Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Rwanda: How Victoire Ingabire's Mother Became 'The Doctor of Death'


During the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, mothers with babies on their backs were thrown alive in rivers and lakes to drown.

Women and girls were also raped before being killed and their clothes were taken away by the killers.

Among these mass murderers were also horrible women who did horrifying things to their fellow women, and children. They include Thérèse Dusabe, the mother of Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire, who was a midwife at the Butamwa Health Center in Nyarugenge District.

Dusabe collaborated with the Bourgmestre of Butamwa Commune to prepare and chair all the meetings that planned the attacks against the Tutsi in the area.

Testimonies from the Mageragere Gacaca Court showed that Dusabe was nicknamed "the doctor of death" for her cruelty.

As noted, she first killed Tutsi pregnant women and then killed babies by hitting them on the walls.

In 2009, Gacaca Courts sentenced her to life in prison after convicting her of the torture of Tutsi women who were being treated at the Butamwa Health Center.

Dusabe was sentenced in absentia twice in different cases for her role in the Genocide. She was sentenced to 30 years in jail by a Gacaca court for the disembowelment of pregnant Tutsi women and removing the foetuses which she would smash to death in a horrendous manner, officials from the now defunct Gacaca jurisdictions told The New Times in January 2010.

In a separate trial, Dusabe was sentenced to life for masterminding the Genocide by calling for meetings and sensitizing the Interahamwe militias to kill the Tutsi.

After the genocide was stopped, it is reported that Dusabe fled the country and went to Zaire (now DR Congo) from where she managed to find her way to Europe, apparently with the assistance of her daughter, Ingabire, who calls herself a politician.

Ingabire was herself convicted by the Gacaca courts of serious crimes, including genocide ideology, when she arrived in Rwanda from the Netherlands in 2010.

She was arrested in October 2010.

In September 2018, when President Paul Kagame exercised his prerogative of mercy to grant early release to more than 2,000 inmates convicted for various crimes, Ingabire was among those pardoned.

She had served eight years of her 15-year term when she got early release.

Ingabire was arrested in 2010 on evidence, among others, furnished to Rwandan judicial authorities by the Dutch government. Evidence provided by Dutch authorities attested to the fact that she was fundraising for FDLR, a terrorist group based in eastern DR Congo that was formed by the remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi

She was also convicted for inciting the masses to revolt against the government and minimising the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

When interviewed by journalists to comment on the sentences imposed by Gacaca courts replied that she did not trust Gacaca courts because they were run by incompetent people, adding that she only trusted the judges of the now defunct International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania.

When asked about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and her mother's role, Ingabire laughed.

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