Rwandan court fines driver over death of top journalist

Kigali court said the driver "pleaded guilty and apologized." (AFP/File)

• The trial was not open to the public until late Tuesday when a handful of journalists were invited to witness the reading of the verdict

KIGALI: A Rwandan driver was on Tuesday fined one million Rwandan francs ($920) for involuntary manslaughter, over the death of a top journalist who was critical of the government.
John Williams Ntwali, editor of The Chronicles newspaper, was killed on January 18 when a speeding vehicle rammed a motorcycle on which he was riding pillion.
The court in Kigali said the driver, identified as Moise Emmanuel Bagirishya, “pleaded guilty and apologized for the accident.”
“He confessed that he killed Ntwali when he was over-speeding and fatigued,” the judge said, finding him guilty for “involuntary manslaughter and involuntary cause of bodily harm.”
“The court orders him to pay a fine of 500,000 Rwandan francs for each of the two crimes,” he told Kagarama Primary Court where neither Bagirishya nor the prosecution were present.
The trial was not open to the public until late Tuesday when a handful of journalists were invited to witness the reading of the verdict.
Ntwali, who had been arrested multiple times during his two-decade career as a journalist, owned the Pax TV channel on YouTube, which had established itself as a rare outlet for critical reporting in Rwanda.
Dozens of rights and media groups have urged Rwanda to conduct an independent and impartial probe into the death of the 44-year-old journalist.
Human Rights Watch said last month that Ntwali had been regularly threatened and attacked in pro-government media for his investigative reporting.
Media is tightly controlled in Rwanda and journalists critical of President Paul Kagame and his ruling party have been jailed, have disappeared or turned up dead throughout his nearly 30 years in power.
The country’s media played a central role in whipping up racial hatred in the lead up to the 1994 genocide that saw 800,000 mainly ethnic Tutsis killed in a 100-day massacre.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a media watchdog, says Kagame “exploits Rwanda’s collective memory” of the genocide to justify his control over the media.
Rwanda ranks 136th out of 180 countries on the RSF press freedom index.