Aloys Ntiwiragabo, the All-Present Spy Master in the April 6, 1994 Plot

Found in 2020 near Orléans after having evaded international justice for 26 years, Colonel Aloys Ntiwiragabo was not in Rwanda when the president’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. However, he and his subordinates were involved in every aspect of the plot. This is the first episode.

On the evening of April 6, 1994, the Rwandan capital, Kigali, became the stage of a deadly conspiracy. Two missiles, fired from a military camp, shot down the presidential plane as it was preparing to land. The attack claimed the life of President Juvénal Habyarimana, as well as that of Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, who was traveling with him. On the ground, Rwandan soldiers carried out a series of political assassinations, created a constitutional void, and seized power. It was the starting signal of a long-planned collective crime: the genocide against the Tutsi, which would claim one million lives over the next three months.

African Facts investigated the role of Aloys Ntiwiragabo, head of military intelligence (G2), who currently resides in France, during the first 24 hours of the last genocide of the 20th century. A true conspiracy, carefully and methodically orchestrated.

The Troubling Absence of the Colonel on April 6, 1994

Aloys Ntiwiragabo was not in Kigali on April 6, 1994. He had been attending a meeting of the United Nations Standing Advisory Committee on Security Questions in Central Africa (UNSAC) for two days in Yaoundé. He was joined in the Cameroonian capital by Rwanda’s Minister of Defense, who arrived just half an hour before the attack.

Military and political tensions in Rwanda were at their peak, with a fragile truce in place and growing threats to the president’s life threats that were public and widely known. Yet, these two key figures in the country’s security apparatus left, against all logic, to attend a meeting where the Rwandan issue was only marginal, as evidenced by the official UNSAC report and Cameroonian daily newspapers from the time.

According to a “special report” written by UNSAC Secretary Sammy Kum Buo which African Facts consulted the Rwandan delegation in Yaoundé had a telephone link to Rwanda, allowing them to closely monitor the situation. Were Colonel Ntiwiragabo and the Minister aware of what was being prepared that night? At the very least, they had a clear sense of how the events in Rwanda would unfold, as Sammy Kum Buo wrote in his report:

“As soon as my colleagues from the secretariat and I informed the two delegations that same night — well before any news of violent reactions had come from Kigali the members of the Rwandan delegation […] predicted them.”

During our investigation, we discovered other elements suggesting that Aloys Ntiwiragabo may have had detailed knowledge of the events unfolding in the capital.

In 2018, two years before the colonel’s presence in France was uncovered, the Central Office for the Fight Against Crimes Against Humanity (OCLCH) intercepted a brief phone conversation as part of another case. African Facts was able to review the transcript. At the time, investigators did not know they were listening to Aloys Ntiwiragabo. His female interlocutor referred to a Rwandan officer who had provided information to international justice about meetings held during the early days of the genocide.

A very curious statement from Aloys Ntiwiragabo, who consistently insisted in 1995, 1997, 2018, and 2020 that he was physically absent from the capital implying that he was unaware of the situation and therefore bore no responsibility. Was the colonel actually being informed in real time about events by his intelligence service, as the UNSAC special report also seems to suggest?

And interestingly, while Aloys Ntiwiragabo was not physically present in Kigali that night, the G2 military intelligence service he led was, in contrast, omnipresent behind the scenes of the plot unfolding in the capital.

A layered conspiracy

On April 6, 1994, the radio frequencies of the Rwandan army were changed. This was a routine exercise, but it temporarily disrupted military coordination by isolating some operators from each other, forcing them to rely on army headquarters to centralize communications. The officer on duty at headquarters that night, from April 6 to 7, was the deputy of Aloys Ntiwiragabo in the G2 military intelligence service.

Two hours after the attack on the presidential plane, this same deputy of Ntiwiragabo took part in the “crisis committee” that validated the military coup: the “meeting that took place that night.” In the hours that followed, the army assassinated the Prime Minister, the President of the Constitutional Court, and key opposition politicians.

Immediately after the attack, the Rwandan army’s Commandoes for Reconnaissance and Deep Action (CRAP) went to the crash site, accompanied by several French military advisors. They conducted searches. Several pieces of evidence disappeared that night, including the plane’s black box, which could have helped reconstruct the incident and determine the origin of the missile strikes.

According to a document signed by Aloys Ntiwiragabo himself in 1993, obtained by African Facts, “the use of CRAP units for intelligence gathering” fell under the exclusive responsibility of the G2 service.

At dawn on April 7, 1994, ten Belgian UN peacekeepers assigned to protect the country’s Prime Minister were captured and taken to a military camp, where they were summarily executed. This triggered Belgium’s decision to withdraw its troops from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). African Facts reviewed documents written by the armed forces of that time. Two non-commissioned officers from the G2 military intelligence service were present at the location where the ten Belgian soldiers were briefly detained before being massacred. From the operations room at army headquarters, Aloys Ntiwiragabo’s deputy in G2 was able to see their corpses. The officer later convicted of the killings by Belgian justice had, just months earlier, served as G2’s liaison on the frontlines.

This particular killing appears to have been premeditated. Two days before the coup—while Colonel Aloys Ntiwiragabo was flying to Cameroon gendarmerie lieutenant actively encouraged other junior officers to attend a reception organized by the Prime Minister. That same evening, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the genocidaires’ media outlet, accused the head of government of conspiring with those officers and plotting a military coup, thus preemptively justifying her elimination in the early hours of April 7.

As the killings multiplied across the capital, the G2 implemented another major part of the conspiracy: a deception campaign meant to mislead public opinion, divert attention, and exonerate the plotters.

On the morning of April 7, G2’s signal interception station claimed to have picked up a message in which rebels took responsibility for the attack. In reality, it was a fabrication created by G2 itself. The radio operator who transcribed the forged message later confirmed: “The sector commander personally brought me the fake message to transcribe. It was handwritten on a scrap of paper. The author was my superior, Colonel Aloys Ntiwiragabo. I could clearly distinguish between their handwriting.”

A note dated November 17, 1993, signed by Ntiwiragabo and revealed by Mediapart, further shows that he had predicted the content of such a message months before it was “intercepted.”

Fairly quickly, the genocidaires also claimed that the plane had been shot down by the rebels from a hill near the airport, presenting as evidence photographs of two missile launchers they claimed to have found at the scene. This, too, would later prove to be a fabrication. Once again, the G2 intelligence service was behind the deception.

Colonel Aloys Ntiwiragabo himself admitted that the photos originated from his service, when he was questioned years later by a French judge in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Aloys Ntiwiragabo only returned to Rwanda on April 8, 1994, and resumed his duties as head of military intelligence, later also taking on the role of commander of the “operational sector” of Kigali from the end of May 1994.

His alleged role in the genocide, which claimed one million lives between April and July 1994, is currently under investigation by France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) and the Central Office for the Fight Against Crimes Against Humanity (OCLCH). He is presumed innocent. When contacted, his lawyer asked that we “stop bothering” his client.

Who was Ntiwiragabo in telephone contact with from Yaoundé on April 6 and 7, 1994? Was it with the Ministry of Defense lthen controlled by another key extremist figure, Colonel Théoneste Bagosoraor with the Rwandan army headquarters, where his deputy was on duty?

The investigation should aim to answer these crucial questions to clarify Ntiwiragabo’s role and level of involvement in these events, as well as determine his degree of responsibility in the conspiracy.

Source: African facts