Citation
THE SECRETARY
HOW MIDDLEMEN AND CORPORATIONS
ARMED THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE
An Open Secrets Investigation
Published by Open Secrets in May 2023
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Authors: Mamello Mosiana, Daniel Ford and Hennie van Vuuren
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THE
SECRETARY
HOW MIDDLEMEN AND CORPORATIONS
ARMED THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE
An Open Secrets
Investigation
NUMBERS AT A GLANCE:
100 DAYS
HOW LONG THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE LASTED.
FROM THE 7TH OF APRIL 1994 TO 15 JULY 1994.
THE RWANDAN CIVIL WAR LASTED
3 YEARS AND 9 MONTHS
2 500 AK-47S
6 624 MORTARS
8 160 GRENADES
551,756 PIECES OF AMMUNITION
80 TONS
WEAPONS SOLD TO RWANDA
R 1,4 BILLION
0 2 – O P E N S EC R E T S
ESTIMATED CURRENT-DAY VALUE
OF WEAPONS FROM THE MALO *
*$40 MILLION IN 1994
1 MILLION
CIVILIANS MURDERED IN RWANDA
DURING THE GENOCIDE
*
*ESTIMATE BETWEEN 800 000 AND 1 000 000
40 000–50 000
ESTIMATED NUMBER OF
PEOPLE MURDERED
IN THE BISESERO HILLS
DURING THE GENOCIDE
R43 MILLION
APPROXIMATE
CURRENT-DAY VALUE *
THAT EHLERS POCKETED
27 YEARS
6 YEARS
SINCE BAGOSORA IDENTIFIED
EHLERS AS HIS SOUTH AFRICAN
CONTACT IN THE ARMS DEAL
*$1 326 883 IN 1994
SINCE SHERPA FILED A COMPLAINT
AGAINST BNP PARIBAS FOR ITS
ROLE IN FINANCING ARMS SALES.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 0 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
KEY TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . 06
1
2
INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09
The Sale of Weapons Is Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
100 DAYS IN RWANDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Civil War: A Prelude to Genocide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Missile Strike: Catalyst for the Genocide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3
ARMING THE CIVIL WAR, ARMING
THE GENOCIDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
The 1992 Armscor Transaction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
A Greedy and Cynical Deal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4
WILLEM ‘TERS’ EHLERS: APARTHEID’S
SECRETARY AND GLOBAL ARMS DEALER . . . . . . 33
Ters Ehlers: An Officer—and a Gentleman? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
In a Pen with the Big Crocodile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Ehlers Goes Private. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Next Stop: Seychelles & GMR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5
EHLERS ARMS THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE . . . . . 43
Alfred Kalisa: The Financial Adviser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Camille AKA Colonel Théoneste Bagosora. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
BNP Paribas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Banking on Genocide: How the FAR Financed Genocide. . . 51
0 4 – O P E N S EC R E T S
Ehlers Knew …. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
A timeline: Rwandan genocide and Malo
arms transaction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
6
ARMS DEALERS AND THE KILLING FIELDS
OF BISESERO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
The Killing Fields of Bisesero. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Arming the Bisesero Attackers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Rwanda, Zaire, and Operation Turquoise:
The Beginnings of the Great African War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7
THE FRUITS OF IMPUNITY:
EHLERS AND OTHER WARS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The Cameron Commission and the Elusive ‘Eli Wazan’. . . . 69
The Honorary Consul of Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
The Consequences of Impunity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Accountability: It Is Not Too Late. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8
EHLERS RESPONDS…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
NOTES: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
OUR PUBLICATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Our INVESTIGATIONS: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Our REPORTS:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 0 5
KEY TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
AU
African Union.
BCR
Banque Commerciale du Rwanda (Commercial Bank of Rwanda).
BNP
Banque Nationale de Paris.
BNP PARIBAS
The bank created by the merger of Banque
Nationale de Paris and Paribas (an international investment bank) in May 2000.
BNR
Banque Nationale du Rwanda (National
Bank of Rwanda). This is Rwanda’s central
bank.
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency. This is the foreign intelligence agency of the United States
government.
DIRCO
Department of International Relations and
Cooperation. This is the foreign ministry of
South Africa.
DRC
Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country formerly known as Zaire (until 1997).
EUC
End-user certificate. This is a documented
contract between a country selling arms and
the purchaser of the arms. It is intended to
prevent munitions ending up with a third
party not involved in the transaction.
FAR
Armed Forces of Rwanda. This was the name
of the military of Rwanda until 1994. Following the end of the genocide and civil war, it
was briefly known as the Rwandan Patriotic
Army and is now known as the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF).
GMR
This was a Seychelles-based front company
for the apartheid regime, named after an Italian arms dealer (Giovanni Mario Ricci).
ICTR
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
This was an ad hoc court established by the
United Nations Security Council to prosecute those responsible for the Rwandan
genocide in 1994. The court formally closed
in December 2015.
INTERAHAMWE
A Hutu extremist paramilitary organisation.
The Interahamwe were the main perpetrators
of the Rwandan genocide and are still active
in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo today. Interahamwe means ‘those
who work together’ or ‘those who fight together’ in Kinyarwanda.
MRND
Mouvement Républicain National pour la
Démocratie et le Développement (National
Republican Movement for Democracy and
Development). Founded in 1975, the MRND
was the ruling party in Rwanda until 1994.
NPA
National Prosecuting Authority. This is the
agency of the South African government responsible for state prosecutions.
UNITA
União Nacional para a Independência Total
de Angola (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola).
ZAIRE
Former name of the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. The DRC was known as Zaire,
officially the Republic of Zaire, from 1971 to
1997.
NRA
National Resistance Army. This was the
armed wing of Uganda’s National Resistance
Movement. It was renamed the Uganda People’s Defence Force in 1995.
OAU
Organisation of African Unity. Established
in 1963, the OAU was the predecessor of the
African Union.
PARMEHUTU
The Party of the Hutu Emancipation
Movement, also known as the Mouvement
Démocratique Républicain (Republican
Democratic Movement)–Parmehutu (MDR–
Parmehutu). Founded by Grégoire Kayibanda in 1957, this was a Hutu nationalist party,
which ruled in Rwanda from 1961 until 1973
when it was dissolved following a coup by
Juvénal Habyarimana.
RLTM
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines.
Propaganda radio station for the commission
of the Rwandan genocide.
RPF
Rwandan Patriotic Front. Led by Paul Kagame, the RPF has been the ruling party in
Rwanda since 1994 when it invaded Kigali,
ending the Rwandan genocide and civil war,
and formed a government.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 0 7
“If Rwanda was the genocide that happened,
then South Africa was the genocide that didn’t.
The contrast was marked by two defining events
in the first half of 1994: just as a tidal wave of
genocidal violence engulfed Rwanda, South Africa
held elections marking the transition to a postapartheid era. More than any other, these twin
developments marked the end of innocence for the
African intelligentsia. For if some seer had told us
in the late 1980s that there would be a genocide in
one of these two places, I wonder how many among
us would have managed to identify correctly its
location.”
~ Mahmood Mamdani 1
INTRODUCTION
0
South Africa and Rwanda embarked on two
disparate paths in April 1994. One country
towards a democratic election, the other
towards a genocide. Joy and misery; rebirth
and death. Unspoken and sometimes forgotten are the ties that bind these two moments.
Because while South Africa was ushering in
democracy, apartheid’s personnel had found
new opportunities to sow misery in Rwanda
in pursuit of profit. This investigative report
tells the story of one such man who helped
arm a genocide.1
In July 1989, the South African apartheid
regime’s most significant political prisoner
met the country’s top praetorian in secret.
When Nelson Mandela, as prisoner 46/664,
set foot on the soft carpeted floors in PW
Botha’s office at Tuynhuys in Cape Town, he
entered an office that would be his own in just
five years.2 Botha, feared and loathed in equal
measure by most South Africans, was in the
final months of his tenure as head of state. He
and his allies in the National Party had created an imperial presidency, supported by an
enormous military and political machinery
designed to preserve white power.
In his autobiography, Mandela described
the hour-long interaction as ‘friendly and
breezy until the end. It was then that I raised
a serious issue. I asked Mr. Botha to unconditionally release all political prisoners, including myself. That was the only tense moment
in the meeting, and Mr. Botha said that he
was afraid that he could not do that’.3 This
meeting did not result in Mandela’s immediate unconditional release (that came eight
09
months later), but it was of extraordinary historic significance—signalling the beginning
of an irreversible shift of power.
Only one photo exists of the meeting.4 It
suggests a moment of levity, with Mandela
and Botha facing one another in jocular conversation, surrounded by Botha’s minister of
justice, Kobie Coetsee; the head of the prison
service, Willie Willemse; and the chief of the
civilian intelligence service, Niël Barnard.
As the story goes, the photo was taken in
haste with a point-and-shoot camera by the
one other man in the room—Willem ‘Ters’
Ehlers.5
Ters Ehlers was no ordinary photographer. As Botha’s private secretary and aidede-camp, the commodore was his confidant
and belonged to the powerful and paranoid
state president’s inner circle. By the end of
1989, Botha was ousted from power by the
conservative National Party loyalist, FW de
Klerk. While Ehlers was now without a government job, he was not without power and
connections. The early 1990s and the advent
of democracy in 1994 would be an opportunity for him and other securocrats to monetise their proximity to the inner workings of
the apartheid military establishment.
Ehlers was a man with wide-ranging illicit
connections from his time in the apartheid
regime. He had been stationed in France in
the 1970s when Paris was Pretoria’s major
supplier of military hardware—it would
become a nerve centre for the apartheid
regime’s global arms sanctions-busting network by the end of the decade. In the 1980s,
Ehlers was part of a tight scrum of trusted
hawks surrounding Botha who were active in
the dark arts of retaining white power. Ehlers,
together with the likes of Minister of Defence
Magnus Malan and apartheid assassin and
spy Craig Williamson, enjoyed proximity to
an imperial president. By 1994, Ehlers had
branched into international arms dealing
for clients around the world. He specialised
in securing deals for those facing sanctions
and other scrutiny, and thus in need of clandestine deals under which money and arms
could be moved in secret.
In June 1994, as South Africa settled into
a tenuous peace in its second month as a
democracy and the genocide in Rwanda
reached an alarming crescendo, Ehlers was
facilitating a secretive and circuitous arms
transaction. He travelled from South Africa to the scenic Seychelles islands to buy
1 0 – O P E N S EC R E T S
weapons, which were sold on to a Rwandan
colonel, who provided a falsified end-user
certificate (EUC) from then Zaire (now
Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC).
The arms travelled to their destination—
Rwanda—with Colonel Théoneste Bagosora
on a DC-8 plane registered in Zaire.6 Bagosora was an official in the Rwandan ministry
of defence and a leader of the Interahamwe,7
the extremist militia considered to be the
main perpetrator of the genocide. This circuitous trip was undertaken twice, and was
unsuccessful the third time, as the media
and people in the Seychelles learned that the
arms were supporting the ongoing genocide
in Rwanda.8 This arms sale was in explicit
contravention of United Nations (UN) sanctions on the sale of weapons to the genocidal
Rwandan regime.
THE SALE OF WEAPONS IS
BUSINESS
In 2019, eNCA aired a show, The First Citizen, in which journalist Aldrin Sampear interviewed former African presidents including FW de Klerk, Olusegun Obasanjo, and
Ellen Sirleaf Johnson. In April 2019, on the
25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide,
Sampear also spoke to former South African
president Thabo Mbeki. In the course of their
conversation about the events of April 1994,
Mbeki, who was deputy president and the
African National Congress’ (ANC) head of
international affairs at the time, revealed that
he had received a delegation from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) at the ‘beginning
of 1994’.9 The RPF has been the ruling party
in Rwanda since its invasion of Kigali and
defeat of the Rwandan government in April
1994, which ended the 100 days of genocide
and a four-year civil war.
When the RPF delegates met with then
Deputy President Mbeki, they informed him
of arms sales from South Africa to Rwanda
during the genocide.10 According to Mbeki,
he asked Pik Botha, the former apartheid
foreign minister and then mineral and energy affairs minister in Nelson Mandela’s first
cabinet, to meet with the RPF delegation, so
that they could raise the matter with him.
One of the RPF delegates informed Mbeki
that not only did Botha confirm the sales but
also showed them invoices proving the arms
had been sold to the previous Rwandan government (the perpetrators of the Rwandan
genocide).11 According to Mbeki, Botha told
him,
‘The issue of [the] sale of weapons
is business … We sell to whoever is
ready to buy and pay us’.12
This is the modus operandi of arms dealers,
whether they be states like apartheid South
Africa or individuals like Ehlers.
That the ‘business’ of arms dealing may facilitate genocide is rarely a consideration for
those engaged in the business; rather, profit
often beats out principle. This state of affairs
is cemented by the lack of accountability
that enablers like Ehlers face for their role
in international crimes. Théoneste Bagosora
was charged and convicted of crimes against
humanity by the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and spent the
rest of his life in prison until he died in September 2021. But Ehlers has maintained his
cushy life in South Africa, nestled away from
the repercussions of his actions as apartheid’s
secretary and arms dealer to Rwanda.
In the eNCA interview, Mbeki regretted
that in April 1994, South Africa was ‘very
preoccupied with change ... The challenge to
manage this change in South Africa became
so overwhelming that for some weeks we actually did forget about Rwanda’.13 Those weeks
have now turned into decades, but Rwandans
have not forgotten—neither should South
Africa and the rest of the world.
This investigative report is about the global nature of civil wars and genocide. It shows
how localised genocides have far and complex origins, involving not just victims and
perpetrators but also enablers and profiteers.
Motivated by profit and far removed from the
consequences of their actions, these actors
continue to sow discord around the world.
Without justice, they will continue to do so.
It is our duty to hold them to account and to
remember that April in Rwanda.
Using declassified records from South
Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO); Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) cables and faxes;
and police affidavits, witness testimonies,
and other documents of the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, we show
that Ters Ehlers and Théoneste Bagosora
facilitated and perpetuated crimes against
humanity and genocide in Rwanda in June
1994—a genocide that claimed the lives of
over 800,000 to one million people in just
100 days.14 15
“Every year in April the raining season starts. And every
year, every day in April ... The haunting emptiness descends
over our hearts. Every year in April, I remember how
quickly life ends. Every year, I remember how lucky I
should feel to be alive. Every year in April ... I remember.”
~ Augustin Muganza, protagonist in Sometimes in April, a film about the Rwandan genocide. 15
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 1 1
100 DAYS IN
RWANDA
2
On 6 April 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal
Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by
surface-to-air missiles as it flew into Kigali.
His assassination nullified the 1993 Arusha
Accords, which had been signed to end the
Rwandan civil war, and became the catalyst
for the genocide that began on 7 April. Rwanda witnessed genocide for 100 days until 15
July when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led
by Paul Kagame, seized the capital, Kigali.
Kagame is yet to loosen his grip on power:
he first served as vice president and defence
minister under President Pasteur Bizmungu
and then became the president of Rwanda in
2000—a position he still holds.
The 100 days of massacres are widely recognised as a genocide by legal practitioners
and genocide scholars based on the evidence
showing that it was an attempt to destroy ‘in
whole, or in part’1 the Tutsi and Twa ethnic
groups. Over 100 days, between 800,000 and
one million people were killed; an average of
10,000 people every day or 417 people every
hour. Had the killings lasted any longer, it is
hard to imagine that the Tutsi and Twa would
not have been annihilated.
