Exiled critic of Rwandan president found beheaded in Uganda
Ugandan police say a male body has been found in a village near Kampala, and his head has yet to be located.
An exiled vocal critic of the Rwandan government has been found decapitated near Kampala, south-central Uganda, according to a police spokesperson, in a case that remains under investigation.
Ugandan police said on Monday they were investigating the “murder of a male adult (around 50), whose head was cut off, and up to now, the head has not yet been recovered”, spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke told reporters.
The body was identified by relatives as Robert Kabera and found in Luwala, a village near Kampala. Police said the killing likely occurred late on October 16 or early on October 17.
Kabera, a former sergeant who fled Rwanda several years ago, was living in Uganda. He was reportedly not critical of the government while serving in the military but later became increasingly opposed to President Paul Kagame.
The former soldier ran a YouTube channel, “Major Robert TV”, which had 144,000 subscribers. He also featured a song praising opposition figure Victoire Ingabire, a rare voice of dissent in Rwanda who has been imprisoned several times.
In Uganda, Kabera “had no issues with anyone”, his brother, Victor Agaba, told AFP. “Our problem comes from home… The army created a criminal case against him. It was a witch-hunt,” he said.
Kabera was declared a fugitive after leaving Rwanda and accused of corrupting a minor, charges he denied.
Rwandan authorities have faced accusations of assassinating opponents of Kagame, who has governed the country since taking power in 2000, following the 1994 genocide in which about 800,000 people were killed, primarily members of the Tutsi minority.
Kabera is not the first Rwandan opposition figure living in exile to be killed. In 2021, former Rwandan army lieutenant Revocat Karemangingo was shot dead in Mozambique, where he was suspected of secretly supporting an opposition force.
Outspoken opponent Seif Bamporiki was also shot dead in South Africa that year, while former intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya, who became a critic of Kagame, was strangled in his South African hotel room in 2014.
Former general Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who co-founded the opposition Rwanda National Congress with Karegeya and lives in exile, has survived several assassination attempts.
Credit: Al Jazeera
