ALLEGATIONS AGAINST RWANDAN DEPUTY DARFUR

C O N F I D E N T I A L KIGALI 000762 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/11/2017 TAGS: PREL PHUM RW SUBJECT: ALLEGATIONS AGAINST RWANDAN DEPUTY DARFUR COMMANDER APPEAR UNFOUNDED REF: KIGALI 0006 (NOTAL) Classified By: Ambassador Michael R. Arietti, reason 1.4 (B/D) ¶1. (C) A Brussels-based opposition group, FDU-Inkingi, recently accused Rwandan Major General Emmanuel Karenzi Karake - the newly appointed Deputy Commander of the UN-AU Hybrid Force in Darfur - of participation in various massacres and murders of political opponents in the years just before and after the 1994 genocide. FDU-Inkingi, an umbrella grouping formed by three external opposition parties in the fall of 2006 (reftel),is composed of various disaffected Hutu politicians, and the adult Hutu off-spring of senior officials in the pre-genocide Habyarimana and Kayibanda governments (each of those governments was near-exclusively Hutu and actively discriminatory towards Tutsis and Rwanda's other minority group the Twas). ¶2. (C) Post has conducted a review of its own files and other available sources, including an extensive internet search, and finds no independent basis for these charges. Karenzi Karake was a senior military figure when the Kagame government faced an ex-FAR (ex-Armed Forces of Rwanda) insurgency at home in the aftermath of the genocide, and when it intervened in the Congo to confront that insurgency directly. On that basis, he has long been the subject of rumors of involvement in extrajudicial killings in Rwanda and the Congo. ¶3. (C) As noted reftel, FDU-Ikingi frequently engages in heavy-handed and ill-informed attacks on the Kagame government, attempting with limited success to monitor events in Rwanda from afar, and often attributing the worst possible motivations for any action taken by the Rwandan government. Absent any other sources for these accusations beyond the FDU-Inkingi itself, we do not find them convincing. ¶4. (U) Career information for Major General Karenzi Karake is listed below: DPOB: 23 December 1960, Rwanda 2005: Commander, 4th Division, RDF (Rwanda Defense Forces) 2004: Commander, 3rd Division, RDF 2000-2002: G3 (Chief of Operations, Plans and Training),RDF 1998-1999: Commander, 408 Brigade, RDF 1994-1997: G2 (Chief of Military Intelligence),RDF 1993: RPA (Rwanda Patriotic Army) Chief Military Officer to UNAMIR (UN Mission to Rwanda) 1991-1992: RPA Chief Military Officer to NMOG (OAU observer group in Rwanda) 1990: Field Commander, RPA 1984-1990: Service in National Resistance Army, Uganda Post records show Karake participating in a 1993 IMET training program for the RPA and FAR military observers attached to UNAMIR. ¶5. (U) Post has emailed Karake's unclass bio to AF and AF/C. ARIETTI