battalions of commandos and other small unities of less importance;

- It formed more than 400 soldiers intended to form part of the gendarmerie;

- It formed more than four groups of instructors. It planned that in the event of war, each unity has its own instructors to form the new recruits quickly;

- It trained all the officers command leadership;

- It sufficiently trained its soldiers with the urban guerrilla warfare, within each unity;

- It trained and trained the soldiers to make long steps, transporting all the individual equipment, each man with his cartridges and of the bombs allowing him to resist during several days while waiting for that the new provisioning arrives;

- It trained the soldiers in what it called the true history of Rwanda, which was not necessarily different, but which was exempted with the objective to insist on the fact that

the best remedy for the problem arising lay in the inversion of Habyarimana and its regime and in the need for the seizure of power by the FPR.

The weight of this was very important because the soldiers never thought that peace could come from the agreements of Arusha. On this point, the FPR adopted the same attitude as that of the extremists of the CDR and the MRND and other Power, the difference being that the FPR taught it to its soldiers without making publicity of it while, on its side, the MRND was praised some with the radio and in the newspapers, the refrain being that the agreements of Arusha were paper rags, or that they were like a dog in decomposition.

During this stage of the war, the FPR/APR managed to control the methods of intoxication of the public opinion enabling him to trap the Habyarimana régime, and all the errors it made were easily rejected on Habyarimana and its government.

We were in the stage where the agreements of peace had been just signed, but where two men, Habyarimana and Kagame, two enemy Generals who are at war, and who if they met somewhere in the country would not hesitate to draw one mortally over the other.

We were in the stage where the FPR obtained the certainty that, if it wanted, it would sow the disorder to seize the power, but also, where it was ready to yield to the international pressure to enter to the government. He as the extremists of Habyarimana did not want to intend to speak about this way of power sharing as a durable solution with the problems arising. This is why each one planned an alternative solution if they would have been constrained to cohabit with a view to cause the rupture of the agreements concluded between the two protagonists of the conflict.

Here is what was planned on both sides:

- Habyarimana created what he indicated as civil defense, which did not even dissimulate its intention to disseminate weapons within the population, in each cell and each sector of the country that will be used later on to sow disorders.

- He created armed militia to refuse the signed agreements, even those signed by him. They were ready to make anything with the simple signal.

- He imposed on Radio RTLM on Radio Rwanda and other small affiliated newspapers, the same leading line for saying that the agreements of Arusha were not of any utility for the Rwandans. 

- He bought new military equipment that was added to the old ones, so that one disseminates them in all the country.

- He made draw up lists of all the people who had children or brothers within the FPR Inkotanyi, those which were suspected of propagating the ideology of the FPR, those who sought financings to him, Hutu who behaved as of Tutsi, I want to say those who supported the fight of the FPR, so that as soon as possible, all are massacred. Nobody knew the day when these massacres were to be carried out.

- This is different from what the FPR propagates which supports that it was established the list of all Tutsi so that they all are killed. It is a lie because if Tutsi were to be killed simultaneously, that supposes that each one of them was to be carried out by his neighbors, and these neighbors knew each other very well in order not to have to try hard to draw up the list of Tutsi, because even the little children grow up hearing people talking  about them at the village.

Here, I would like to stress that even with the death of Habyarimana, and even if he had not been killed, the objective was to massacre all the people inventoried on well drawn

up lists, and it is what occurred except for some fortunate, all the others whose one had planned death were massacred in the three days that followed the death of Habyarimana.

On the side of the Government, I affirm that Habyarimana in person or on pressure of his

entourage, wanted that these lists are elaborated, and he knew that at a convenient period, the people appearing would be carried out there.

Another point that I do not want to forget, and which appears serious to me, it is that the human life which is usually sacred in Rwanda, had become like the water that runs, especially for Tutsi; I please say that finally Habyarimana and his extremists had sensitized the Hutu of the CDR and Interahamwe that to pour the blood of Tutsi was a banal act. They had been exerted there in Kibirira, in Bugesera, and at Bagogwe, to test that to pour the blood was possible, and that those who did it did not have to tremble. This was serious so much that, as I announced, the other Hutu of the villages and the sectors, and even those of the MRND, were not killers, they were astonished by the behavior and the projects of Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi; others fought them until generated disorders within the political parties. Nobody is unaware of how the youth of the MDR (Inkuba), PSD (Abakombozi) and PL (liberals) faced Interahamwe.

