By Brian Okoth
The Malawian government has said that 55 Rwanda genocide suspects are hiding in the country after they changed their identity details.
Ken Zikhale Ng’oma, the Minister of Homeland Security, said in a press briefing in the capital Lilongwe on Monday that a total of 552 suspects wanted for various human rights violations in their home countries have sought asylum in Malawi.
The minister said 40 of the suspects are generals who committed serious humanitarian law violations in their countries of origin.
“My ministry is aware that those hiding in our country are using false identity on their passports which were obtained without following the proper procedures,” he said.
Ng’oma said some of the suspects are disguising as refugees.
“The government will review all the immigration documents of persons suspected to be in the country illegally. We’ll seek to know the types of passports they are holding and how they acquired them,” he said, adding that the verification exercise will last a year, from June 5, 2023.
Malawi’s remarks come two weeks after South Africa apprehended Rwandan genocide suspect Fulgence Kayishema.
He was arrested on May 24 after being on the run since 2001.
Kayishema, 62, is alleged to have orchestrated the killing of approximately 2,000 Tutsi at the Nyange Catholic Church during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said.
The Rwandan government had written to Malawi seeking to establish whether Kayishema travelled to South Africa on a Malawian passport.
Ng'oma said authorities were “conducting thorough investigations” into how the suspect acquired the document and would be providing “a comprehensive report soon”.
In about 100 days (between April and July) in 1994, some 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, with the ethnic Hutu extremists largely blamed for the genocide against Tutsis.
