“They threw me in the water and beat me. When you’re wet, you feel the pain from the sticks even more… the deputy director had a stick and an electric cable… he’s the one who hit me,” a former prisoner of Rubavu prison told Human Rights Watch in July 2024. The prison’s deputy director he refers to was acquitted of murder, torture, and assault after a landmark trial of prison officials and prisoners that concluded earlier the same year. 

The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), in power since the 1994 genocide, has long presided over the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, whether held in official or unofficial detention facilities across the country. On April 5, 2024, the Rubavu High Court, in the country’s Western Province, convicted Innocent Kayumba, a former director of Rubavu and Nyarugenge prisons, of the assault and murder of a detainee at Rubavu prison in 2019, and handed him a 15-year sentence and 5-million Rwanda Francs fine (US$ 3 675).

Two other Rwanda Correctional Service (RCS) officers and seven prisoners, who were accused of acting under instruction, were convicted of beating and killing prisoners. Three other RCS officials, including former Rubavu prison Director Ephrem Gahungu and Deputy Director Augustin Uwayezu, were acquitted. Human Rights Watch research indicates that serious human rights abuses, including torture, are pervasive in many of Rwanda’s detention facilities and as far as Human Rights Watch is aware, Kayumba is the only senior prison official who has been held criminally accountable for abuse in detention in Rwanda.

Report by the Human Rights Watch