Tharcisse Muvunyi, a soldier who had been found guilty of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has been found dead in Niger.
His lawyer, Abbe Joles, said the 70-year-old was found unresponsive in the shower by one of his housemates in Niger’s capital Niamey on Saturday afternoon.
The former soldier had earlier appealed for medical assistance, but his request to be flown to the United Kingdom (UK) for treatment was not granted.
Muvunyi, who had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010, but was released after two years, had been living in Tanzania’s northern city of Arusha before moving to Niger in 2021.
Brain scans
In Niamey, he was sharing a house with seven other people who had been charged alongside him over their alleged roles in the Rwandan genocide.
On May 6, he was found unconscious in the house and taken to hospital for brain scans. The scans weren’t completed, but he was discharged from hospital on May 10, Reuters reports.
On May 16, Muvunyi’s lawyer filed a request with the United Nations, seeking the former convict’s evacuation to the UK for treatment. Joles said she never received a response from the UN.
Muvunyi was charged with inciting the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda, resulting in the killing of hundreds of thousands of the Tutsi minority ethnic group and moderate Hutus.
Retrial
The now-defunct United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda heard a retrial against Muvunyi, ordering his release in 2012 after he had served two years of his original 15-year sentence.
Prior to the retrial, the tribunal had on February 11, 2010 found him guilty of inciting the public to commit genocide.
Muvunyi, a former lieutenant-colonel, was the Commander of the Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) School in southern Rwanda during the genocide period.
In about 100 days – between April and July1994 – some 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, with the ethnic Hutu extremists largely blamed for the genocide.