All that occurred until Habyarimana manage to divide them into Power and Amajyogi. In short, the extremists sensitized their youths to give death without being worried. Here another sign that made the genocide possible (8).

On the FPR/APR side, many things were done that prepared the last day for Tutsi.

- For reasons of control of the Ugandan border, the FPR made enter as much as possible of ammunition to Rwanda, for a use of long duration. This was held at the end of September 1993, on three different localities, and for two reasons:

-To take again the hostilities in a decisive way to seize power, in the contrary case, to dissimulate to use them to sow the disorder after our entry in the Government with a view to seize power by the force... For that, who wants to understand Network, here there is a signal. Those who were selected, myself y included, have to dig very large pits, as where I was, the cavity measured 50 m X 30 m X 7 m. We deposited ammunition there and bombs of various gauges of 7,62 mm, 11.5 mm, 12.7 mm, 14.5 mm, 23 mm, 37 mm, 75 mm, 76 mm, 81 mm, 82 mm, 107 mm, 120 mm, 122 mm. Ugandan citizens transported all this armament. They were more than 1.000 and transported it a whole day.

We who had the load to ensure the guard of it, we were agreed that one among us could result in the death of all with the old hoe if this secrecy escaped. In this place, three among us were shot because they had been to buy cigarettes without the authorization of the commander. What was affirmed to us by Kabarebe and Kayumba Nyamwasa was that even if it were that we enter to the Government, that there was no question for us of remaining there. We were going to be installed very close of the hiding-places of our

equipment on the border between Uganda and Rwanda, that one was going to supply us discreetly, until the moment when it will be possible to make a coup d'etat.

The other hiding-place was in Kirama in Mutara, Bungwe in Cyumba, and between Kaniga and Gatonde. Actually, nothing other was considered if it is not to be able to sow the disorders to seize the power. Very few people were implied in this affair, one counted them at the end of the fingers, it was Kagame himself, Kabarebe his second, Kayumba Nyamwasa, the Chief of the Information, Colonel Ngoga in North, Colonel Bagire in Mutara, Major Jacob called Rubondo who was responsible for military logistics and others who arrived in visit organized by the persons in charge for the military operations or those who were sent to us. The soldiers of the FPR who were selected for this kind of work were to deserve a very great confidence, and it is among them that one recruited those who went spy on the town of Kigali before the assassination of Habyarimana.

- Several soldiers were disseminated everywhere in the country, with mission of posing the mines, to establish the basic structures of the FPR, to involve with the handling of weapons those who could shoulder to us during the war, to know the operation of each political party, to mix with youths of the political parties, and to follow closely those which the FPR decided D ' to eliminate.

- The FPR and its frameworks penetrated in the buffer zone, demilitarized zone, where it started to propagate its ideology. For me it was a good deed, only the error that was made was that whoever did not adhere immediately to this ideology was killed with blows of the old hoe. Generally all its family was carried out little time afterwards.

The FPR tested its tactic of intoxication of the public opinion by allotting to the MRND the crimes for which it was the author. For example the FPR assassinated people whom it had in aversion or not, to cause occasions to show the regime. By using the technicians of Network or his enlarged branch officers of the intelligence of the unities or bands of killers, or of young people to which it had taught how to manufacture small bombs, the selection of the targets to be cut down was done according to criteria's hereafter:

1° The Hutu who discharged its function suitably, who liked Habyarimana and his Government.

2° Any Hutu who made watch of a certain intellectual level (for example Mr. Gapyisi).

3° Any Hutu whose assassination could be easily allotted to the government.

4° Any Hutu which the survey had of the difficulties of locating.

5° Any senior officer if it were possible.

6° No Tutsi born in Rwanda could cause the confidence of the FPR, if its death could easily be allotted to Habyarimana, there was nothing to regret (it is necessary to sacrifice Tutsi of the interior).

7° Intellectual Tutsi who could not adhere spontaneously to the ideology of the FPR like Landoald Ndasingwa whom we missed several times.

8° Tutsi who in general resided in isolated places were assassinated collectively, and this kind of crimes was immediately charged to the MRND, by example the soldiers of the FPR did that in Kabatwa in Gisenyi, under the command of Gashayija Bagirigomwa, Moses Rubimbura of the service of information. These are not rumors, they occurred at the beginning 1994.