The genocide was the culmination of a
long history of colonialism, racialisation, and
ethnic violence in Rwanda. Human Rights
Watch’s 1999 report on the Rwandan genocide notes: ‘Rwandans take history seriously’.2 Our report focuses only on one aspect
of the genocide, a single arms transaction
facilitated by Ters Ehlers in June 1994. This
chapter is, therefore, not a full account of the
genocide or the history of Rwanda; rather, we
13
investigate the genocide in the context of the
Rwandan civil war and the role of the international arms industry in arming the parties
in the war and genocide.
The Kingdom of Rwanda emerged, in the
1500s, out of a number of smaller kingdoms
established over a period of hundreds of
years.3 Rwanda was first colonised by Germany in 1884 and then, following an invasion,
by Belgium in 1916. It remained in Belgian
hands until 1959. During the colonial period
(1884–1959), the European colonisers (the
Germans and then the Belgians) favoured
the Tutsi in Rwanda as part of a divide and
rule strategy because they felt the Tutsi had
physical features and traits that made them
slightly more ‘civilised’ and thus were closer
to being European than the rest of the local
Rwandan population.
When the Europeans encountered Rwandan society, they perceived the Tutsi to be
elites, and because the Europeans already
perceived themselves to be superior to Africans, they viewed the African elites as being
closer to their idea of European-ness.4 In
essence, the Belgian colonists used Eurocentrism to invent the Tutsi as a Hamitic (foreign
colonising) race.5 The Tutsi were co-opted by
the Belgian elite and were more likely to be
integrated into the colonial administration
and to be given some form of education, be it
inferior to the education Europeans received.
The entrenchment of class had the effect of
privileging the Tutsi at the expense of the
Hutu and Twa, which not only stratified
these groups but also cemented the Tutsi’s
role as an intermediary between Europeans
and Africans.6
In 1935, the Belgians introduced racial
classifications on identity cards, distinguishing between Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa.7 Eightyfour percent of the population classified
themselves as Hutu, 15 per cent as Tutsi, and
one per cent as Twa.8 The 1950s saw a growing movement among the Hutu that called
for an end to colonial rule and thus also an
end to Tutsi domination. The Belgian colonial administration, perhaps realising the
deeply damaging racialisation of Rwandan
society, tried to walk back the racially stratified system by empowering the Hutu. This
culminated in the 1959 Hutu Revolution,
which was backed by the outgoing colonists
and saw the ouster of the Tutsi king.9
In 1961, the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (Parmehutu)—led by its
1 4 – O P E N S EC R E T S
founder, Grégoire Kayibanda—took power
from the Belgian administration. As its name
suggests, Parmehutu was a Hutu ethnic nationalist political party, which angered and
alienated many Tutsi, and as a result, the
years following decolonisation were marked
by ethnic violence and pogroms against the
Tutsi. Between 1959 and 1964, around 20,000
Tutsi were killed and more than 300,000 fled
into exile.10
Rwanda became a one-party state in 1973
and a dictatorship in 1975 under Juvénal
Habyarimana and the Mouvement Républicain National pour la Démocratie et le Développement (MRND). Despite a decision to
ban Parmehutu in July 1973, ethnic tension
continued to simmer. By 1990, many Tutsi,
including political opponents of the regime,
had been exiled from Rwanda and were
living in the neighbouring East and Central
African states of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,
and then Zaire (now DRC), as well as in the
United States (US).11
THE CIVIL WAR: A PRELUDE
TO GENOCIDE
The Rwandan genocide was triggered by
a civil war. In October 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda from
neighbouring Uganda to overthrow Juvénal
Habyarimana and the ruling MRND government.12 Uganda was home to an estimated
200,000 Tutsi refugees. The Rwandan diaspora—the Banyarwanda—formed a key part
of Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA). However, the
trained fighters were still marginalised as refugees in Uganda and denied citizenship and
access to land for livelihoods, limiting their
full integration into Uganda society.13 Supported by Banyarwanda across the world and
Museveni’s Uganda, the RPF invasion sought
to overthrow the Habyarimana regime and
pursue a form of ‘armed repatriation’.14
Long-serving French President François
Mitterrand viewed the RPF attack as part of
a calculated anglophone takeover of France’s
political sphere of influence in Africa. A key
factor influencing this view was that Museveni’s regime enjoyed the financial and military patronage of the United States. Among
other things, Ugandan elite forces—notably
including Paul Kagame, trained in American
DRC
UGANDA
KENYA
RWANDA
BURUNDI
TANZANIA
institutions.15 At the beginning of the invasion, Kagame was at the US Army Command
and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, ‘studying field tactics and
psyops, propaganda techniques to win hearts
and minds’.16 He returned to lead the invading Rwandan Patriotic Army—the armed
wing of the RPF.17 Also, the RPF’s arms imports were financed by the Banyarwanda in
North America.18
France had long backed the Habyarimana
regime financially and militarily. The French
desire to maintain influence in Rwanda was
also motivated by its access to Zaire’s valuable
mineral resources, and the Habyarimana regime had proved to be a key ally.19 France’s
support for Habyarimana was emblematic
of Françafrique—a term used to describe its
continued imperial relationship with former
French and Belgian colonies in Africa.20 This
French support intensified during the civil
war. The Rwandan government purchased
mortars, artillery, armoured cars, and helicopters from France. Paris also deployed up
KEY
to 680 troops and military advisers to help repel the RPF.21 Owing to this past relationship
and its complicity in the genocide (discussed
in Chapter 5), France has had a strained relationship with Rwanda since 1994.
In January 1994, Human Rights Watch
reported that both the government’s Armed
Forces of Rwanda (FAR) and the RPF had
committed human rights violations and were
culpable for the deaths and displacement of
civilians and the destruction of crops and
property.22 In August 1993, with the conflict
at a stalemate, the RPF and the Rwandan
government signed the Arusha Peace Agreement, also known as the Arusha Accords, in
Arusha, Tanzania.23 The accords were brokered by the Organisation of African Unity
(OAU)—the predecessor of the African
Union (AU)—and Tanzania24 and included
commitments to a ceasefire, establishing a
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 1 5
transitional government, holding national
democratic elections, and ensuring the promotion of national unity and reconciliation.25
In October 1993, the UN Security Council
adopted resolution 872 establishing the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
(UNAMIR) to monitor the implementation
of the Arusha Accords.26 This international peacekeeping force had an authorised
strength of over 2,000 troops and was composed primarily of Belgian and Bangladeshi
contingents.27 However, the Arusha Accords
had created but a fragile peace. Of the civil
war and its descent into genocide, Mahmood
Mamdani writes:
The civil war profoundly changed all those
who took part in it. The Rwanda[n] Patriotic Front (RPF) went into it as an army of
liberation and came out of it as an army
of occupation. The Habyarimana regime
entered the war pledged to a policy of ethnic
reconciliation and came out of it pledged
to uphold Hutu Power. From a marginal
tendency in the constellation of forces supporting the regime in 1990, the war turned
Hutu Power into a central tendency in
Hutu politics. With defeat looming on the
horizon, the Hutu Power tendency differentiated even further: the genocidal tendency
was born of the crisis of Hutu Power.28
MISSILE STRIKE: CATALYST
FOR THE GENOCIDE
On 6 April 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal
Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated, when
their plane was downed by missiles on its way
back to Kigali from further peace talks in Dar
es Salaam. The downing of Habyarimana’s
plane was the catalyst for the genocide, as
Hutu militias alleged it was an attempt by the
RPF to subvert the peace talks.29 Blaming the
RPF for the attack also helped the Rwandan
army secure foreign assistance, particularly
from France.30
In 2012, French Judge Marc Trévedic
found that Hutu extremists were culpable
for the downing of the plane. However, the
inquest was reopened in 2016 when Rwanda’s
former army chief of staff, Faustin Kayumba
Nyamwasa, said he had evidence that Kagame had ordered the downing of the plane.31
1 6 – O P E N S EC R E T S
The case was later dismissed without having
reached a final conclusion. Of the dismissal,
Kagame had this to say: ‘I believe that the
past is behind us … Reopening a classified
file is to invite problems’.32 Kagame’s regime
subscribes to the argument that Colonel
Théoneste Bagosora—one of the subjects of
our investigation—instigated and carried
out Habyarimana’s assassination to serve as a
pretext for genocide (to which we will return
in Chapter 5).
The day after the downing of the plane,
on 7 April 1994, the Interahamwe33 began
attacking and killing Tutsi. Hutu Power went
from rhetoric to genocide. The violence was
all-encompassing and continues to have
international notoriety for the macabre and
intimate murders of neighbours, family
members, acquaintances, and friends.34 This
violence was spurred on by radio stations
throughout Rwanda that supported Hutu
Power and used genocidal rhetoric against
the Tutsi and Twa. Broadcasters told people
where to go to kill Tutsi with talk of ‘cutting
the tall trees’ or killing the ‘cockroaches’.35
According to Human Rights Watch, the government also distributed radio sets to local
authorities to deliver these messages of hate.36
This is perhaps best illustrated by the ICTR’s
trial and conviction of Ferdinand Nahimana,
Hassan Ngeze, and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza
for conspiracy to commit genocide and direct and public incitement to genocide for
their role in the media in running Radio
Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM)
and the newspaper, Kangura. 37
Foreign workers, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists had established a presence in the country since the beginning of
the civil war. They were well placed to raise
the alarm and urge intervention by foreign
governments. Those who did were ignored.
In 1990, French General Jean Varret warned
Paris that a ‘genocide is being prepared’, but
was plainly ignored in favour of the pursuit
of narrow national interests.38 Owing to the
alliance between the French and MRND governments, French troops stationed in Rwanda are said to have not only ignored warnings
but also to have facilitated the genocide. They
are further alleged to have aided in the escape
of senior genocidaires through the French
Operation Turquoise humanitarian zone in
the south of Rwanda, near the country’s border with Zaire, at the end of the genocide in
July 1994.39
The Rwandan genocide is notorious not
just for the awful violence but also for the exodus of foreign aid workers, diplomats, journalists, and other foreign nationals from the
country. At the beginning of the onslaught in
April 1994, foreign governments acted only
to repatriate their citizens and left Rwandans
to fend for themselves. In 1999, the UN initiated an inquiry into its own role and that of
the broader international community in the
genocide. Accepting culpability, the report
stated:
The failure by the United Nations to prevent, and subsequently, to stop the genocide
in Rwanda was a failure by the United Nations system as a whole. The fundamental
failure was the lack of resources and the
political commitment devoted to developments in Rwanda and to the United Nations presence there’40
Not only did countries fail to respond but
some also supplied weapons to Rwanda—despite all the warnings and the war. We turn to
this in the next chapter.
PAUL KAGAME:
LIBERATOR AND VILLIAN
President Paul Kagame and the RPF are
seen as the liberators of Rwanda following
the genocide. Many political elites continue
to regard Kagame as a “model African
leader” following his nearly three decade
long grip on power. This is attributed to the
relative economic prosperity of Rwanda
and at a more superficial level, the oft
cited cleanliness of its streets. The truth
is more complex. Kagame and his security
establishment have retained power by
meting out brute force against domestic
and foreign based critics of his regime.
This has included assassination squads
sent as far afield as Johannesburg and who
evidence suggests murdered some of the
most senior members of his regime who
had become strident critics of his power.
To add to the complexity, Kagame and the
RPF were not innocents in the horrific
violence of 1994. They are implicated in
the murder of civilians, particularly in the
Eastern DRC, in the wake of the Rwandan
genocide. They have also profited from
the occupation of parts of the Eastern
DRC, which has fueled instability, war, and
human rights abuses. This investigation
concerns an arms deal which contributed
to the Rwandan genocide. It therefrore
does not comment further on the conduct
of the Kagame regime over the past three
decades. That should however not be
read as an absolution of the complicity in
massive human rights abuse by Kagame
and the RPF.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 1 7
1 8 – O P E N S EC R E T S
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 1 9
ARMING THE
CIVIL WAR,
ARMING THE
GENOCIDE
3
The Rwandan civil war was armed by a host
of foreign countries, and arms were supplied
to both the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the
Armed Forces of Rwanda. Despite warnings
of an impending genocide from as early as
1990, many countries were happy to cash in
on the demand for weapons. Countries that
supplied weapons to both factions in the civil
war included African states (Egypt, Uganda,
Zaire, and apartheid South Africa), former
European colonisers (France and Belgium),
and Asian states with a history of peddling
weapons to the highest bidder (China and
South Korea), among others.1 Many of these
weapons were later used in the commission
of the genocide.
Some RPF soldiers carried weapons obtained during their time in Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army in Uganda.
The international community at the time regarded the RPF as ‘rebels’ and not liberators.
Training and arming them, as the Ugandan
government did, was thus in contravention
of the UN Charter and the rules of the OAU.2
This implicated the US government as well, as
it supplied arms to the Museveni regime—a
US ally in the region.3 The United States was
aware of the RPF’s presence within Museveni’s NRA, and so it would have known that
some of these weapons may have gone to
the RPF. The RPF is also said to have carried
Kalashnikov AKM automatic rifles (commonly known as AK-47s) manufactured in
Romania.4
Rwanda’s political and economic classes
were clearly preparing for an escalation of
21
the conflict, and many countries around the
world would have been aware of this. British investigative journalist, Linda Malvern,
pointed out that
‘in the three years from October
1990, Rwanda, one of the poorest
countries in the world, became the
third largest importer of weapons
in Africa, spending an estimated
$US 112 million’.5
According to genocidaire Jean Kambanda,6
in 1993, Rwanda imported $750,000 worth
of machetes from China.7 In its 1994 report,
Human Rights Watch notes that between
January 1993 and March 1994, double the
number of machetes were imported into
Rwanda than in previous years. One of
the primary Rwandan financiers of the
genocide, Félicien Kabuga, is said to
have imported 987 cartons of machetes,
weighing 25,662kg, which were shipped
from Mombasa, Kenya, in October
1993.8 Machetes were among the primary weapons used by ordinary Rwandans during the genocide, as they were
often urged by radio propaganda to ‘cut
the tall trees’ (a euphemism used to urge
the killing of Tutsi who tend to be taller than the Hutu). 9Banks were widely
complicit in the sale of arms to Rwanda’s
fighting factions in the civil war and
genocide. We will later profile the role
of BNP Paribas in the South African
transactions. But Paribas was not the
only French bank complicit in the arms
sales—Banque National de Paris (BNP)
was complicit,10 as was Credit Lyonnais,
which provided a bank guarantee that made
a $6 million arms sale from Egypt to Rwanda
possible.11 A UN commission also found that
banks in Belgium (Banque Bruxelles Lambert), Italy (Banca Nazionale de Lavoro),
Switzerland (Union Bancaire Privée, Geneva), and the United States (Federal Reserve
Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank) handled
financial transactions involved in the purchase of weapons destined for Rwanda.12
According to Human Rights Watch, ‘Arms
dealers in Israel, the United Kingdom, South
Africa, and Albania had no scruples about
selling weapons to authorities who were
executing a genocide’.13 Correspondence
obtained by Human Rights Watch shows
2 2 – O P E N S EC R E T S
that UK company Mil-Tec Corporation deposited payments for arms sales to Rwanda
in a National Westminster Bank account.14
Mil-Tec was operated by two Kenyans, Anup
Vidyarthi and Rakeesh Gupta, and under
the directorship of two British subjects, John
and Trevor Donnelly; and it shipped $5.5
million worth of ammunition and grenades
to Rwanda.15 Shipping documents show that
Mil-Tec used an aircraft registered in Nigeria
but leased from a company in the Bahamas
to make its deliveries.
