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 Patrick Karegeya, who once headed military intelligence in his
homeland, fled to South Africa in 2007 after allegedly plotting a
coup against President Paul Kagame with former Rwandan army chief
Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who was also exiled there.
Karegeya body was discovered on New Year's Day on a bed at
Michelangelo Towers, an upscale hotel and apartment complex he had
apparently booked in to three days earlier, South African police
said.
His neck was swollen and a bloody towel and rope were found in the
room's safe, they said.
Paul Ramakolo, a spokesman for South Africa's Hawks, an elite crime
fighting unit, confirmed Karegeya had been killed. "We will check if
it was as a result of strangulation or what could be the factor," he
said.
The opposition Rwanda National Congress, many of whose senior
members are also living in exile, described Karegeya's death as an
assassination.
"By killing its opponents, the criminal regime in Kigali seeks to
intimidate and silence the Rwandan people into submission," it said.
A spokesperson for the Rwandan presidency declined to comment and it
was not possible to reach Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo or
spokespeople at the Rwandan embassy in Pretoria.
Rwanda's ambassador to South Africa, Vincent Karega, earlier told
local radio SAFM he was not aware of details of the killing. "We
encourage the authorities to really look into the matter so that we
know exactly what happened," he said.
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Nyamwasa was shot in the stomach in 2010 as he drove into the
driveway of his upmarket Johannesburg home. He survived what his
family said was an assassination attempt ordered by Kagame.
Both Nyamwasa and Karegeya, who was 53, fought alongside Kagame in
Rwanda's 1994 war, which halted the genocide by ethnic Hutu militia
who had killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in just three
months.
In 2011, South Africa declined a Rwandan request to extradite
Nyamwasa to his homeland. He was also wanted in Spain and France for
killings in the 1990s.
Also in 2011, a Rwandan military court sentenced Karegeya, Nyamwasa
and two other exiled officers to 20 years in prison for threatening
state security after they were tried in absentia.
(Additional reporting by Stella Mapenzauswa in Johannesburg and
Richard Lough in Nairobi; editing by Ed Stoddard and John Stonestreet)
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