A Rwandan exile who frequently criticized his country's government has been found beheaded in an area near Kampala in south-central Uganda, according to a Ugandan police spokesperson. The case remains under investigation.
On October 20, Ugandan police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke said the force was investigating "the murder of an adult man, about 50 years old, who was beheaded, and so far the head has not been found." Rusoke added that relatives had identified the victim as Robert Kabera.
The body was discovered in Luwala, a village near Kampala. Police believe the killing likely took place on the night of October 16 or in the early hours of October 17.
Robert Kabera was a former sergeant who left Rwanda several years ago and lived in Uganda. During his military service he did not criticize the government, but he later became an increasingly vocal opponent of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Kabera ran a YouTube channel, "Major Robert TV," with 144,000 subscribers. On the channel he posted a song praising opposition figure Victoire Ingabire, widely seen as one of the few dissenting voices in Rwanda and a woman imprisoned several times.
"A manhunt"
The victim's brother, Victor Agaba, told AFP that in Uganda, "Robert had no problem with anybody."
"Our problem comes from home… The military fabricated a criminal case against him. It is a manhunt," Agaba said.
According to the account given, Kabera was declared a fugitive after leaving Rwanda and was accused of defiling a minor, a charge he denied.
Rwandan authorities have previously been accused of assassinating opponents of President Kagame, who has led the country since 2000. Kagame took power after the 1994 genocide, in which about 800,000 people were killed, most of them from the minority Tutsi community.
Kabera is not the first opposition figure to be killed in exile. In 2021, former Rwandan army lieutenant Revocat Karemangingo was shot dead in Mozambique, where he was suspected of secretly backing an opposition force. That same year, prominent opposition figure Seif Bamporiki was also shot dead in South Africa.
In 2014, Patrick Karegeya, a former Rwandan intelligence chief who later turned against the government, was strangled to death in a South African hotel room. Former general Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who co-founded the opposition Rwanda National Congress (RNC) with Karegeya and lives in exile, has survived several assassination attempts.