The weapons used in the Rwandan civil
war and then later in the genocide came from
all over the world, including countries that
purport to uphold human rights and peace.
War crimes often involve the complicity of
the international community, far removed
from the violence and willing to profit from
misery.
It should come as no surprise that one of
these countries was apartheid South Africa.
Prior to 1994, the South African apartheid
regime was one of the main suppliers of
arms to Rwanda, despite being subject to
arms embargoes itself since 1976. The UN
imposed mandatory restrictions against the
sale of arms to apartheid South Africa, but
the embargo on importing arms from the
apartheid state was voluntary. The latter was
imposed in December 1984 by UN Security
Council resolution 558, which requested ‘all
States to refrain from importing arms, ammunition of all types and military vehicles
produced in South Africa’.16 The irony is that
the willingness of states to violate the mandatory embargo left apartheid South Africa
awash with imported weapons and technology to produce more; and it then became a
key exporter to other violent regimes around
the world.
The isolation of the apartheid state is said
to have created a sort of siege mentality in
an industry whose apartheid-era arms exports mirrored the immorality of domestic
policy. Armscor, the state-owned arms
exporter, was virtually given a free hand
in pursuing lucrative markets that often
turned out to be located where gross human
rights abuses were taking place.17
One of the myths dispelled by Open Secrets’
research in Apartheid Guns and Money is
the idea that the apartheid state was a pariah
of the world—friendless and economically
isolated. Rather, declassified archival material shows how for years apartheid South
Africa and its allies—some of them permanent members of the UN Security Council—circumvented the arms embargo using
a complex network to launder cash for arms
and to create end-user certificates. Zaire, in
particular, served as a central node for the
transit of weapons bought illegally by the
apartheid regime for União Nacional para
a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA)
in Angola.18 This relationship was also exploited for Mobutu Sese Seko’s suppression
of opposition in Zaire; for meetings between
South African envoys and representatives of
Gabon’s Omar Bongo and Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema Mbasogo; and to aid
Hissene Habre’s coup in Chad.19
According to Human Rights Watch,
by 1994, South Africa was the
tenth largest arms producer in the
world, with approximately 800
arms and arms component manufacturers employing a workforce of
50,000.20
State-owned arms company Armscor sold
infantry weapons worth millions to the
Rwandan government between 1980 and
1992.21 Between 1990 and 1993 alone, South
Africa was estimated to have sold arms worth
$32 million to Rwanda.22
With regard to the Rwandan civil war and
genocide, there are two documented arms
sales between South Africa and Rwanda: one
in 1992 between Armscor and the Rwandan government and the other in May 1994
(which is the subject of this investigation).
The weapons Armscor sold to Rwanda in
1992 were used not only in the civil war but
also in the genocide.
THE 1992 ARMSCOR
TRANSACTION
In 1994, the Arms Project—a joint UN and
Human Rights Watch project—revealed that
it had obtained documents dated 19 October
1992, which showed that South Africa had
supplied Rwanda with a ‘wide range of light
arms, machine guns and ammunition’.23 The
project had acquired photographs and observed Rwandan government troops carrying
South African R-4 automatic rifles and RPF
soldiers with South African weapons they
claimed to have captured from the Rwandan
army.24
The October 1992 sale included:
• South African-made 5.56mm R-4 automatic rifles;
• 20,000 high-explosive grenades and over
1.5 million rounds of ammunition;
• 7.62mm SS-77 machine guns;
• 12.7mm (.50 calibre) Browning machine
guns and over one million rounds of
ammunition;
• 70 hand-held 40mm MGL grenade
launchers with 10,000 grenades;
• 100 60mm M1 mortars; and
• 10,000 M26 fragmentation grenades.
Right:
Invoices for the purchase of
weapons by the Rwandan
Mininstry of Defence from the
apartheid government.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 23
Human Rights Watch had obtained an invoice from Conrad Kuhn, an Armscor representative, to Major Cyprien Kayumba, in
the Rwandan ministry of defence, dated 19
October 1992, which detailed the sale.25 It
indicated a total cost of $5.9 million. This is
significant in the context of Rwandan arms
purchases. According to Human Rights
Watch, Rwanda’s arms imports between 1981
and 1988 totalled just $5 million.26
There is evidence that the arms provided
by Armscor were used by soldiers of the
Armed Forces of Rwanda in a massacre in
Butare on 20 April 1994 (13 days into the
genocide). The incident in Butare is referred
to as an ‘extermination’ of Tutsi elites. FAR
troops and militia arrived at Butare airport
on 20 April and massacred prominent Tutsi—some in their homes, but many in the
killing fields behind the museum in the city,
in the arboretum of the university, and at a
psychiatric centre.27 The killing went on for
three days, with the residents of Butare hearing ‘frequent bursts of gunfire’.28 According
to an interview conducted by Human Rights
Watch, a survivor in the town recalled:
I saw the deputy [Laurent] Baravuga
leading three or four soldiers who were
carrying South African rifles [probably
R-4 rifles]. He had a list. He knew the area
well and could direct them. The soldiers
were Presidential Guards and they were
followed by a large crowd of people. After
the soldiers had finished and moved on, the
crowd would move in and loot the house.
I saw people streaming by carrying refrigerators, radios, anything. Nearly everyone
from Cyarwa joined the crowd and they
were happy to steal.29
In a report on the genocide for SABC in 1994,
Jacques Pauw spoke to Paul Kagame, then
the general leading the RPF. They stand amid
many dead bodies near a riverbank and a fallen bridge, and we are told that government
forces have just been to the town. Pauw asks
about the origin of the weapons of the RPF, to
which Kagame responds that the weapons
have been purchased with help from
the Rwandan diaspora all over the
world.30 Pauw then quizzically
states, ‘I see a lot of South African
weaponry?’ and Kagame replies,
‘You can be sure that was captured
from the Rwandese government,
24 – O P E N S EC R E T S
because they have been buying a lot of arms
from South Africa’.31 The camera then zooms
in on a very young, probably teenage ‘soldier’,
holding a South African manufactured R-4
automatic rifle. This is one of the arms listed
in Armscor’s delivery in 1992.
And this was not the only South African
arms transaction that played a role in the
1994 Rwandan genocide.
A GREEDY AND CYNICAL DEAL
In June 1994, two consignments of small
arms and ammunition made their way from
the Seychelles to Goma in Zaire and eventually to Gisenyi in Rwanda. The arms were
transported on two separate flights between
the Seychelles and Goma on 16–17 and 18–
19 June 1994.32 A third consignment of arms
was intercepted and stopped following news
reports in the Seychelles that the final destination of the arms was Rwanda in defiance
of sanctions on arms sales to that country.33
Referred to in Seychellois newspapers as
the ‘Malo shipment’, the arms came from a
Greek ship, simply named Malo, which had
set sail from Montenegro in the Mediterranean towards Somalia, a war zone at the time.
The vessel was intercepted by Seychellois authorities in March 1993.34 This was because
Somalia was under a UN embargo due to the
conflict there. Moreover, the origin of the
weapons was Serbia, which was also under
an embargo due to the conflict in the former
Yugoslavia.
The weapons stockpile included
2,500 AK-47s,
6,000 mortars, and
5,600 fragmentation
grenades.35
Kafunzo
Merama
Kagitumba
UGANDA
Remhasha
Rutshuru
Kisoro
DRC
Kabale
Cyanika
Butaro
Kidaho
Ruhengeri
Kora
Goma
Ngarama
Cyamba
Nemba
Kabaya
Ngaru
Kinyami
Murambi
Mbogo
Shyorongi
Kiyumba
DRC
Gishyita
Rwamatamu
Bukavu
Cyimbogo
Nyakabuye
Kitabi
Karengera
Bugumya
Ruramba
2
Kayonza
Kibungo
Rukira
Bare
Kirehe
Sake
KENYA
Rusumo
Ngenda
Rutatira
Karama
Butare
Gisagara
TANZANIA
BURUNDI
Munini
Runyombyi
1
Rwamagana
Rilima
Nemba
Busoro
Bugarama
0
Ruhango
Nyabisindu
Gikongoro
Gikoro
Gashora
Gatagara
Karaba
Gisakura
Rwumba
UGANDA
Kigarama
Bugesera
Bwakira
Rwesero
Rukara
Butamwa
Gitarama
Masango
Muhura
Bicumbi
Kicukiro
Birambo
Kaduha
Kamembe
Cyangugu
Rutare
Kigali
Runda
Bulinga
Mabanzaa
KEY
Kinihira
Ngororero
Kibuye
Gabiro
Byumba
Rushashi
Gisenyi
RWANDA
Gatunda
Mulindi
Kirambo
Nyagatare
Muvumba
Katuna
Busogoo
Mutura
Lubirizi
3
4
RWANDA
0
10
20
30
40
50 km
BURUNDI
5 km
TANZANIA
DRC
KEY
RWANDA
Goma
Gisenyi
LAKE KIVU
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 25
‘Alain Butler Payette, the assistant to the
Seychelles Foreign Minister, said the ship was
carrying unspecified arms and munitions
which, according to the ship’s manifest, appear to have been loaded at Bar in Montenegro and were en route to Kismayu in southern Somalia’.36 There are differing reports on
the confiscation of arms from the Malo: some
say that the Seychelles coast guard caught
the ship, while others say that it had engine
trouble and was forced to dock in the capital,
Victoria.37 What remains curious is how the
ship ended up in the Seychelles, given that
it would have had to steer past Somalia and
travel over 1,500km to the south-east into
the Indian Ocean. Engine trouble might have
been the cause, but a third country, such
as the United States, France, or Kenya, also
might have intervened to stop the transfer of
weapons to Somalia—we do not know.
The Seychelles government said that
they had originally planned to destroy the
confiscated weapons, but claimed that they
lacked the expertise to do so. Instead, they
had reached out to the United States for
help, but their request for assistance had
been denied.38 Arms trade researcher Kathi
Austin describes how the Seychelles’ failure
to destroy the weapons, and the US refusal to
assist, led the Seychellois government to put
the weapons up for sale.39
The arms were seized to prevent their
transfer from one conflict zone to another
and to prevent further loss of life in Somalia
and Yugoslavia. However, as the Seychellois
newspaper Regar noted at the time,
26
this move by the Seychelles to
then sell the arms to Rwanda could
best be described as a ‘greedy and
cynical deal’.40
The deal was negotiated among senior Seychelles government officials, Rwandan Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, Zairean government
officials, and a South African, Willem ‘Ters’
Ehlers. Ehlers is said to have accompanied
Colonel Bagosora from Johannesburg to the
Seychelles on 4 June 1994 to participate in
these negotiations.41 According to Human
Rights Watch, the government of Zaire issued an end-user certificate in respect of
the arms, but on arrival in Goma, they were
handed over for the use of the Rwandan government forces, which were at that time still
in Gisenyi.
Both shipments of arms from the Seychelles were transported to Goma on a DC-8
plane registered in Zaire.42 Flight records
show that two flights were made on the
corresponding dates from Mahe International Airport to Goma Airport.43 Once in
Goma, the road from there to Gisenyi was a
well-travelled hop across the border. Writing
at the time, The Guardian’s Chris McGreal
described arms pouring into Rwanda, at
Goma airport, as various flights carrying
arms landed and unloaded crates of weapons
from a host of origin countries.44 Goma was
such a prolific site for the arrival of arms at
the time that aircraft used by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and bearing
NGO insignia were found to be arriving at
the airport carrying both aid supplies and
arms.45 While many of these flights would
have taken place prior to the embargo, they
establish Goma as the key point of entry for
weapons for the Armed Forces of Rwanda,
especially once they were at a stone’s throw
away from Goma in Gisenyi—the FAR’s base
in the later stages of the conflict.
A Human Rights Watch interview with
a member of the Zairean secret police confirmed that Zaire assisted in transporting
weaponry to the FAR troops in Gisenyi in
return for Rwandan government vehicles
as payment.46 Austin’s research, based on
interviews with Bagosora, among others,
describes the Seychelles shipments being
escorted to Rwanda.47 Furthermore, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
believed that the UN Commission of Inquiry
report, which looked at the Seychelles arms
deal, corroborated Bagosora’s account of successfully bringing weapons into Rwanda in
mid-June 1994.48
ICTR documents reveal that on 18 June
1994, a Colonel Leopold Payet of the Seychelles
signed the following items over to Bagosora:49
1. 6,000 60mm mortars
2. 624 82mm mortars
3. 4,800 pieces of 12.7mm high-explosive
ammunition
4. 5,440 pieces of 37mm + fuse
5. 7,600 pieces of 14.5mm
6. 5,600 fragmentation rifles
Above: Documents from the ICTR
investigation confirming the transfer
of weapons between the Seychelles
and Goma in the DRC
The invoice was countersigned by Bagosora
using his name, indicating an awareness of
the final destination of the arms. The Seychelles government confirmed that the arms
were paid for via two deposits into the Central Bank of the Seychelles at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The two payments
of $179,965 and $149,982.50 were both made
on 17 June from the Swiss Union Baincaire
Privée (UBP) bank account of Willem Tertius Ehlers. Bank records uncovered by UN
investigators indicate that Ehlers himself received one transfer of $592,784 and a second
transfer of $734,099.50 In total, Ehlers pocketed $1,326,883 for this cache of arms to aid
a genocide. To put this into context, adjusted
for inflation,51 $1,326,883 is equivalent to
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 27
approximately $2,617,021.55 (over R43 million) in 2022.52
In November 1995, the UN’s International
Commission of Inquiry into Rwanda wrote
to the foreign minister of a now liberated
South Africa, Alfred Nzo, regarding the involvement of Ehlers in the Seychelles arms
deal. Nzo responded on 20 February 1996 as
follows:
Following investigation by our authorities
I am now able to furnish the following information which has come to hand … In
respect of the involvement of South African
national: in connection with the sale or
supply of arms and materiel to the former
Rwandan Government and, in particular,
Mr Willem Petrus Jacobus Ehlers, the information available indicates that Mr. Ehlers,
in his private capacity, could have brokered
the arms transaction in question in June
1994.53
But just who is Willem Petrus Jacobus Ehlers,
the South African national at the heart of this
cynical arms deal?
IN TOTAL, EHLERS POCKETED
$1,326,883 FOR THIS CACHE OF
ARMS TO AID A GENOCIDE. TO PUT
THIS INTO CONTEXT, ADJUSTED FOR
INFLATION, $1,326,883 IS EQUIVALENT
TO APPROXIMATELY $2,617,021.55
(OVER R43 MILLION) IN 2022.
2 8 – O P E N S EC R E T S
Serbia
Arms are manufactured
in Serbia and
transported to
Montenegro.
1
Montenegro
Arms leave Montenegro
in the Greek registered
Malo, initially intended
to land in Kismayu,
Southern Somalia.
2
Arms are split into two
flights that fly from Mahe
Airport in the Seychelles
to Goma in the DRC. They
are then transported
over the border to
Gisenyi, Rwanda.
