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A woman whose husband and three young children were slaughtered during the 1994 Rwandan genocide cried Thursday, 12 May, 2011, as she identified from the witness stand Lazare Kobayaga she contends led a mob attack up a mountain where she and many others had sought refuge from the ethnic carnage that was sweeping Rwanda.

Her account was the most emotional yet as the trial of Kobagaya entered its fifth day of testimony in a federal courtroom in Wichita, U.S. The government is seeking to revoke his U.S. citizenship for allegedly lying to immigration authorities about his involvement in the genocide.

The 84-year-old genocide suspect is charged with unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship in 2006 with fraud and misuse of an alien registration card in a case prosecutors have said is the first in the United States requiring proof of genocide. Kobagaya contends he is innocent.

An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda between April and July 1994. Most of the dead belonged to an ethnic group known as the Tutsi, while most of the killings were carried out by members of an ethnic group known as the Hutu.

Valerie Niyitegeka, a Tutsi woman whose family farmed near Kobagaya’s village, recounted for jurors the events of April 15, 1994, when she, her husband, Appolloni, and their six children fled as mobs of Hutu men burned Tutsi houses.

“I was OK for my house to be burned _ as long as I am not dead,” she testified through a translator.

Niyitegeka detailed how she climbed _ and at times crawled _ up the steep, rocky mountainside of Mount Nyakizu with her youngest son strapped to her back. She described how the women and children gathered piles of stones for their men to throw as mobs of Hutus attacked.

She told jurors she was able to identify the elderly Kobagaya as the leader of the attacking mob because she recognized the way he walked and the cane he carried that day. She pointed at him in the courtroom : “He is there. He is the one.”

The defense tried to cast doubt on that identification by noting trees and other obstructions on the mountain that day.

During the melee as the family fled the mountain in the ensuing days, Niyitegeka was separated from her husband and three of her children. She testified she would never see them alive again. Their slain children’s ages were 12, 10 and 8.

Joseph Yandagiye, a 76-year-old Hutu farmer, testified about what happened to the children and their father, who sought refuge at Yandagiye’s house. After taking them in, Yandagiye went to run some errands. When he returned, he said he found a crowd of Hutus had already surrounded his house.

Yandagiye testified that when the crowd threatened him in an attempt to get into the house, Appolloni came out and told the mob : “Take me instead.”

Yandagiye also told jurors he initially followed the mob that had taken Appolloni and his children, but turned back after they told him they would make him kill them himself if he continued to follow.

Later that day, a group of Hutu men came to get him too, Yandagiye testified. It was then that he learned that Appolloni and his children had been killed.

Yandagiye testified that Kobagaya told the mob that they should kill him too because he had sheltered Tutsis in his house during a 1959 conflict. Yandagiye said another community leader, Francois Bazaramba, urged the crowd not to kill him but to punish Yandagiye by making him buy beer, which he did.

Bazaramba is a former Rwandan pastor who was sentenced last year to life imprisonment by a Finnish court for committing genocide.

The Rev. Ubald Rugirangoga was counseling inmates in a Rwandan prison in the wake of the country’s 1994 genocide when he was forced to truly practice what he was preaching. 

His mother, brother, and around 70 members of his extended family had been killed in the slaughter that claimed more than 800,000 lives, mostly minority Tutsis, over 100 days, at the hands of Hutu extremists.

Speaking mostly through an interpreter Tuesday to the Worcester County Bar Association, the priest said the man who killed his mother happened to be in the prison, but he didn’t know who he was. He said the man sought him out and explained what he had done. He asked Rev. Rugirangoga for forgiveness. 

“It was difficult,” he said. “I had preached to forgive, and I had to practice what I was preaching, so I had to search deep down in my heart. And I went up to him and I told him, I forgive you.” 

