Kagame court denies bail, again, to Victoire Ingabire Special

Kigali - On January 20, Rwanda's High Court once again rejected the bail appeal of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Chair of Rwanda's FDU-INKINGI coalition of opposition parties.

Her preventive detention order had expired during the Christmas holidays, but the judge ruled that her case had been transmitted to the Court for the evidence stage thereafter. Ingabire remains in Kigali's infamous 1930 maximum security prison. On January 18, two days before the verdict, President Paul Kagame informed a press conference that Ingabire will face the laws up to the exhaustion of the process. "Who is the judge strong enough to contradict him in Rwanda?" asked FDU's spokesperson Sixbert Musangamfura, writing from exile in Finland. "Only God."

Wikimedia Commons

Rwandan President Paul Kagame was sworn in for another 7-year term, after the explosive, August 26th leak of a UN report documenting genocidal massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus, by his army, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

image:67520:1::0

January 16th was the anniversary of Ingabire's return to Rwanda to attempt to run for president against incumbent and staunch U.S. ally Paul Kagame. She was arrested in April and charged with "genocide ideology," a speech crime unique to Rwanda, which means disagreeing with the received history of Rwanda's epic 1994 massacres known as the Rwanda Genocide, and/or disagreeing with the Rwandan government. She was then confined to Rwanda's capitol, Kigali, and her party was not allowed to register or register her candidacy. On October 14th, she was arrested again and she has remained incarcerated since.

The Newsline EA

Opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza being led from prison to court in handcuffs, in pink prison garb, with her head shaved by prison authorities.

image:82913:0::0

Bernard Ntaganda, another Rwandan presidential candidate who might have had a chance to win, had he been allowed to run, also remains in Kigali's 1930 maximum security prison, while a judge considers the prosecution's plea that he be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.

Parti Social-Imberakuri

Rwandan Police arrested Bernard Ntaganda, founder and presidential candidate of Rwanda's Parti Social-Imberakuri, on the morning of June 24th, 2010, after calling for a protest of the opposition's exclusion from the election, saying "Silence is acceptance."

image:67350:2::0