4
Kismayu
Goma
Gisenyi
Seychelles
The Malo is intercepted
in the Seychelles and
docks in the capital
Victoria (March 1993).
3
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 29
WILLEM
‘TERS’ EHLERS:
APARTHEID’S
SECRETARY
AND GLOBAL
ARMS DEALER
4
TERS EHLERS: AN OFFICER—
AND A GENTLEMAN?
Today, Ters Ehlers lives in a villa in the affluent suburb of Waterkloof in Pretoria. He
was born in 1948, the year which signalled
the beginning of the National Party’s 47 yearlong grip on power in South Africa. These
were golden years for regime loyalists like
Ehlers and his family. By the 1980s, Ehlers
held the influential position of secretary to
PW Botha within the state system. His ascendency to the inner sanctum of power in
Pretoria was most likely helped along by the
fact that other members of his family, including his cousin, Niël Barnard, were part of the
apartheid regime’s power elite. Barnard, who
was Botha’s chief civilian spook in the 1980s,
can be seen between Nelson Mandela and
Botha in the photograph taken by Ehlers at
their first meeting in 1989. Barnard led the
early phase of the clandestine talks between
the government and the ANC leadership, in
particular Mandela.
One of the few photos we have found of
Ehlers was taken in the mid-1980s, in which
he and two dozen other officials working in
Botha’s office are pictured together.1 Commodore Ehlers—the only official in a crisp,
white navy uniform—was assigned to his
role as Botha’s secretary by Defence Minister
Magnus Malan. By the 1980’s the apartheid
state was not increasingly militarised, it was
paranoid. Most important political policy
decisions were made by the powerful and
33
deals, and Ehlers’ time in France would have
cemented his ties with officials within one of
the apartheid state’s most important allies.
The significance of the relationship between Paris and Pretoria was evident in the
role of the South African embassy in Paris—exposed and detailed in Open Secrets’
Apartheid Guns and Money—as Armscor’s
sanctions-busting headquarters in Europe.4
It has been suggested that Ehlers worked in
the Paris embassy in the late 1970s, which
would have put him at the heart of the regime’s sanctions-busting enterprise.5
The period Ehlers spent in France overlapped with Botha’s tenure as minister of
defence from the late 1960s to the early 1980s
when the latter oversaw both the increased
militarisation of the apartheid state and the
establishment of a sanctions-busting machinery to counter the UN arms embargoes.6
IN A PEN WITH THE BIG
CROCODILE
secretive National Party Broederbond machinery. The cabinet itself was an instrument
of the State Security Council which meant
that securocrats wwre make all key decisions.
The position of Secretary was therefore more
than just that of imperial scribe, Ehlers occupied a position of enormous insight and influence, and it required someone Botha could
trust, and who understood the workings of
the military at a time that the regime was at
war both at home and abroad.
Ehlers was no low-level officer—he had at
one point been a contender for chief of the
navy2 and had reportedly received training at
a French submarine base from 1970 to 1972.3
Such exchanges of personnel between the two
countries ensured that enduring relations
developed between some of the future top
tier of military commanders. The Apartheid
state understood that solidarity is about more
than money, it requires political and personal
connections. These French connections were
important at the time as France was one of
the primary suppliers of military hardware
to the apartheid regime from the 1960s to
the 1980s. This included much of the naval
fleet. There was an intimacy that developed
between South African and French military
officials which extended beyond shady arms
34 – O P E N S EC R E T S
Ehlers’ selection as a secretary of
PW Botha, the ‘Big Crocodile’, was
no coincidence. The young man’s
military experience, exposure
to state secrets, and ties to the
apartheid power elite had groomed
him to become part of the regime’s
inner circle. He would be Botha’s
side when he was developing strategy and consulting with foreign
dignitaries.
By the 1980s, Botha increasingly centralised
power around his presidency. The state security council—staffed by securocrats—gave
Botha’s compliant cabinet its marching orders
and was central to the development of a ‘total
national strategy’ meant to counter the ‘total
onslaught’ of the liberation movements. The
garrison state became security obsessed and
military expenditure skyrocketed to over 30
per cent of government spending by the mid1980s. This meant that the many state secrets
Top left: Ters Ehlers during our interview with him
at the Intercontinental Hotel at OR Tambo.
Right: Declassified documents from the
Department of Foreign Affairs
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 35
which passed across Botha’s desk went, by
extension, through Ehlers. This gave Ehlers
access to some of the most closely guarded
secrets of the state—the development of the
South African nuclear weapons programme,
clandestine offers of weapons from across
the globe, and the booming arms trade with
countries such as France, China, Israel, West
Germany, and many others. It provided an
excellent perch from which to develop contacts in intelligence agencies across the world
and meet senior dignitaries, including from
several African states, such as Zaire, that
enjoyed a close, clandestine relationship with
the apartheid regime, and Botha personally.7
Open Secrets accessed documents in the
archives of the South African Department
of International Relations and Cooperation
that give insight into the type of information Ehlers handled at the time. They show
correspondence from a South Africa-based
arms trader, R Malek, to the South African foreign minister, offering to facilitate a
top-secret arms deal with Iran in 1984. Malek
indicated in his correspondence that he had
been advised to contact Foreign Affairs
by Ters Ehlers.8 It is unclear if the deal was
successful, but it passed through a chain of
command involving numerous officials who
indicated that the transaction might not be
advisable as South Africa was a major provider of hardware to Iraq, which was engaged
in a bloody and protracted war with Iran at
the time.9 Other documents show that South
Africa ultimately supplied both sides of that
conflict.
Apartheid spy Craig Williamson, who in
the later apartheid years ran a clandestine
arms and oil sanctions-busting operation
called Giovanni Mario Ricci (GMR), described the thrill that their access to power
gave him and men like Ehlers:
We did it because it was fun. It was great
to be in the know. People who read the
newspaper don’t have a clue what is really
going on. Government then was run like a
military operation and required military
discipline. We would caucus in [Defence
Minister] Magnus Malan’s office together
with Ters Ehlers. There were no debates
even in the NP party caucus about directives. The caucus was told, ‘this is policy’.10
36 – O P E N S EC R E T S
EHLERS GOES PRIVATE
In late 1989, Ters Ehlers lost his position. PW
Botha was ousted as leader of his beloved National Party, and within months, his cabinet
was successful in evicting the ailing Botha,
who had suffered multiple strokes, from the
presidency too.
The 42-year-old Ehlers left his offices at
the Union Buildings in Pretoria carrying a
little black book that was second to none.
His decade as handlanger or assistant to
Botha had set him up for life. He, like many
securocrats, would leave government to
privatise his services. Ehlers packed up his
navy uniform and set up shop as a fixer and
middleman in the dangerous and dirty world
of highly lucrative arms deals. Ehlers became
part of what Human Rights Watch, in a report published in 2000, described as South
Africa’s ‘old-boy network’ spanning national
defence and private business and drawing on
experience gained dodging apartheid arms
embargoes. This network would go on to run
the arms trade in Africa and globally, which
included dealing with some of the world’s
worst human rights offenders.
Ehlers reportedly developed close ties with
several senior African politicians and leaders.11 According to The Independent, Ehlers
worked in conjunction with former members
of South African military intelligence and
the South African National Defence Force
(SANDF), calling on contacts that lingered
within these structures.12
NEXT STOP: SEYCHELLES
AND GMR
In 1990, Ehlers made a seamless transition
from the security state to one of its most
curious, secret front companies—the Seychelles-based GMR. Named after Italian
Giovanni Mario Ricci, GMR was a sanctions-busting front for the apartheid regime
from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.13
Ehlers was tasked with taking over the reins
of GMR from Craig Williamson, who he
knew well from his days in Botha’s presidency.14 This relationship with GMR is important
for our understanding of Ehlers’ role in the
arms sales to Rwanda during the genocide
as those weapons transited through the Seychelles in 1994.
GMR was originally established by
Giovanni Mario Ricci, an Italian businessman who settled in the Seychelles in the
mid-1970s, having lived and done business
in Mexico, Haiti, and Somalia. Ricci had
fled Italy following a conviction for fraud
in 1958 and had later been in Switzerland
for possessing counterfeit money—both of
which he subsequently had expunged from
his record.15
Ricci became a friend and financial adviser to Seychellois President France-Albert
Rene, as well as a financier of the Seychelles’
only political party, the Seychelles People’s
United Party, and the government itself. In
1978, Ricci was granted extraordinary power: the sole rights to incorporate and administer offshore companies in the Seychelles,
through a new entity called the Seychelles
Trust Company.16 It started as a joint venture with the Seychelles government but was
fully privatised by 1981—making it the first
private offshore registration company in the
world.17 Ricci also received diplomatic status
in the Seychelles, apparently on the mistaken
assumption by Seychellois officials that he
was a representative of the Vatican. His status
was as emissary of an entity called the Sovereign Order of the Coptic Catholic Knights of
Malta, which, though bearing a resemblance
to a Knights of Malta order of the Vatican,
turned out to be a commercial company registered in New York.18 Ricci was a schemer
and the kind of man that white nationalists
like to keep close, even if offshore.
With this access and power in the Seychelles, Ricci became a natural go-between
for foreigners wishing to cultivate influence
or financial interests with the Seychellois political elite. As Stephen Ellis, a historian and
an expert on organised crime and deep state
networks, writes, ‘Although having no official
government position, [Ricci] was diplomat,
unofficial head of security, businessman and
financial adviser to President Rene all rolled
into one’.19
Ricci appears to have become an especially important intermediary for South Africa
following its failed coup attempt in the Seychelles in 1981 that aimed to replace President Rene.20 Ricci partnered with Craig Williamson, and in 1986, established a company
called GMR (Ricci’s initials). Williamson became managing director of GMR South Africa. GMR’s primary purpose was to soften
the blow of disinvestment from apartheid
South Africa. Williamson and Ricci claimed
that it was set up to break the capital boycott
and trade sanctions against South Africa, by
bringing in foreign capital from an array of
foreign businesses into the country and facilitating the movement of boycotted goods
through the Seychelles.
Williamson is on record as having
said that GMR was used to ‘avoid
any inhibiting laws’ preventing the
import of goods to South Africa.21
While little is known about the exact nature
of Ehlers’ business transactions when he took
over from Williamson at GMR in 1990, it is
likely that it was more of the same—but with
a focus on the clandestine sale of weapons.
Although Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were free, South Africa was
only liberated following democratic elections
in April 1994, and so the international arms
embargo was still in place. This meant that
trusted clandestine operations, such as GMR,
benefitted the apartheid state. In 1991, South
Africa’s Minister of Defence Magnus Malan
(Ehlers’ former boss) and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pik Botha visited the Seychelles
on separate occasions, indicating the importance of the island state to the apartheid
regime.22
Ehlers is said to have left GMR in 1994,
but the company continued to play a role in
illicit arms trade after the transition to democracy in South Africa. It facilitated a 1996
arms deal with forces in Burundi during that
country’s near-concurrent genocide with
neighbouring Rwanda. In one documented incident, an unidentified South African
employee of the GMR group of companies
offered a consignment of weapons, including
assault rifles, anti-tank mines, and grenades
of Somali origin, to the Burundian government, and then, shortly after the imposition
of an arms embargo against Burundi, sold
it to the rebels.23 Human Rights Watch reported that although there was no evidence
that South African government officials were
directly involved in the supply of arms to Burundi, there were serious concerns that they
may have implicitly allowed private individuals to go ahead.24
Ehlers also facilitated dubious private arms
deals outside of GMR. For example, Ehlers is
connected with Dr Jan Lourens, who had for
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 37
years worked on one of apartheid chemist
Dr Wouter Basson’s chemical and biological
warfare projects.25 Basson, whose activities
have been linked to numerous atrocities in
Namibia, is often referred to as ‘Dr Death’.
Lourens had helped develop, among other
things, a screwdriver that dispensed poison
as it stabbed, umbrellas and walking sticks
that fired poisoned micro-balls or darts, and
a signet ring with a hidden poison compartment.26 Not long after Lourens’ resignation in
March 1993 (as a result not of ethical qualms,
but largely due to suspicions that his wife
was having an affair with Basson), he was approached by Ehlers who introduced him to
a person from Syria who hoped to purchase
documentation or expertise on chemical and
biological weapons for the Syrian army.27
The deal apparently fell through, but Ehlers’
pattern of monetising skills and connections
gained from his time at the heart of the apartheid state was established.
According to press reports at the time,
Ehlers served as chief of GMR until 1992,28
and by July 1994, the company confirmed
that he had left its services.29 However, by
then Ehlers had transitioned fully into being
an international arms trader, and his networks in the Seychelles and around the world
would come in handy. One transaction facilitated by Ehlers through the Seychelles was
for weapons that were used in the Rwandan
genocide.
Right: An image of PW Botha’s
presidential staff taken in 1985.
PW Botha seated centre of the front
row. Ters Ehlers in naval uniform is
second from right in the back row.
38 – O P E N S EC R E T S
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 39
EHLERS ARMS
THE RWANDAN
GENOCIDE
5
On 17 May 1994—41 days after the genocide
began and just under a month after the massacre at Butare—the UN Security Council
adopted resolution 918 imposing a mandatory arms embargo on the sale or supply
of arms to Rwanda.1 The resolution clearly
stated:
All States shall prevent the sale or supply
to Rwanda by their nationals or from their
territories or using their flag vessels or
aircraft of arms and related matériel of all
types, including weapons and ammunition,
military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary police equipment and spare parts.2
Resolution 918 noted not only the widespread killing of civilians but also the ‘killing
of members of an ethnic group with the intention of destroying such a group, in whole
or in part’3—the standard definition of genocide. The UN Security Council further established a sanctions committee to monitor
implementation of the embargo. Despite this,
several countries continued to sell weapons
to Rwanda during the genocide. This included South Africa and France, a permanent
member of the Security Council. The sanctions were partially lifted in September 1996,
two years after the genocide.
The main weaponry of the genocidaires
(in both the army and the Interahamwe)4
included machetes and small arms, in particular rifles. While civilians mainly used
machetes and makeshift weaponry in the
genocide, army personnel favoured the use
43
This spread: Documents from the
Belgian government’s investigation into
the Malo arms sale. This includes an
affidavit by Alfred Kalisa.
4 4 – O P E N S EC R E T S
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 4 5
of live ammunition weapons such as machine
guns and rifles.
At the start of the genocide and as the
genocidal campaign intensified, the Armed
Forces of Rwanda needed to acquire weapons
clandestinely to circumvent resolution 918.
Despite past arms sales to Rwanda, Armscor
was unable or unwilling to officially provide
weapons with the embargo in place and with
a change in regime imminent in Pretoria. Allegedly, Armscor instead referred the Rwandans to arms dealer Willem ‘Ters’ Ehlers and
his company, Delta Aero. What followed was
an arms transaction worth $1.3 million involving middlemen, fake identities, unscrupulous government officials, charter flights,
and war criminals in a complex web of deceit.
ALFRED KALISA:
THE FINANCIAL ADVISER
On the 9th of June 1994, Alfred Gakuba
Kalisa was arrested in a First National Bank
(FNB) branch at the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg upon trying to deposit Thomas
Cook traveller’s cheques worth $1,597,000.
Kalisa was informed that the cheques were
stolen and subsequently taken downtown to
John Vorster Square police station and interrogated.5 He told the police an intriguing tale
about Ters Ehlers facilitating a weapons deal
for Zaire (now DRC).