Even though he forgave him, the man who killed his mother still had his doubts. To further prove his forgiveness, Rev. Rugirangoga reached out to the man’s children, who were left without parents after the man’s wife died. Rev. Rugirangoga said that after forgiving the man, all the pain and anger just left. 

“I was free,” he said. 

Speaking in the jury pool room at the Trial Court building on Main Street, Rev. Rugirangoga told another story of forgiveness, in which a Tutsi woman took in the daughter of a girl, even though the girl’s Hutu father murdered most of her family. The two families had been neighbors, Rev. Rugirangoga said. The woman’s surviving son at first didn’t understand why the woman would take in the daughter of the man who made her a widow, but later he came around. And in a surprising twist, he ended up marrying the girl years later. 

Rev. Rugirangoga has been running schools in Rwanda where he mixes children of victims of the genocide and children of perpetrators of the genocide. 

He said it’s important to start early with children. He said the government has used his schools as a model. 

“I try to bring them together,” he said. “Hopefully in the future, with the history in our country, this will not happen again because I have to stand with these children.” 

He said it is a burden to carry anger around, and said if you can’t forgive, you are slowly dying inside. 

“If you carry anger around, you can even get sick, not knowing why,” he said. “It can lead to depression.” 

Asked a question about developed countries’ inaction during the genocide, Rev. Rugirangoga, who fled Rwanda by foot during the genocide but later returned, said he was not angry. 

“At the time of the genocide we were in survival mode, we couldn’t hear what was going on, who was helping or not,” he said. 

“But you have also, the U.S. and other countries that have shown support with the help they’ve offered us. If we’re forgiving the killers, then we need to forgive the grudge that nobody helped us.”

President Paul Kagame, May 10, presided over the swearing-in ceremony of eight newly appointed cabinet ministers at Parliamentary Buildings in Kigali. 

In his remarks immediately after the function ; President Kagame called upon the new ministers to work tirelessly and enhance positive gains for the country.

“With great performance, Rwandan society will reach sustainable development and poor performing will lead to poor development which will bring a bad image to the nation,” Kagame cautioned.

The Head of State appealed to the ministers to commit themselves and use extraordinary efforts in serving the citizens as required, adding that they should produce extra results compared to what is expected out of them. Kagame wished the new ministers the best in their new duties.

The new ministers that were sworn in included Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, the new Minister of Health, Aloysia Inyumba, the State Minister in Prime Minister’s office in charge of Gender and Family Promotion, Francoise Kanimba, (Trade and Industry) ; Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, (Education Minister) and Albert Nsengiyumva (Infrastructure).

Others were Venantia Tugireyezu, the Minister in the President’s office ; Christine Nyatanyi, the Minister of State in charge of Social Affairs and Community Development and Dr. Alex Nzahabwimana, the State Minister in the Ministry of Infrastructure in charge of transport.

Former minister of Sports and Culture Joseph Habineza, who was recently appointment as the Rwanda High Commissioner to Nigeria has expressed his gratitude to President Paul Kagame for the appointment. In an exclusive interview with IGIHE.com from Paris, France, where he was on holiday, the former minister further thanked the Rwandan public for showing sympathy towards him and encouraging him following a much publicised scandal that resulted in his resignation from government.

“I am very happy and grateful to His Excellency President Kagame. I also thank the general public for showing me sympathy and for encouraging me. Asked what he thought of getting back to government months after his resignation, Habineza said that it was difficult to respond, adding that the appointing authority was best placed to answer the query.

 He tendered his resignation in early February this year after a wide circulation of internet photographs that showed him cuddling several women. 

Mr Habineza told the media then, that he had resigned for personal reasons.

“But when you see people publishing pictures and all that, it is not good for your image as a minister,” he said.

The photos, which Mr Habineza says were taken in 2008, were published on on an opposition website called Le Prophete.

Most of the 11 photos showed the minister dancing or cuddling with one woman in particular in a well-furnished room.

The person who posted them said he was a university student and wanted to illustrate how the government was spending lavishly.