Shyaka and his wife plotted the abduction plan to blackmail security organs.
For months, since April 2021, Rwandan media, especially social media, has been flooded with information that one Rwandan citizen called Gilbert Shyaka was abducted or killed.
KT Press has taken time to investigate the whereabouts of the alleged missing person. This is what we found out.
It all started with Shyaka appearing on YouTube channels and later opening his own channel called “Ijwi ry’Imfubyi” where he propagated revisionist agenda alongside other YouTubers- some of whom have since been charged for genocide denial crimes.
On August 22, 2021, both Gilbert Shyaka and his wife Antoinette Dushimirimana were traveling from Gicumbi to Gatuna with a plan to cross into Uganda using the Gatuna border, when they were intercepted by security officials
The duo was asked to present their identifications, of which Shyaka did but his wife didn’t. In the midst of questioning his wife, Shyaka managed to sneak and evade the authorities.
The next day Shyaka was reported to have managed to enter Uganda with the help of porous border post smugglers, leaving his wife behind as she remained in security custody.
After being questioned and confessing to the crime, Dushimirimana was released. Days later she appeared on news and YouTube outlets claiming her husband was missing and could have been abducted.
KT Press has also learned that upon her release, Dushimirimana was contacted by a network of subversive groups of individuals living in Rwanda, UK and Australia among other countries.
According to reliable information members of the subversive network, sent her comforting messages and money to support her and her two kids (3 and 6 years old), with a promise that they will make sure she joins her husband in Uganda.
To justify her conspiracy and cause, on September 22, Dushimirimana allegedly wrote a letter to the President of the Republic of Rwanda insinuating that her husband was missing and could have been abducted.
In her messages, she said that her husband was missing because an earlier letter he had written to the President seeking explanation for the death of his father who was allegedly killed on 21 April, 1994 in Kibari Commune, Gicumbi district- during the genocide against Tutsi.
In the letter and messages, she also claimed that she was tortured while in custody, a move which helped her to get sympathisers among members of a subversive network operating in and outside Rwanda.
Reliable sources told KT Press that the above letter was actually not written by Dushimirimana but by one Zihabamwe Noël who lives in Australia , who literary doctored the letter in the names of Dushimirimana and asked her to send an electronic sign to make it official.
In order to authenticate the letter, once it was released, it is also said that the said individual later on went on to coach her on what to say in public interviews, especially on “Ijwi ry’Imfubyi” YouTube channel which is co-hosted by one Eugenia Muhayimana- who is also a close friend of her husband Shyaka (the founder of the channel).
To understand this, KT Press looked at her interview with BBC Gahuza, on September 23, 2021 and found out that Dushimirimana proclaimed herself as a simple farmer living in the villages of Gicumbi district and needed external support to publish the letter.
This promise didn’t take long. KT Press found out that the support was offered by one Marius Komeza who used his Twitter to post the letter fabricated by Zihabamwe’ and used a false twitter handle to post the letter claiming it was done by a Rwandan living outside Rwanda.
Antoinette lied about the whereabouts of her husbands, claiming that he was missing yet she knew where he is.
To push this agenda inside Rwanda, Dushimirimana appeared on several subversive YouTube channels and reliable sources show that one of the local channels paid her up to Rwf300.000 for appearance.
These appearances also brought her financial support from subversive individuals in Guinea, USA, and France who encouraged her cause.
In the YouTube interviews, Dushimirimana claimed she was tortured but she couldn’t prove it, and it is said that Eugenia Muhayimana (a show host) asked her to find ways of acquiring medical reports to prove it in vain.
On September 24, 2021 after the above move had failed, but with consistent funding from the network, Dushimirimana decided to relocate her two kids to her sister’s home in Kinigi, Musanze district.
This relocation was a calculated move. The same network that assisted her husband Shyaka to cross to Uganda, with help of smugglers, was already waiting on instructions of Shyaka, who used mobile phones to pass on the instructions.
KT Press has found out that in one of the key instructions, Shyaka told her to cross over to Kisoro in Uganda and wait in a guest house (lodge) for someone to pick her up with specified Ugandan number plates and vehicle model.
Our investigation has shown that the same vehicle which was supposed to pick her up was the same that transferred Shyaka to Kabale in his escape.
In all this process, Shyaka has been silent and not using his YouTube channel so as to maintain his conspiracy theory of being a missing person.
Unluckily, on September 29, as Dushimirimana attempted to illegally cross to Uganda to meet Shyaka, she was arrested and is currently being charged with flaunting immigration laws.
Though charged with immigration laws, legal experts say that Dushimirimana could also be charged with additional criminal charges of propagating harmful propaganda against the government.