According to Kalisa, he had been recently
contacted by a ‘Mr Camille’, a man claiming
to work for the ministry of defence in Mobutu Sese Seko’s government in Zaire, and another man known as ‘Jean Jacques’, who in
turn worked for Camille. Camille had asked
Kalisa whether he could put him in contact
with someone from Armscor, to which Kalisa
had replied that he ‘was not in that type of
business’ but could put Camille in touch with
his ‘good friend’, Commodore Ehlers, who
also worked in the armaments business.6
It was at this point that Kalisa arranged a
meeting between him, Ehlers, Camille, and
Jean Jacques in Johannesburg in May 1994.
Kalisa provided testimony to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in which he
discussed the details of this meeting, in 1995.
Kalisa said that Camille and Jean Jacques
told Ehlers they were interested in purchasing weapons for Zaire. Ehlers, in turn, said
that he could supply weapons stockpiled in
46 – O P E N S EC R E T S
the Seychelles, and they agreed that Camille
would produce an end-user certificate signed
by the Zairean defence minister that the
government of the Seychelles would require
before releasing the arms. Given the apartheid state and Ehlers’ own deep ties to the
Seychelles, it is not hard to see how Ehlers
was the ideal candidate to facilitate the sale of
the Malo shipment.
Following this initial meeting, there was
a second meeting between Camille, Jean
Jacques, Ehlers, and a defence vice minister
named only as Joseph. Kalisa said that he was
not at this meeting, at which the transfer of
the arms was discussed in more detail.7
With regard to payment, it was agreed
that Camille would hand over the agreed
amount of money8 for the arms in the form
of traveller’s cheques to Kalisa. Kalisa was to
deposit the traveller’s cheques into his FNB
account and then alert Ehlers. At that point,
Ehlers would tell Kalisa where to transfer the
money.9
Above: Fax from Interpayment Systems
which details their investigation into
whether Kalisa was knowingly selling
arms to the Rwandan government.
A PAWN OR A PLAYER?
Kalisa’s failed attempt to deposit the traveller’s cheques prompted an investigation by
Interpayment Services, who enlisted the help
of the Belgian police to determine the origin
of the cheques. Interpayment Services was
the traveller’s cheque-issuing subsidiary of
Barclays Bank that was acquired by Thomas
Cook in 1994.10 A fax from Neal Richardson,
a special investigator at Interpayment Services, indicates that the traveller’s cheques
were part of a batch obtained by the Banque
Commerciale du Rwanda (BCR) that had
been put on a stop list and therefore they
were illegal.11
In a follow-up fax to the Belgian police,
Richardson wrote that Kalisa had been described as a mere ‘pawn’ by the South African
police and that he was cooperating with the
police and had turned over all the traveller’s
cheques given to him by Camille.12 Kalisa’s
characterisation as a pawn is dubious. Born in
1952, Kalisa is an American-educated Rwandan, who had grown up in exile in Burundi.13
In an appeal case for Yussuf Munyakazi at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,
Kalisa was described as a known financier of
the Rwandan Patriotic Front since its early
days.14
Kalisa is part of an elite group of East
Africans, which includes a former Bank of
Uganda governor, a Kenyan who once led
Kenya’s export promotion body, and a former
governor of the Central Bank of Tanzania.
These individuals all studied at Boston University in the United States and have been
referred to, by journalist Asuman Bisiika, as
the ‘Boston Mafia’ because of their collective
financial power.15 Kalisa worked for the New
York-based Chemical Bank in West Africa in
the 1980s and reportedly set up companies in
Nigeria in the early 1990s.16
A search of the South African Companies and Intellectual Property Commission
(CIPC) reveals that Kalisa holds dual US and
South African citizenship. He is registered as
the director of at least seven South African
companies focused on finance and investment since 1991.17 These businesses have now
all been deregistered and bear the hallmarks
of shell companies. There are no websites
for the companies; four of the seven had the
same address on the 12th floor of the Forum
Building in Sandton (Johannesburg); and
only some of the businesses appear in online
directories, but even there, they provide no
descriptions of their actual work.18 Kalisa’s
statement to the police, in 1994, indicates
that one of his companies—Kwanza Trading
and Financing—had a physical office in the
Carlton Centre, where the traveller’s cheques
were kept before being handed over to investigators. Kwanza Trading and Financing
is listed in several business directories, but
again, there are no descriptions of its business activities.
In 1995, Kalisa became the founding
president of the Bank of Commerce, Development, and Industry (BCDI) in Rwanda.
The Kinshasa branch of the bank, Banque de
Commerce et de Developpement (BCD),19
was opened in 1997, with Kalisa coming to be
described as ‘Kabila’s Banker’ due to his closeness to Congolese President Laurent-Désiré
Kabila.20 It was said that the bank, which
was opened by Kabila in October 1997, was
also part-owned by the president, together
with Salim Saleh, the brother of Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni and an unnamed
Rwandan company.21 According to an Africa
Confidential article, Kalisa claimed that the
bank was ’20 percent owned by him, 40 percent by Congolese and 40 percent by others’.22
Kalisa would later be ousted by Kabila, in August 1998, after Tutsi rebel groups in Congo
rose up against Kabila’s regime.
Kalisa was arrested for corruption, misuse
of BCDI funds, and falsification of documents in Rwanda in 2007. He remained in
jail until 2010 when he received a presidential
pardon from Paul Kagame and was released.
Kalisa is now a trusted economic adviser to
Kagame and Rwanda’s ambassador to Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.23 We reached
out to Rwandan Embassy in Egypt to pose
questions related to his involvement in the
Malo arms transaction but his office has not
responded to our email.
All of this makes it likely that Kalisa was
no pawn, but rather a well-connected player; and that he knew the real identity of ‘Mr
Camille’—a Rwandan colonel looking for
weapons during the genocide.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 47
CAMILLE AKA COLONEL
THÉONESTE BAGOSORA
While Belgian police investigators concluded
that Alfred Kalisa was an unwitting player in
the transaction, they verified that the traveller’s cheques he had received were the same
as those purchased by Théoneste Bagosora
on 30 May 1994 from the Banque Commerciale du Rwanda.24 Piecing together events,
it becomes clear that Bagosora was ‘Camille’,
and that ‘Joseph’ was Joseph Nzirorera, the
president of Rwanda’s National Assembly
and secretary-general of the MRND. This
was confirmed by Bagosora at his hearing
at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda. Jean Jacques, described only as a
French man, is the only person involved
in this transaction whose identity remains
unknown, despite some speculation that he
could be a well-known French business person and arms dealer.
Born in Giciye commune in Gisenyi prefecture in Rwanda in 1941, Bagosora came
from a large family that had strong connections to prominent members of the Hutu
community. The godmother of Bagosora’s
eldest child was Juvénal Habyarimana’s wife,
Agathe Habyarimana.25 Both Bagosora and
48 – O P E N S EC R E T S
Above: Eyaounde, Cameroon: Colonel Theoneste
Bagasora speaks from Cameroon’s central prison in
Yaounde 11 July. He says there was “no genocide in
Rwanda”. (Alexander Joe/AFP via Getty Images)
Agathe Habyarimana would later be accused
of belonging to Hutu supremacist groups.
Bagosora had a religious upbringing: he attended a local Catholic school and sang as
a choirboy in his church. As a young adult,
Bagosora devoted his life to the military. In
1962, he enrolled in an officer training school
in Kigali. Upon graduating in 1964,26 Bagosora quickly rose through the ranks and was
promoted to lieutenant in 1967. During this
time, Bagosora received military training
in Belgium.27 He was then involved in the
fighting against the 1968 invasion by exiled
Rwandans from Burundi.28
Bagosora’s prominent military position
and close association with other key figures
in the Rwandan government would help
him lay the groundwork for the violence
that would take place in April 1994. Bagosora supported Juvénal Habyarimana in his
successful coup d’état, in 1973, which ousted
Grégoire Kayibanda.29 At this stage in his
military career, he was the head of the military police.30 He remained in this position
until 1980 when he was sent to receive further military training in France.31 Upon his
return to Rwanda, Bagosora was made head
of Rwanda’s military intelligence, known as
Services Documentation,32 which was part
of the defence ministry. In 1992, he was
appointed cabinet director for the defence
minister but remained listed as an on-duty
soldier.33
A GENOCIDAIRE
During the Rwandan civil war, Théoneste Bagosora was chair of the Enemy Commission
in 1992. This commission published a report
that overemphasised the ethnic component
of the Ugandan-backed invasion of Rwanda
in 1990 and referred to the enemy as the
Tutsi.34 Bagosora is said to have continued
using this rhetoric, in particular at meetings
at the military camp under his control.35 His
work at the Enemy Commission would later
inform the unofficial lists of ‘the enemy’ that
he distributed to military officials prior to
the genocide.36 These lists were created by
local government officials and used to collect information about suspected RPF sympathisers. Owing to the overwhelming ethnic
basis on which these lists were compiled,
they are suspected of directing the violence
of the conflict with the RPF towards Tutsi
civilians.37
Bagosora played a central role
in the genocide. Not only did he
define a national enemy in broad
ethnic terms but he also distributed weapons to youth groups and
politically affiliated militias with a
history of violence, increasing the
risk of violence against civilians.38
Group.42 Suspected of operating clandestine
radio networks and death squads, this group
is thought to have played a key destabilising
role in the early 1990s.43
As the country erupted into violence after Habyarimana’s assassination, Bagosora
quickly took steps to seize power by assuming
control of the Rwandan military.44 He used
this power to eliminate political rivals and to
control any broadcasts to the population. One
of Bagosora’s first acts was to orchestrate the
murder of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.45 Owing to the organised nature of
the military assault that preceded the prime
minister’s killing, which involved several elite
units of the Rwandan military, Bagosora was
found to have been responsible for the attack
that resulted in Uwilingiyimana’s death.
Not long after taking steps to secure
control of the military and the state more
broadly, Bagosora could be found around
the country at sites of extreme violence. The
ICTR indictment against him contains a
host of witness statements placing him at the
scenes of numerous killings.46 When Bagosora left Rwanda in May 1994 to procure arms
in South Africa—presenting himself as ‘Mr
Camille’—it was with the ambition to ‘wage
a war that will be long and full of dead
people until the minority Tutsi are finished
and completely out of the country’.47
MR CAMILLE
In his testimony at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, Théoneste Bagosora
testified to leaving Rwanda on 23 May 1994
in order to procure arms for the Armed Forces of Rwanda using official Zairean facilities,
in particular in Goma for transit between
An Interahamwe leader later testified before the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda that Bagosora had ordered the creation of lists of Tutsi to kill.39
Bagosora was also the leading figure in
creating the government programme known
as Auto-Défense Civil, comprising civilian
self-defence groups that polarised communities and prepared them for violence.40 The
ICTR found that Bagosora used these groups
to facilitate killings following Habyarimana’s
assassination.41 Another indicator of Bagosora’s preparation for ethnic violence was his
suspected membership of Hutu supremacist
organisations. The most prominent of these
was the Akazu, also known as the Zero
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 4 9
Rwanda and Zaire.48 The city of Goma—situated on the border between Rwanda and
Zaire—is a convenient location for the transfer of arms to Rwanda.
Not only did Goma serve as a transit point
for arms to Rwanda in 1994 but the Zairean
government also provided a fraudulent
end-user certificate for the arms destined for
Rwanda. An end-user certificate is a documented contract between a country selling
arms and the purchaser of the arms. This is
intended to prevent munitions ending up
with a third party not involved in the transaction: ‘It effectively means that a purchasing
country needs to agree that the munitions
bought will not be transferred any further
without the selling country’s permission’.49
Despite vocal commitment to the anti-apartheid movement, many African states
did regular business with the apartheid
regime.50 Apartheid South Africa’s relationship with Zaire was of particular note. Zaire
served as a central node for the transit of
weapons bought illegally by the apartheid
regime for UNITA in Angola.51 This served
both Zaire and South Africa’s interests in one
of the Cold War’s interminable proxy wars in
Angola.52
In May–June 1994, following the imposition of the UN embargo on arms sales to
Rwanda, Bagosora made use of the Zaire
channel to disguise the FAR’s arms purchases. According to Bagosora’s testimony at the
ICTR, he spent the period from 23 May to
22 June in Zaire, South Africa, and the Seychelles, procuring weapons.53 After signing
contracts for arms in Kinshasa, he joined
another Rwandan official, Joseph Nzirorera,
in Johannesburg on 3 or 4 June.54 Bagosora’s
account and timeline then match those of Alfred Kalisa in that a day or so after arriving in
Johannesburg, he left for the Seychelles with
a South African broker to purchase arms.55
He confirmed this broker was Ters Ehlers.
Bagosora’s testimony confirmed that the
South African deal did not go as smoothly as
previous transactions using the Zaire channel; rather, payment by traveller’s cheques
became impossible after travel bank Thomas Cook cancelled the cheques based on its
suspicion that they were being used to violate
the embargo.56 This is why Kalisa’s attempt
to deposit the traveller’s cheques failed. Bagosora, however, found a new channel—the
French bank BNP Paribas, an old hand at
dirty money deals.
5 0 – O P E N S EC R E T S
BNP PARIBAS
Open Secrets’ work has long shown the
pivotal role banks play in money laundering by facilitating transactions that should
be flagged and reported, especially when
being used by Politically Exposed Persons
(PEPs) or by countries that are active war
zones on which embargoes have been placed
for certain transactions. Yet cash-for-arms
deals continue unabated due to banks failing to fulfil their legal requirements to flag
and break the money-laundering cycles of
criminals, corrupt regimes, and in our case,
genocidaires.
Cloaked by the shiny veneer of professionalism, bankers more so than shady middlemen often escape the notice of international
prosecutors. Yet without banks willing to
facilitate money laundering for genocidaires
and arms traffickers, war profiteering is impossible. Banks are a central node of international arms trafficking, and they were crucial
in propping up the apartheid regime. This
is evidenced by the extensive mechanisms
Kredietbank Luxembourg and Kredietbank Belgium used to obscure the
origin and destination of money for
arms purchased by the apartheid
regime.57
THERE ARE TYPICALLY
THREE STAGES OF MONEY
LAUNDERING.
1: Placement:
Illicit funds are ‘placed’ into the financial
system by deposit(s) into a bank account,
usually through structuring or smurfing,
i.e. splitting money up into smaller
deposits.58
2: Layering:
This entails various processes to disguise
the origin of illicit money and distance it
from its original source. A common way
is simply to route the funds through
multiple bank accounts across different
jurisdictions.59
3: Integration:
After layering, illicit proceeds can be integrated
into the ‘legitimate economy’ by transferring
them into a new bank account or purchasing
assets, like property or art.60
We have showed how Bagosora and Ehlers
attempted to place Thomas Cook traveller’s
cheques in the account of Alfred Kalisa,
who was then instructed to pay Ehlers and
the government of the Seychelles in multiple
transactions; in essence, to layer the money.
However, due to Interpayment Services correctly flagging the transaction as originating from Rwanda, the sale was temporarily
halted. Arguably, the sale could have been
permanently halted, had other banks been
willing to follow similar protocols.
