Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi

by Linda Melvern

In the course of those six months Meron approved the early release of one more unrepentant génocidaire, a former military officer, Aloys Simba, thereby ignoring the strongest objections from the government of Rwanda. Simba had been convicted at the ICTR for the crime of genocide and extermination, arrested while hiding out in Senegal in November 2001. Four years later he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He walked free on 19 January 2019, having served eighteen years in international custody. And so, when international visitors go to Murambi, one of six national genocide memorial sites, they may not realise how their own governments connived in the early release of a man who on 21 April 1994 handed out weapons to militia surrounding the technical college there, how having recruited and trained Interahamwe he directed the massacre of thousands of Tutsi families who had sought shelter. His orders were to get rid of ‘this filth’. At Murambi, there were an estimated 50,000 people murdered.