Rwanda opposition journalist shot dead in Kampala

A Rwandan journalist critical of his country's President Paul Kagame has been shot dead in Kampala, a police spokesman said on Friday.

Charles Ingabire, editor of the online opposition publication Inyenyeri News, was gunned down at a bar close to Makerere University in Kampala in the early hours of Thursday by an unknown assailant, said Ibin Ssenkumbi, a spokesman for Kampala metropolitan police.

"We recovered five cartridges from the scene that we suspect belong to a sub-machine gun," Ssenkumbi told AFP.

Police had questioned a security guard and waitress from the bar and it seemed Ingabire had been drinking with an unknown man before he was shot, Ssenkumbi said.

The man had yet to be identified and it was too early to tell whether Ingabire's killing was linked to his work as a journalist, Ssenkumbi said.

"It's certainly tragic that a Rwandan citizen has been killed in Kampala," said Yolande Makolo, a spokeswoman for the Rwandan presidency.

"But to say the reason he was killed is that he was a journalist is misleading," she said. "He was not known to us and he was definitely not vocal or prominent."

She conceded Ingabire "may have contributed to that blog (Inyenyeri)" but said police records showed he was better known as "the head of a micro-finance company arrested for embezzlement and convicted" and who subsequently escaped from jail in 2006.

Inyenyeri, a Kinyarwanda-language publication, is the official mouthpiece of the opposition Rwandan People's Party.

A party official told AFP that Ingabire had fled Rwanda to Uganda several years ago for political reasons following his outspoken criticism of the regime and he had been attacked several times while in Kampala.

"We were concerned for his security and seeking to get him to Europe," John Karuranga, UK-based president of the Rwandan People's Party, told AFP.

Karuranga, who was in regular contact with Ingabire, said that he believed "100 percent" that journalist had been killed due to his criticism of the Rwandan government.

From file by: AFP