9° Even after the war, the FPR did not hesitate to sacrifice Tutsi to find the pretext of go

to plunder minerals and lumber in Zaire:

 - It sacrificed the Bagogwe at Mudende, that which in doubt can require the evidence of them, we will provide them to him

- It sacrificed the Banyamurenge at Biura and elsewhere, and that is not a secrecy for anybody.

- The technicians of the Town of Kigali (Network) committed innumerable crimes.

As I said at the beginning, Network is a broad network made up of elements only known by those who select them. For the remainder, each one knew that with which it was affected. If it happened that you meet some share with another, which you suspect of

being your Inkotanyi comrade, there was even no question of making him a wink, because he was achieving a mission different from your. We were involved to occupy us only of what concerned us, each one personally carrying out the received instructions. The criteria of selection were as follows:

1. To be tutsi of father and mother: the examination of this criterion was not to leave any doubt and was not accepted that after a deepened examination, the candidate was to then enjoy greatest confidence.

2. To refer physical or to look like a Hutu was an asset, because it was not necessary for them to be camouflaged, the others that posted the face of Tutsi, it was necessary for us to circulate with motorbikes. Each time one feared to be known, we put the helmet on our heads, and one endorsed the tools of the agronomists, this camouflage enabled you to go to carry out the task for which you had come.

3. To know Rwanda perfectly, especially the town of Kigali was advantageous because there the center of the majority of the activities was.

4. To be a Hutu, of public notoriety, in condition never of not having resided at Rwanda, and to have shown a great hostility towards the Hutu, by disavowing your ethnic membership, and without fear to pour your blood.

5. To be Hutu, born in Rwanda for missions determined very well and isolated from the

others, one took care not to put to you in contact with other missions dispatched at Kigali.

Openly or without your knowledge, you were spun by more than five agents of the services of information of Inkotanyi.

- Personal work was different from that of the others, it happened that one crossed there during the execution of a mission without knowing, but certain secret instructions could enable you to be recognized mutually in the event of need. There were young people who ensured everywhere the services of taxi motorbikes in the country; they furrowed all the places of gatherings of the politicians, taximen, commanders of the military unities or dignitaries Hutu. Boys of street were sent in the streets of Cyimihurura, among the dockers of the markets, some were going to mix with Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi or Bakombozi. Others worked clandestinely, they worked during the night, and others still were engaged as pump assistants at the gasoline stations. Work was diversified so much that when it took again hostilities there, Kagame had all information, which he needed to undertake his last decisive battle.

Each one of those who were considered to be able to involve the others, received the order to recruit the greatest number of accomplices, and often the latter did not know that they had in front of them a Inkotanyi soldier, they had only the impression to have an interlocutor in sympathy with the FPR. We received also instructions to carry out special surveys into personalities, to provide the reports of them by specifying if their assassination could be useful to us, and if it were possible.

- When the negotiations arrived at the conclusion that the FPR Inkotanyi could enter in Kigali with its 600 soldiers, the trap of the FPR was closed again on a new catch. The selection of these soldiers was done with a highly intelligent calculation, because they were not soldiers only we were accustomed to seeing. Here how that occurred:

1. Each unity sent a man of great confidence, a soldier who had eaten the teeth of the heart (pitiless), excessively devoted, who almost did not need a superior, able to draw from complicated situations without being assisted, gunner of elite, an example of courage and easy trigger.

2. The selection went on the best commanders, the best in the services of information, and which had had a drive sufficient for the urban guerrilla warfare, in order to not see any obstacle to be seized Kigali. We had memorized that one dies the come day, that all the risks deserved to be taken, that courage was the mother of all the other values, that in no case, one did not have to give to the enemy the opportunity to gain the victory.

3. According to the usual structures of command of the army, the Sergeants and corporals had troops under their command on the level of the Section. It was not thus with the third battalion of Inkotanyi, the sergeants were mixed with the corporals under the command with a second lieutenant or a sergeant estimated to have competences of the officers. What I want to explain here is that it acted of an autonomous force, which did not need to receive instructions too much, where each soldier could obey his own orders and succeed.

4. In more of the lesson exempte