Kagame reshuffles Rwandan security services

Rwandan President Paul Kagame reshuffled the leadership of his security services, naming the former deputy commander of the UN-African Union force in Sudan's Darfur region as his intelligence supremo, his office announced Thursday. Major General Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, arrested for misconduct last year but later freed after being pardoned, takes over as chief of national intelligence, an official statement said. He replaces Colonel Emmanuel Ndahiro who was transferred to the defense ministry. Kagame, who faces a challenge from former members of his inner circle now living in exile, also named Brigadier General Rchard Rutatina, his adviser on defence and security issues, as head of military intelligence. Captain Patrick Karuretwa steps into to Rutatina's previous post. Colonel Tom Byabagamba, head of the presidential guard, was appointed chief of a newly created anti-terrorist unit in the defence ministry and the general staff. And Colonel Dan Munyuza, the military intelligence chief, was named head of foreign intelligence. Kagame made the appointments in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Karenzi, known as KK, was arrested last April alongside former airforce chief Lieutenant General Charles Muhire who was accused of corruption. The two were members of an exclusive circle of top military officers in the former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel movement, which brought an end to the 1994 genocide. Last January, the army said ex-military chief General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa and former head of intelligence Patrick Karegeya, both exiled in South Africa, had formed a rebel group operating in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Nyamwasa, Karegeya and two other former top officials -- also in exile -- were sentenced to heavy jail terms for threatening state security, defamation and criminal conspiracy, among other charges. The four, all of whom were once in Kagame's inner circle, last September co-authored a document denouncing what they said was the repression of freedoms in Rwanda since Kagame's arrival in 1994. They accused Kagame of being authoritarian, corrupt and driving the country back towards a conflict on the same scale as the 1994 massacres. Kagame, who has ruled the small central African country since his RPF stopped the 1994 genocide against his Tutsi minority, won a new seven-year term in polls last August.