BANKING ON GENOCIDE: HOW
THE FAR FINANCED GENOCIDE
Commercial banking activity was suspended
on 7 April 1994 in Rwanda, which meant that
a myriad array of money-laundering-esque
tactics was used by the Rwandan government to pay for arms. This started with a trip
to Germany, between 28 April and 8 May
1994, by two representatives of the Banque
Commerciale du Rwanda, Ephraim Nkezabera (director of BCR) and Ezakar Bigilinka
(director of BCR’s foreign department), to
transfer the BCR assets held there to the Banque Nationale du Rwanda (BNR)—Rwanda’s
central bank—which held a bank account
with Banque Nationale de Paris.61 (Later, in
May 2000, BNP merged with Paribas and is
now known as BNP Paribas.) This transaction was a crucial building block for facilitating payment for arms transfers; it made it
possible for Théoneste Bagosora to pay Ters
Ehlers and the government of the Seychelles.
It is not clear how long Alfred Kalisa was
detained by the South African police after his
failed attempt to deposit the Thomas Cook
traveller’s cheques, but by 9 June 1994, he was
able to contact Bagosora to inform him that
the traveller’s cheques were fake. Bagosora
insisted on the authenticity of the cheques,
but because he was already in the Seychelles,
he had to find another way to make the
transaction happen. So Bagosora contacted
Joseph Nzirorera, the president of Rwanda’s
National Assembly and secretary-general of
the MRND, who in turn contacted the BNR
governor, Denis Ntirugirimbazi, to make the
payment.62
It was at this point that BNR began using
its BNP account to transfer money to Ehlers’
Swiss bank account at Union Baincaire
Privée. A private bank for the wealthy, UBP
is notable for its location in a secrecy haven,
which has long helped
tax evaders and money
launderers move money without notice.63
The timeline of
events in the Ehlers
saga illustrates the
lengths undertaken to
layer the money to pay for the arms from the
Seychelles, using BNP and UBP’s facilities.
The first transfer was made on 14 June 1994
and amounted to $592,784, while the second
transfer, which was made two days later on
16 June, amounted to $734 099.64 These payments correspond with the evidence and testimony on arms deliveries on 16 and 20 June
1994 to Goma, Zaire.65 66 67
Moving the Money
A timeline of payments made to Ehlers by the
Rwandan Central Bank for procuring the
weapons, and Ehlers' payments in turn to the
Seychelles Central Bank for the weapons.
14 June 1994:
$592 784 was deposited
from the BNR account at
BNP (Paris) to Ehlers’ Swiss
UBP account.
15 June 1994:
$179 965 was paid from
Ehlers’ Swiss UBP account to
the Seychelles Central Bank
in New York.65
16 June 1994:
$734 099 was deposited
from the BNR account at
BNP (Paris) to Ehlers’ Swiss
UBP account.66
17 June 1994:
$149 982,50 was paid from
Ehlers’ Swiss UBP account to
the Seychelles Central Bank
in New York.67
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 51
On 29 June 2017, French and Rwandan civil
society groups filed an official complaint
against BNP Paribas on the basis of complicity in the Rwandan genocide, war crimes,
and crimes against humanity.68 They include
Sherpa, an anti-corruption group that defends victims of economic crimes; Ibuka
France, an association that defends survivors
of the Rwandan genocide; and the Collective
of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR), a group
based in France that pursues claims against
genocide suspects.69 The complaint centres
on the payments made to Ehlers that facilitated the shipment of weapons described
earlier. Sherpa and the other complainants
have relied on gathered evidence, testimonies, and investigative reports, including the
UN International Investigation Commission
for Rwanda. They assert that BNP ‘could not
have doubted the genocidal intentions of
the authorities of the country for which it
allowed the transaction’.70
In their complaint, the NGOs claim the
following:
By allowing the financial transaction requested by the BNR during
the Rwandan genocide, when an
embargo voted by the UN resolution was in place, BNP Paribas
would have participated in financing the purchase of 80 tons of
weapons, which served to perpetrate the genocide. It would have
thus contributed to the genocide
recognized by the International
Criminal Court for Rwanda.71
Sherpa go on to reference the testimony of
Jacques Simal, an employee of the Belgian
bank Banque Bruxelles Lambert (BBL), who
had been posted to the Banque Commerciale
du Rwanda.72 Simal’s testimony confirms that
the banking sector had a clear understanding
of the crimes taking place in Rwanda, and
as a result, BBL made the decision to freeze
BCR accounts and reject the money transfers
that BNP would go on to approve. Additionally, the director of the foreign department
at BCR confirmed that BNP was the only institution that agreed to transfer assets on behalf of BNR.73 The complicity of BNP in the
arming of a genocidal regime is, yet again,
evidence of its willingness not only to flout
5 2 – O P E N S EC R E T S
international sanctions but also to prioritise
its own profit over the lives and human rights
of individuals.
After Sherpa and the others had launched
their complaint against BNP Paribas, Paris’
public prosecutor announced that it had
opened a judicial investigation into allegations of BNP Paribas’ complicity in the 1994
Rwandan genocide.74 The probe opened
on 22 August 2017 and is led by three investigating magistrates.75 All sources seem
to emphasise that despite the opening of a
full-scale inquiry, there is no implication of
guilt or promise of a trial, but rather that the
information from the complaint and initial
inquiries merit further investigation.
The focus of these organisations is important: they are seeking to hold a hugely
influential economic actor to account. Headquartered in Paris, BNP Paribas is the largest
bank in France, the second largest bank in
Europe,76 and the ninth largest bank in the
world by total assets.77 According to S&P
Global, BNP Paribas’ total assets in 2020
were valued at €2,429 billion (about R4.5
trillion).78
EHLERS KNEW …
So just how much could Ehlers have known
about the final destination of the arms?
Ehlers would have been well aware of the
role of Zaire as an issuer of end-user certificates for the apartheid government. The
Zaire–South Africa relationship was cemented in the mid-1980s, with the appointment
of Honoré Ngbanda as head of intelligence in
Zaire in 1985. In 1986, Ngbanda visited South
Africa and met PW Botha and his minister of
defence, Magnus Malan, and had lunch with
members of the state security council. At the
end of the meeting, which discussed collaboration and international terror threats,
Ngbanda was presented with a Krugerrand
by Botha. The visit was important to the
South African Defence Force (SADF), as discussions focused on ensuring the continued
supply of EUCs from Zaire and on deepening
existing intelligence contacts.79 As secretary
to Botha, Ehlers would have no doubt been
privy to the extensive and illicit transactional
relationship between South Africa and Zaire.
Alfred Kalisa, a man who describes himself as Ehlers’ ‘friend’, was apprehended before the deal was carried out, which means
Left: Caption for end-user certificate et doluptium
quis expelibus, ommollendis at vit la sint, volore
quia duciandustis est opta cus, ommolor epeliquo
tem. Inctia plandis sam inctumqui idelliquae aut
ut illabo.
that Ehlers’ payment was put in jeopardy.
Kalisa had Bagosora’s identity confirmed
to him by police and a call he subsequently
made to Bagosora to inform him of the failed
transaction. This led Bagosora to make alternate plans for the payment to proceed. It
is highly unlikely that this would have been
missed by Ehlers: he was with Bagosora in
the Seychelles, he was a ‘friend’ of Kalisa’s,
and he would have noticed that the payment
arrangements changed. In particular, he
would have noticed that he was now no longer being paid in traveller’s cheques but by a
bank transfer from the BNP account of the
Rwandan government. That was, and should
have been, enough confirmation for Ehlers
that he was in fact doing business with the
Rwandan government.
Beyond this, Ehlers was procuring the
arms from government officials, like Colonel
Payet in the Seychelles, who would have also
been duty-bound to verify the identity of the
end-user. They either flagrantly abandoned
this duty or willingly assisted the purchase.
This is evidenced by the fact that a Seychellois newspaper later identified Bagosora as a
Rwandan official and thereby prevented the
transfer of a third consignment of arms that
were part of this deal.80 That knowledge of
this deal—in particular Bagosora’s involvement and the final destination of arms being
Rwanda—came to light so quickly, makes it
almost impossible to believe that the South
African parties to this deal, including Ehlers,
would not have known who they were dealing with and where the arms were destined
to be used.
That Bagosora was moving around the
continent to procure arms, was no secret.
Bagosora himself confirmed that while attempting to make arrangements for the third
transfer, he was tipped off that the CIA had
‘spotted’ him.81 This corresponds with declassified US diplomatic cables at the time. Titled
‘Seychelles Arms for Rwanda’, these cables
describe how the Seychellois government
became concerned that it was inadvertently
sending arms to Rwanda.82 One cable quotes
the United Opposition Party describing the
arrival of a Rwandan, a Zairean, and a South
African into the country on 4 June 1994.
Ehlers’ involvement in the covert deal to
deliver weapons to Rwanda via the Seychelles
was confirmed by a range of investigations
in the four years after the completion of
the deal. The first of these was undertaken
by Human Rights Watch, and its findings
published in the report Re-arming with Impunity. In an interview on 15 February 1995,
Bagosora explained how he had been put in
touch with Ehlers.83 By naming Ehlers as his
South African accomplice, Bagosora spurred
further investigation into the affair. As well
as featuring in the Human Rights Watch investigation, this arms deal also featured as a
case study in a UN Commission of Inquiry
into the supply of weapons to Rwandan government forces during the genocide.84 Swiss
cooperation with regard to the financial flows
that made the deal possible enabled the naming of Ehlers as an end recipient of related
payments.85 In a nutshell, this transaction
implicates the governments of South Africa,
then Zaire, and the Seychelles, but chiefly
Ehlers, who used his experience, as well as
government and GMR connections, to connect Bagosora to a stockpile of weapons that
would eventually be used in the final acts of
genocide in Rwanda.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 53
This spread: Declassified US diplomatic
cables. Titled ‘Seychelles Arms for Rwanda’,
these cables describe how the Seychellois
government became concerned that it was
inadvertently sending arms to Rwanda.
5 4 – O P E N S EC R E T S
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 55
A TIMELINE: RWANDAN GENOCIDE AND MALO ARMS TRANSACTION
6 April 1994: President Juvenal
A TIMELINE:
Habyarimana is assassinated.
19 October 1992:
Armscor sells weapons
to the Rwandan
government.
1 October 1990
The RPF invades
Rwanda starting the
Rwandan Civil War.
1994
1993
1992
1991
RWANDAN
GENOCIDE AND
MALO ARMS
TRANSACTION
J
F
20 April 1994: Arms supplied by
Armscor used in a massacre in Butare.
27 April 1994: South Africa holds
its first democratic election.
28 April – 8 May 1994: Rwandan
delegation from the BCR travels to
Germany to transfer the bank’s
assets into the National bank of
Rwanda (BNR) account at BNP.
M
APRIL
MAY
10 May 1994: Alfred Kalisa
introduces Bagosora
(alias Mr Camille) to
Ters Ehlers. (Approx. date)
17 May 1994: UN
arms sanctions
imposed on Rwanda
23 May 1994: Bagosora,
Ruhorazora and Nzirorera go
to Kinshasa.
6 March 1993: The Seychelles
government confiscates 80 tonnes of
Serbian light arms from the Malo ship.
The ship had come from Montenegro
and was bound for Somalia.
4 August 1993:
Arusha Accords signed.
5 6 – O P E N S EC R E T S
25 May 1994: Bagosora buys
$1 597 820 worth of travellers
cheques from BCR in Kinshasa.
28 May 1994: Meeting between Bagosora,
Jean Jacques and Ehlers
at an estate in Sandhurst,
Johannesburg.
4 June 1994: Bagosora, Ehlers arrive
in Seychelles to buy the weapons.
9 June 1994:
Kalisa apprehended when attempting
to deposit traveller’s cheques.
Bagasora is in the Seychelles and is
informed that the travellers cheques
were cancelled by the issuer.
Nzirorera then contacts the governor
of BNR (Denis Ntirugirimbazi) to make
the payment for the weapons using
the BNP account.
On the 4th of June 1994,
Théoneste Bagosora
Ters Ehlers arrived in
Seychelles to
buy weapons.
19 June 1994: The plane leaves the Seychelles
for the second time with the second shipment
of weapons accompanied by Bagosora
JUNE
16 June 1994:
$734 099 was deposited from the
BNR account at BNP Paris to Ehlers’
UBP account in Switzerland.
15 June 1994:
$179 965 paid from Ehlers’ UBP account to
the Seychelles Central Bank in New York.
Cameron Commission releases its first
report.
14 June 1994: $592 784 was
deposited from the BNR account
at BNP (Paris) to Ehlers’ UBP
account in Switzerland.
13 June 1994: Zaire Deputy Defence Minister
Baoko-Yoka provides Bagosora with
end-user certificates that state that the final
destination for the weapons is Zaire.
18 June 1994: The same
plane returns to the
Seychelles accompanied
by a Zairean official
17 June 1994:
$149 982. 50 paid from Ehlers’ UBP
account to the Seychelles Central Bank
in New York.
The first shipment leaves the Seychelles
for Goma.
The Seychellois newspaper, the Regar,
reveals that the arms were in fact
destined for Rwanda.
Anatole Nsengiyumva (the ranking
military officer in Gisenyi) receives
orders from Edouard Karemera to send
troops to the Bisesero region to
participate in a ‘clean-up’ operation. This
attack claimed over 1000 lives.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 57
20 June 1994: Second shipment
of arms arrives in Rwanda
In November 1995, the International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda) wrote to the Cameron Commission in South
Africa to ask for information
on the arms sales to Rwanda
by Ehlers and Armscor.
22 June 1994: Operation
Turquoise is put into action.
24 June 1994: Militia forces
arrive in Bisesero and intensifies
the attempt to “exterminate”
Tutsi people.
21 August 1994:
Operation Turquoise ends.
JUNE
JULY
AUG
SEPT
OCT
NOV
8 November 1994: International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) established.
18 July 1994: End of civil war
when RPF seizes control of
Gisenyi and north-west of
Rwanda.
15 July 1994: End of 100 days of
the Rwandan genocide
14 July 1994: Hutu forces flee to
the DRC, mostly concentrated
in refugee camps in Goma.
4 July 1994: RPF takes Kigali.
This day is now celebrated as
Liberation Day.
5 8 – O P E N S EC R E T S
27 and 29 November 1995: International
Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda) writes to
the Cameron Commission to ask for
information on the arms sales to Rwanda
by Ehlers and Armscor.
DEC
11 March 1996:
Bagosora apprehended.
24 October 1996 – 17 May 1997:
First Congo War begins when
Uganda and Rwanda invade the
DRC (then Zaire).
Below: A view of a courtroom on December 18, 2008 during a Rwanda
International Criminal tribunal, ICTR session at the Arusha International
Conference Centre where Former Rwanda army's Col. Theoneste Bagosora,
Lt. Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva and Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze were sentenced
to life in prison on charges of genocide.
2021
2016
2008
1997
1996
1995
20 February 1996:
Alfred Nzo writes to the International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda)
stating that Ehlers ‘could have
brokered the arms transaction in
question in June 1994.’
31 December 2016:
ICTR dissolved
25 September 2021:
Bagosora dies.
