South African Police Deny Report on Arrests in Murder of Karegeya

The New Age reported today that three Rwandan nationals, including Lieutenant Colonel Francis Gakwerere, were arrested at a hotel in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, after Rwandan exiles alerted local police about their presence in the country.

“It is not true, it is a big lie,” Paul Ramaloko, spokesman of the SAPS’s directorate for priority crime investigations, known as the Hawks, said by phone.

Karegeya was found strangled to death on a bed in the Michelangelo Towers hotel in Johannesburg’s affluent Sandton area on New Year’s Day. At a wreath-laying ceremony for him on Jan. 5, Rwandan exiles blamed the government of President Paul Kagame for the murder.

Three men including Gakwerere were questioned by police in Maputo as persons of interest in the case, according Chad Thomas of IRS Forensic Investigations, a Johannesburg-based company that probes financial crimes in Africa.

Police questioned Gakwerere because he was also a person of interest after the 2010 attempted assassination of Kayumba Nyamwasa, a founding member of the Rwanda National Congress, an opposition party, in Johannesburg, Thomas said today in a phone interview.

Ramaloko declined to confirm that anyone has been questioned in connection with the murder. The Hawks are making “satisfactory progress” in the investigation, he said.

Source:SABC News

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