Gen. Gervais Ndirakobuca, current Prime Minister of Burundi and a former rebel commander is mentioned in a controversial old murder case in which he is an accomplice in diverting state ammunition to FDLR a Rwandan rebel group operating in DRC.
The head of an anti-corruption agency in Burundi who was investigating this serious crime was mysteriously murdered including other high ranking co-accused and the resultant case file has since disappeared from court.
Critics are pointing fingers at some of the co-accused as indicated in the case file including the current powerful Prime Minister that could have a hand in the disappearance of the case file.
According to the RPA online publication, Ernest Manirumva the former vice president of the Observatory for the Fight against Corruption and Economic Embezzlement (OLUCOME) who was investigating the weapons diversion was later mysteriously assassinated in 2009.
The Assassination case has been pending at the Supreme Court for the past ten years. However, according to RPA publication, the case file has mysteriously disappeared and nobody has dared raise a finger.
Manirumva was assassinated on the night of April 8 to 9, 2009. He was the victim of his work investigating several embezzlement cases which involved senior leaders of the country.
Among the sensitive files at the origin of his death, were weapons ordered, but which were never delivered to Burundi.
The anti-corruption activist had discovered that they had been transported to the east of the DRC and given to the FDLR, hostile to the Kigali regime.
This matter which had drawn the attention of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and requested to carry out investigations, sent its report findings to Judicial authorities in July 2010, it classified it as a state crime.
The FBI had allegedly also requested that DNA samples be taken from certain people. Until now some have been spared by the justice system.
Other people cited by the FBI included the late General Adolphe Nshimirimana who was the head of the National Intelligence Service and General Gervais Ndirakobuca, current Prime Minister of Burundi.
However, no action was taken on these FBI recommendations.
The last judgment rendered in the Manirumva assassination case was in 2013. it was rendered by the Bujumbura Court of Appeal.
The judgment was challenged in cassation by OLUCOME in the same year, 2013. But to date, the court has never convened for this case. No court pronouncement has been made since.
After several postponements for various reasons, the file ended up disappearing according to the explanations given by the Supreme Court to OLUCOME.
OLUCOME has since threatened that if the Supreme Court does not find the “hidden” file to judge it, it will refer the case to regional and international courts.
Recently the Burundi government has publicly aligned its troops with those of DRC and FDLR militia in the jungles of Congo to hunt down ethnic Tutsi Congolese fighters known as the M23 movement.
The FDLR are largely composed of perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi which claimed a million lives.
A secret bilateral defence pact signed in August last year by President Felix Tshisekedi and Burundi’s Évariste Ndayishimiye saw Gitega deploying over 6,000 soldiers to eastern DRC.
Tshisekedi planned such that as the polls approached, the main mission of all Burundian soldiers in DRC had to be protecting him, his allies, and voting centers.
After the polls, all the Burundian troops would be deployed in eastern DRC to support the Congolese army coalition in fighting M23 rebels.
