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Rwanda's intelligence chief returns to Kigali

Xinhua, August 13, 2015 Adjust font size:

Rwanda's spy master Lieutenant General Karenzi Karake who had been held in the UK returned to Kigali on Thursday.

He arrived at Kigali International Airport at about 9.30 a.m. local time, where he was welcomed by his family members.

Briefing journalists, Rwanda's Justice Minister Johnston Busingye said Karake's return was welcome news to the country.

Lieutenant General Karake was freed Monday unconditionally after the English courts threw out the extradition case brought against him.

At the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, the Spanish authorities admitted that the general had committed no offence that could be prosecuted in England and Spain proving the wrongful arrest of the General, Rwanda government statement said on Monday.

Karake had been detained in London for over seven weeks, which started in one of the UK's highest security prisons.

The general was arrested by the Metropolitan Police at London Heathrow Airport on June 20 as he attempted to return to Rwanda after an official visit to the UK.

The arrest which sparked a series of protests in Kigali was based upon a 2008 European Arrest Warrant sparked off by an indictment issued by a Spanish judge in the same year.

Minister Busingye maintained Monday that the case requiring extradition of Karake to Spain had been dismissed.

The Spanish indictment alleges that Lt. Gen. Karake and 39 other top Rwandan leaders were members of a "criminal terrorist organization called the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) formed in Uganda in the 1980s with the purpose of committing genocide against the Hutu in Rwanda."

But Rwanda insists that the arrest warrant was just a tactic in a political campaign by those who deny the genocide of 1994, and is convinced that the proceedings amounted to an abuse of process brought in violation of the diplomatic immunity held by Lt. Gen. Karake.

"In what we do, we have to always bear in mind that we are in a world which has its own ways and politics," Kagame said in Parliament. Endit