18 December 2008: Bagosora, Ntabakuze and
Nsengiyumva are found guilty of genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes by the ICTR.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 59
“The attackers would come
to kill during the day and
at night they would go off
to eat and drink”
~ Human Rights Watch
ARMS DEALERS
AND THE KILLING FIELDS OF
BISESERO
6
The influx of automatic rifles, grenades, and
mortars into northwestern Rwanda in midJune 1994 had a significant effect on violence
in the surrounding region. The weapons
Théoneste Bagosora purchased from Willem
‘Ters’ Ehlers arrived just before troops and
civilian militia departed by bus for Bisesero,
a site of significant violence that occurred
towards the end of the 100-day genocide.
Here, we present evidence that the weapons
supplied by Ehlers were used to carry out acts
of genocide.
THE KILLING FIELDS
OF BISESERO
The arrival of the weapons in Rwanda in
mid-June 1994 coincided with intensified
genocidal rhetoric. Government forces were
becoming desperate in their losing fight
against the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Having retreated to Gisenyi, the FAR was wary
of losing control of the capital Kigali to the
RPF and of possible French intervention.
This resulted in an increased level of coordination for the genocide of the Tutsi.1 While
much of the violence in the early period of
the genocide was perpetrated by one neighbour against another, this later period was
characterised by organised slaughter, as the
FAR, its allied militias, and loyal civilians systematically hunted down remaining Tutsis.
Historian and ICTR expert witness Alison
Des Forges, in her report for Human Rights
61
Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide
in Rwanda, wrote that in June, Valérie Bemerki—a radio presenter, later convicted of
genocide in a Gacaca court—pushed killers
to complete the elimination of Tutsi, ‘their total extermination, putting them all to death,
their total extinction’.2
Bisesero is a range of hills in western
Rwanda. It is about a three-hour drive from
Gisenyi, where FAR troops were based at the
time, and was one of the main sites that refugees fled to during the genocide.3 As such, it
became the objective of several coordinated
assaults targeting the mainly Tutsi refugees,
a majority of whom were likely women and
children.4 At Bagosora’s trial, Des Forges described the FAR as having been ‘determined
to eliminate the surviving refugees on Bisesero hill’.5 While killings had been taking place
in this region from the outset of the genocide, the region fell victim to a sustained and
coordinated attack planned by high-ranking
members of the Rwandan government and
military in June 1994, the same month as
the weapons arrived. By the time of this final
assault in late June, the FAR was more coordinated and the refugees had faced months
of malnutrition surrounded by the bodies of
people who had been murdered.6
Accounts of life in the Bisesero hills and
the nearby town of Kibuye reveal how attacks
on refugees had become routine. Interviews
conducted by Human Rights Watch tell of
how ‘people living in the town of Kibuye became used to the sound of the vehicles rolling
by en route to Bisesero with their loads of assailants. … The attackers would come to kill
during the day and at night they would go off
to eat and drink’.7 Other accounts reveal how
the frequency of these routine attacks would
increase: the attackers were divided into two
teams, those who assaulted the hill during
0
10
20
30
40
Kafunzo
50 km
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6 2 – O P E N S EC R E T S
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Kirambo
Busogoo
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Kigarama
Lubirizi
Kabale
Cyanika
Ruhengeri
Jurwe
Merama
Kagitumba
Heavy weapon fire
Movements of victims
Movements of executioners
Road
Secondary road
School
Above: Uwyisenga Ester a survivor of one of the worst
killing fields in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide stands, 16
January 2004 in front of a row skulls of people who
died during the genocide in Bisesero, Rwanda.
the day and those ‘who went around at night
trying to find where people were hiding by
smelling or seeing their cooking fires’.8
Accounts of refugees hiding in Bisesero
also describe an increasing desperation to
escape the violence.
A young man from Bisesero first
fled south with a group heading for
Burundi, but they were caught in
the Nyungwe forest by the Presidential Guard. They escaped and
made their way back to Bisesero.
He tried again, heading southeast,
planning to circle through the
northern part of Gikongoro to reach
the RPF zone. Forced to retreat
again to Bisesero, he started out a
third time to the northeast, through
Birambo but once more was driven
back to the hilltop.9
Witness testimony
Standing in contrast to these accounts of desperation are the accounts of increasingly brazen attacks by the emboldened genocidaires.
One survivor declares that Dr. Gerard Ntakirutimana, son of Pastor
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, who
headed the Adventist church, came
to the hill often, ‘wearing white
pants and a white and red sweater
and carrying a R4 rifle.’ The witness
thought that Dr. Ntakirutimana
would help him because their
fathers had exchanged cattle, a
sign of a close and enduring bond.
He says, ‘So I fled to Ntakirutimana
for protection, but instead he shot
at me.’ The burgomaster, Charles Sikubwabo, a former soldier, helped
organize the repeated assaults on
the hill. From time to time, Alfred
Musema, head of a nearby tea
factory, came to observe.10
Witness testimony
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 6 3
These accounts from survivors of the Bisesero
hills, which tell a tale of horrendous violence
and misery, are important for understanding
the context in which the weapons would have
arrived. The stories of the desperation of victims and the emboldened behaviour of those
attackers carrying firearms are instructive in
helping assess the potential impact of a new
shipment of arms.
The final attack on Bisesero was one of
the FAR’s last desperate acts before many of
its leaders fled the country. Preparation for
the attack took place in early June 1994, at a
meeting in a hotel in Gisenyi, near the FAR
base.11 On 17 June, a day after the first arms
transfer, Anatole Nsengiyumva (the ranking
military officer in Gisenyi) received orders
from Edouard Karemera (who was accused
of orchestrating an earlier large-scale assault
in the Bisesero hills in mid-May 1994)12 to
send troops to the Bisesero region to participate in a ‘clean-up’ operation.13 Orders were
given for the slaughter to commence no later
than 20 June,14 presumably to get as much
killing done before the anticipated French
intervention.
Above: Communique from the Rwandan Minister
of the Interior and Communal Development about
the operation in Kibuye Bisesero.
6 4 – O P E N S EC R E T S
The result of this coordinated and premeditated assault was devastating and claimed
well over 1,000 lives. Those who took part in
these murders included the military, militia,
and civilians.15 Other estimates have placed
the number of people slain in the Bisesero
hills as high as 50,000 over the entire period
of the genocide.16 French soldiers have been
said to have been complicit in this as the
murders occurred after 27 June, when they
had been deployed as a humanitarian force—
Operation Turquoise—which was mandated
to prevent such continued acts of violence.
ARMING THE BISESERO
ATTACKERS
The arrival of the arms into Goma airport
and their subsequent transfer into Rwanda
paints the French as oblivious bystanders
to a steady stream of weapons entering the
country at Goma.17 At the time of the second
shipment’s arrival in Goma on 20 June 1994,
French troops were preparing for Operation
Turquoise in the same location. The Seychellois newspaper that first identified Théoneste
Bagosora as the previously unnamed Rwandan purchasing arms also noted that the
Rwanda-bound arms would be ‘transferred
literally under French eyes’, given the looming French presence in the Seychelles, its
former colonial outpost.18 This suggests that
the French military and French intelligence
could have kept a watchful eye on the weapons shipment from Rwanda to Zaire and ultimately to the killing fields of Bisesero.
Witness accounts and letters indicate that
weapons such as those imported by Bagosora
and Ehlers were used in the June 1994 attack.
The first of these accounts is in a letter from
one regional leader to another, dated 24 June,
that confirms the arrival of militia forces
from Gisenyi.19 This letter was central to the
court’s decision to find Anatole Nsengiyumva
guilty of dispatching troops to Bisesero. The
letter states that the troops had arrived on 19
June and had begun their assault. Crucially,
the letter states that several shots had been
fired—indicating that firearms were used.
This important evidence was presented at
Edouard Karemera’s trial in late 2006,20 and it
reliably indicates that firearms were used in
the Bisesero assault. Importantly, the judgement came two years after Bagosora’s trial in
Above: FAR soldier with rifle propelled grenade
launcher walking ahead of refugees heading to
the security zone held by Operation Turqoise.
2004, when the court had been unable to state
whether the weapons purchased from Ehlers
by Bagosora were used in Bisesero.21 The
court’s reasoning at the time had been that
the accounts of the Bisesero attack described
traditional weapons being used.22 The fresh
evidence presented at the Karemera trial in
2006 meant a judicial rethink on the matter:
live ammunition was almost certainly used at
Bisesero.
Other accounts of the Bisesero assault
provide supporting evidence of the use of
firearms and grenades. One example of such
evidence comes from the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses who described an attack
on a cave in which over 40 refugees were
hiding. Grenades were used in an attempt
to flush out and ultimately kill the civilians
within. The weapons procured by Ehlers
and Bagosora included both hand grenades
and rifle propelled grenades. As part of the
preparation for the Bisesero assault, grenades
were specifically requested.23 Owing to the
intensity of the violence and the vulnerability
of the refugees in Bisesero, there are likely to
have been many more events like this from
which no witnesses survived. It is impossible
to overstate the brutality and the scale of the
events in Bisesero, which would have very
likely been worsened by the arms imported
by Ehlers and Bagosora.
In the week before the assault on Bisesero,
explosive weaponry, ammunition, and rifles
were delivered to Goma, close to Gisenyi.
This strongly suggests that the arrival of
these weapons coincided with an organised
and premeditated military operation in Bisesero that had requested the delivery of such
weaponry and deployed it against civilians.
Testimony from Gisenyi-based Interahamwe leader Omar Sherushago at the ICTR
revealed that meetings took place in Gisenyi
in early June to arrange for weapons and
fighters to be sent to Bisesero.24 Nsengiyumva
also testified that Gisenyi acted as a hub from
which troops were armed and dispatched to
other areas of the country.25
In his testimony, Sherushago further stated that the early June meetings identified a
need for more troops and for weapons.26 Also
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 6 5
in June, Nsengiyumva was seen returning
from Goma with two trucks full of weapons.
Shortly after this, he would ask Sherushago to
rally local youth groups on account of ammunition now being available.27 While Nsengiyumva’s testimony establishes that Gisenyi
acted as a centre for weapons distribution
and troop dispatch, Sherushago’s testimony
confirms that Gisenyi saw the distribution
of what was most probably the mid-June
shipment of Ehlers’ Malo weapons to militia,
who were then dispatched to the Bisesero
hills. The arrival of the Malo weapons so
close to the distribution and training centre
of Umaganda Stadium in Gisenyi, combined
with the beginning of Operation Turquoise
later in June, makes it highly unlikely that
Sherushago’s testimony could be describing
the arming and training of troops for dispatch to any location other than Bisesero.
These facts were confirmed in Nsengiyumva’s conviction for genocide and crimes
against humanity by the ICTR.
In the second half of June 1994, Nsengiyumva dispatched militiamen, whose training he had overseen, from Gisenyi prefecture
to reinforce local forces in an operation in
the Bisesero area of Kibuye prefecture. This
followed a request by the interim government to provide this support. On arrival, the
militiamen were chanting ‘Let’s exterminate
them’. Government and local authorities sent
them to kill surviving Tutsi refugees in Bisesero … The Chamber finds that these assailants participated in the intentional killing of
members of the Tutsi ethnic group. In view of
the widespread killing of Tutsis throughout
Rwanda as well as the chanting of ‘Let’s exterminate them’ by the assailants, the Chamber
has no doubt that they participated in the
attacks with the intent to destroy, in whole or
in substantial part, the Tutsi group.28
Ehlers arranged for weapons to be shipped
to Goma in collaboration with a senior official of the Rwandan military. In doing so,
these weapons would have arrived at a time
when weapons from Goma were being transferred to Gisenyi and distributed to militia by
Nsengiyumva.29 Such militia were then dispatched by Nsengiyumva to participate in the
assault on the Bisesero hills in mid-to-late
June 1994.30 The testimony presented here
shows that weapons such as those shipped by
Ehlers and Bagosora were used by FAR militia and associated combatants in this assault
in Bisesero and the murder of many civilians.
6 6 – O P E N S EC R E T S
RWANDA, ZAIRE, AND
OPERATION TURQUOISE:
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE
GREAT AFRICAN WAR
The genocide ended on 15 July 1994—100
days after Habyarimana’s plane crash. Nearly
one million people had died by the time the
Rwandan Patriotic Front defeated the Armed
Forces of Rwanda and took control of Kigali.
Many genocidaires used the French humanitarian zone created in the south of Rwanda
under Operation Turquoise to flee into Zaire,
and in some cases, to continue the massacres.
The 1994 Rwandan genocide continues to
reverberate throughout the region. The Interahamwe continue to exist today, launching
insurgent attacks from Zaire into Rwanda.
The Interahamwe have been designated as a
terror group by Rwanda and many other African countries along with some in the global
North.31 Their arms emanate from the same
groups who sponsored the genocide.
In 1996, the First Congo War began when
Rwanda invaded Zaire to continue to hunt
down genocidaires. France had not stopped
arming the FAR, even though the UN arms
embargo (under Security Council resolution
918) prohibiting sales to Rwanda was still in
place. To circumvent this, arms exports were
routed to Goma airport in Zaire, just as the
Ehlers shipment had been.32 For the duration
of Operation Turquoise, the FAR and thus its
militia, the Interahamwe, continued to receive weapons inside the French-controlled
zone via Goma airport.
Below: Survivors of the genocide on the hills of
Bisesero, on the road to Kibuye.
According to UN officials, between July
and September 1994, the French military
flew key commanders, including Théoneste
Bagosora and Interahamwe militia leader
Jean-Baptiste Gatete, out of Goma to unidentified destinations.33 Human Rights Watch
also learned that FAR troops and militia
received military training in the Central African Republic and Cameroon.34 The war in
Congo continues to this day.
Evidently, Ehlers’ Malo arms transaction
had far-reaching consequences. In arming
genocidaires for profit, Ehlers is likely to have
contributed to the death of many people in
Gisenyi and Bisesero, and possibly even the
DRC, where the Interahamwe continued
their attacks with weapons they had received
from Nsengiyumva and Bagosora.
Ehlers profited from genocide—
and for that he should be held
accountable.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 67
THE FRUITS
OF IMPUNITY:
EHLERS AND
OTHER WARS
7
Justice for the Rwandan genocide has been
a long process, with many high-level perpetrators still not having faced justice. The international arms dealers, bankers, and other
enablers have largely escaped accountability.
Owing to the wide-scale involvement of the
people of Rwanda in the genocide, transitional justice has required a multilayered approach. Thus, the country has used both the
formal justice system and traditional justice
mechanisms called the Gacaca. There have
also been several UN, Belgian, French, and
US investigations into the genocide.
THE CAMERON COMMISSION
AND THE ELUSIVE ‘ELI
WAZAN’
In South Africa, the most significant impetus
to clean up the South African arms export
regime came about as a result of a dirty arms
deal in Yemen, which coincided with the
genocide in Rwanda. The Commission of
Inquiry into Alleged Arms Transactions Between Armscor and one Eli Wazan and Other
Related Matters—also known as the Cameron Commission—was initiated following a
revelation that a large consignment of arms
previously belonging to the South African
Defence Force had been intended by Armscor for supply to Yemen—a deal which fell
through, but nevertheless sparked outrage
as Yemen was at the time involved in a civil
69
war.1 The Yemen arms transfer included ‘a
Lebanese arms dealer with Israeli intelligence
connections [Eli Wazan], acting on behalf
of a Saudi Prince [Anwar al-Shalaan] and a
German citizen [Joseph der Hovsepian]’.2
Upon its discovery of South African weapons in Rwanda in 1994, Human Rights Watch
requested the South African government to
disclose the nature of its military assistance
and arms transfers to the Rwandan government, including arms transactions undertaken by Armscor.3 It further requested the
Cameron Commission to investigate Armscor’s deals with Rwanda.4
The International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda) also seemed to be under the
impression that the files of the Cameron
Commission would have information on
Ters Ehlers and other arms of South African
manufacture. In its final report, the International Commission stated that it had written
to the Cameron Commission, on 27 and 29
November 1995, for a copy of the commission’s report but had received no reply.5
On 7 February 1996, the Rwandan commission met with the South African deputy
high commissioner in Nairobi.
At that meeting, the Chairman of the commission conveyed to the Deputy High Commissioner a third letter, dated 7 February
1996, to the Government of South Africa,
recalling the previous two and referring to
the involvement of Mr. Ehlers in an arms
transaction that was under investigation
by the Commission as a possible violation
of the Security Council embargo. The letter
again requested information as to whether
the South African Government had conducted, was conducting or contemplated
conducting an investigation into the possible participation of any South African
nationals or companies in the sale or supply
of arms and matériel to the former Rwandan government forces in violation of the
United Nations embargo. The Commission
also repeated its request for information as
to the origin of the weapons it had inspected
on Iwawa Island, Rwanda (also known as
Ile Wahu), one of which appeared to be of
South African manufacture.6
On 20 February 1996, South Africa’s Minister
for Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo wrote to the
chairman of the International Commission,
referring to the two letters dated 27 and
70 – O P E N S EC R E T S
29 November 1995 and the requests made
therein, and replying as follows:
In respect to the involvement of
South African national: in connection with the sale or supply of arms
and material to the former Rwandan Government and, in particular,
Mr Willem Petrus Jacobus Ehlers,
the information available indicates
that Mr. Ehlers, in his private
capacity, could have brokered the
arms transaction in question in
June 1994’, The Foreign Minister
also stated that the rifle inspected
by the International Commission on
Iwawa Island, Rwanda, on November 1995 had been manufactured
in 1987 and sold in May 1992 to the
Government of Rwanda.7
The Cameron Commission ultimately focused largely on the Yemen case, on government sales rather than private arms transactions, and on general recommendations to
ensure better control of arms sales by South
Africa. It stressed that Armscor and other
South African officials themselves showed
a ‘general, institutional lack of responsibility regarding the end destination of South
African arms exports’,8 but also admitted
that it had exposed ‘only a fraction of the
underworld inhabited by South African arms
manufacturers and dealers’.9
While the final reports of the commission
make no mention of Ehlers, the similarities
between the Yemen deal and that in the
Rwanda case have led to allegations that the
elusive ‘Lebanese’ arms dealer Eli Wazan of
the Yemen debacle may have been Ehlers.
This is a claim we have not been able to verify
as there is very little information surrounding the highly elusive Wazan.
Both Eli Wazan and Marius Vermaak, the
Armscor agent who was responsible for the
transaction and one of the few people known
to have met with Wazan on multiple occasions
(as per the final report of the Cameron Commission),10 declined to testify at the Cameron
Commission, further adding to the mystery
of the primary actors involved. At the time of
the Wazan debacle (and until 1995 when he
resigned),11 Vermaak was a highly successful
manager of the stock sales department at
Armscor. He is noted as having prioritised
clients over paperwork and process to reach
sales targets.12 Despite recommendations by
the Cameron Commission for further investigation into his criminal conduct, Vermaak
was not held accountable for his role in the
Wazan debacle.
THE HONORARY CONSUL
OF COLOMBIA
Between 1958 and 2013, Colombia was
embroiled in a civil war between the government and various groups, mainly the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
or FARC, which led to the death of 220,000
people.13 The war disrupted the lives of five
million people who had to flee their homes
between 1986 and 2012. Remarkably, the Colombian government appointed Ehlers—an
arms dealer and former apartheid military
official—as an honorary consul from at least
1995, (according to a government gazette).14
This arrangement terminated around 2015
when his name still appeared on the Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s list of foreign representatives in South
Africa. 15 The address of the Honorary Consul
also matches the Pretoria residential address
given on Ehlers’ business registrations and
the address from which his wife, Lorraine,
ran a wedding design company.16
In this capacity, Ehlers would have enjoyed
diplomatic immunity as well as protected
diplomatic bag facilities.17 Diplomatic bags
are important as they are seldom inspected
and provide a safe conduit for sharing information, and potentially, material such as
clandestine equipment.
Colombia has also been a significant destination for arms exports despite widespread
concern about the country’s human rights violations.18 Between 1997 and 1999, South Africa exported weapons worth approximately
$30 million to Colombia.19 We do not know
whether Ters Ehlers also assisted the Colombian government in obtaining these or other
weapons. However, it seems inexplicable to
appoint an arms dealer as an honorary consul—unless this area of expertise was being
sought out.
THE CONSEQUENCES
OF IMPUNITY
FUELLING THE WAR IN ANGOLA
South Africa’s failure to hold Ters Ehlers
accountable, despite awareness of his arms
dealing among officials at the Cameron Commission, has resulted in Ehlers being able to
foster misery in other parts of the world and
to make millions while doing it.
Less than two years after the Rwanda
arms sale, in 1996, Ehlers’ name was again
linked to illicit trade. This time, it involved
providing fuel to the rebel UNITA movement in Angola, old allies of the apartheid
regime, despite the UN fuel and arms embargo against them.20 The Namibian transport
ministry linked Ehlers to the grounding of a
Russian-registered cargo aircraft because of
failure to obtain sufficient authorisation for
flights between South Africa, Namibia, and
Angola.21 The fuel had been bought from BP
in Namibia, sold to UNITA,22 and carried
to Angola on cargo planes owned by Pretoria-based Russian Louri Sidirov.23 Sidirov’s
company, Yurand Air, was allegedly responsible for 10 flights from Namibia to Angola,
Zaire, and Botswana, all carrying fuel.24
Senior Namibian officials appeared to have
interceded with the ministry to get approval
for the flights, but they ended up failing to file
approved flight plans.25
Ehlers admitted to having made the applications on behalf of the aircraft owner, who
had a history of skirting the law in Mozambique and South Africa, but denied knowing
anything about the cargo or the specific
flights.26 Organised crime researcher Mark
Shaw claims that several sources have also
implicated Ehlers in the supply of weapons
and other supplies to UNITA, and suggests
that he forged this link as liaison with UNITA under the apartheid government.27
GUNBOATS FOR IRAN
In 2010, Ehlers the arms dealer was back in
the headlines when it emerged that a company he co-owned—Scavenger Manufacturing28—had contravened the US and British
arms embargos on Iran by shipping a cutting-edge speedboat to Iran.29 The superfast,
super sleek boat, known as the Bradstone
Challenger or Bladerunner 51, had been
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 71
developed by British firms and a US defence
contractor, and although it did not strictly
break UN sanctions, its provision to Iran violated US export restrictions, as the speedboat
contained US dual-use components.30 Dual-use items are goods and technologies that
may be used for both civilian and military
purposes.
Having first been used by several private
individuals on the Mediterranean since 2006,
the speedboat was on the market again by
the beginning of 2009. The Mail & Guardian reported that the UK trade and industry
department managed to block an Iranian
attempt to buy it that year.31 A third party
was needed to circumvent this, and so it was
arranged for the boat to travel on a cargo
ship (which changed its name and registration company upon docking) to Durban,
after which it would be transferred to Iran.32
Catching wind of the deal at the last minute,
the US commerce department tried to block
the ship’s departure, but the urgent fax to
Durban was not picked up over the weekend,
until it was too late.33
The list of parties involved in this deal have
since come under selective trade sanctions
by the United States.34 Established in 1996,
Scavenger Manufacturing was co-owned by
Ehlers and mountaineering enthusiast Ralph
Brucher.35 It specialises in the design and
manufacture of ‘textile products and accessories’, including riot gear and special forces
equipment, with more than half of its sales
having security or military applications.36 It
has maintained that its involvement with the
Bladerunner 51 was on the basis of it being a
‘recreational craft’.37
Soon after the transfer, however, a general
in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s navy confirmed that the Bladerunner 51 was to be
adapted to launch missiles and torpedoes,
and then copied and provided in large numbers to the Iranian navy.38 This was hardly
an unforeseeable outcome: it was precisely
the risk of the speedboat being turned into a
‘fast attack craft’, as had happened with similar vessels in the past, that was the basis of
the US attempt to block the sale and transfer
through South Africa.39
72 – O P E N S EC R E T S
ACCOUNTABILITY: IT IS NOT
TOO LATE
Impunity for Willem ‘Ters’ Ehlers has meant
that he has gone on to potentially perpetrate
and profit from human rights abuses in other
parts of the world, as evidenced by the examples we have discussed. It is important that he
is finally held to account. To this end, Open
Secrets believes the following steps are necessary to stop Ehlers and other war-profiteers
like him.
1. We recommend that the South African
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) finally act on the extensive evidence of Ters
Ehlers’ involvement in the Rwanda Malo
arms transaction detailed in this report.
Ehlers was instrumental in the supply of
weapons to Rwanda that were then used
during the genocide. This makes Ehlers
liable to face charges of aiding and abetting genocide. The fact that Ehlers has repeatedly been involved in the sale of arms
to embargoed individuals and those suspected and found guilty of crimes against
humanity makes this an urgent case for
justice. It is vital that the NPA put an end
to the impunity that Ehlers has enjoyed.
In the name of the victims of the genocide in which Ehlers was complicit and
in the name of South African rule of law,
Open Secrets calls for justice in the case of
Ehlers’ arms deal.
2. We call on French prosecutors to act on
the material handed to them by Sherpa,
Ibuka, and CPCR and to act to prosecute
BNP Paribas for facilitating transactions
on behalf of the genocidal Rwandan state
and for making the payment to Ters Ehlers
for the arms transaction detailed in this
report.
3. Ters Ehlers should pay reparations to
Rwandan civilians equivalent to the harm
caused in Bisesero and Gisenyi. It would
be an important step towards centring
the victims and survivors of the Rwandan
genocide. We recommend that this be in
the form of a reparations trust to be managed either by the South African government or by elected Rwandan civil society
groups in South Africa.
It is vital that the NPA put an
end to the impunity that Ehlers
has enjoyed. In the name of the
victims of the genocide in which
Ehlers was complicit and in the
name of South African rule of law,
Open Secrets calls for justice in
the case of Ehlers’ arms deal.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 73
TERS EHLERS RESPONDS
Open Secrets sent Ters Ehlers 14 detailed questions, in August 2022,
providing him a right to respond to the critical issues raised in this report.
Ehlers asked to speak with Open Secrets via phone and was at pains to
suggest that his role in the arms shipment destined for Rwanda had been
misunderstood. He declined the request to respond in writing, preferring to
instead meet with Open Secrets investigators. What follows below are key
issues highlighted by Ehlers in his right to response during a lengthy meeting.
The response by Ehlers should be read alongside the contents of this report to
allow the reader an opportunity to form their own opinion.
MEETING AN ARMS DEALER
AT THE INTERCONTINENTAL
THE BIG CROCODILE’S
RIGHT-HAND MAN
The secretary strode into the Intercontinental
Hotel at OR Tambo Airport; a tall man, with
a broad smile, in a relaxed shirt, crisp blue
jeans, and sensible sneakers. No stuffy suit
or military fatigues for him. He came armed
only with an ostrich skin, combination briefcase, which has a strong whiff of 1980s business deals.
Willem Petrus Jacobus Ehlers is one of
three members of his family who share the
same name. He is also the third son, raised
on South Africa’s West Coast. His mother he
explains, fatigued by the many men with the
same name in their family, decided to call
him Ters from the Latin Tertius, meaning the
third.
After returning to South Africa onboard
a French-constructed submarine, Ehlers
served in the navy until 1978, when PW
Botha, then defence minister, appointed him
as his secretary. When Botha was appointed
prime minister six months later, Ehlers followed him to the Union Buildings. In 1983,
when Botha was appointed executive state
president, the loyal Ehlers continued in his
role of secretary.
Ehlers maintains he was never a member
of a political party; neither the then ruling
National Party nor the secretive Broederbond. His responsibility was to manage
Botha’s office and all official correspondence:
‘I am not interested in politics’—a curious
statement given that he occupied the antechamber to the most powerful political office
in South Africa for a dozen years.
Like a good secretary, he claims to have
seen and heard no evil. He was merely a diligent bureaucrat who engaged in the pleasantries of welcoming guests to Botha’s office, and
in none of the substance of the actual meetings—this included the 10 minutes he spent
with a nervous Nelson Mandela before his
meeting with Botha in 1988. However, he was
more than just a butler offering guests cream
and sugar with their coffee. In sharp contrast
to his claim are the anecdotes he offered,
IN THE NAVY
Ters Ehlers enlisted in the navy after completing his studies at Stellenbosch and compulsory military service. The young man
impressed his superiors, and by 1970, he was
sent to France to receive training at various
French submarine bases—and learn French.
Ehlers’ ear for French would also prove helpful in later years as the scope of his political
and business connections grew in countries
such as the Seychelles, Zaire, and Rwanda.
74 – O P E N S EC R E T S
observing that as he spoke ‘reasonably good
French … it stood me in good stead when I
in most cases would act as translator when
the President of Gabon or Ivory Coast would
come and visit’. He went on to add, ‘I never
realised the mileage speaking French would
stand me in later life’.
TALKING ITALIAN—
EHLERS MEETS GIOVANNI
MARIO RICCI
According to Ehlers, he first encountered
Giovanni Mario Ricci, an eccentric-looking
man at a dinner Botha hosted for the local
Italian community, in the early 1980s. Given
that Ricci spoke no English, they conversed
in the Romance languages—French and
Italian. Ricci claimed to be a good friend of
President France-Albert René of the Seychelles and suggested that he could be the
intermediary between South Africa and the
Seychelles. Relations between the ruling
elites in the two countries were strained at
the time and rebuilding these would be key
for South Africa’s global sanctions-busting
network.
On the long Easter weekend in 1985,
Ehlers and his wife set off on a short holiday
to the Seychelles—one sanctioned by his
boss, at which he would mix business with
pleasure and meet President René. Safari
suits were swapped for business wear, and he
negotiated landing rights for South African
cargo planes travelling to East Asia. He also
discussed the release of a South African intelligence official who had been sentenced to
death in the Seychelles for his involvement
in a failed coup. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s records show, Botha’s
government sweetened the prisoner’s release
with a payment of $3 million. The mix of
cash and goodwill paved the way for South
African investment in orchard farms in the
Seychelles and ultimately entrenched Ehlers’
relationship with René. The perchance meeting with Ricci over supper not only shifted
relations between two countries but was,
by Ehlers’ account, also the catalyst for his
working relationship with Ricci and his sanctions-busting outfit—GMR.
Ehlers is dismissive of suggestions that he
met with Craig Williamson, who preceded
him in running the GMR operation: ‘I met
Craig Williamson once in my life; this was
when he had to do a presentation to the State
Security [Council]’.
‘OPEN FOR THE MARKET’
Following PW Botha’s resignation as state
president in 1989, Ehlers stayed on to assist
FW de Klerk with his transition—but he was
done with bureaucratic chores and wanted to
find something to do that would not mean
occupying himself with ‘menial things’.
Ehlers contacted Ricci and offered his
services: he was ‘open for the market’—as
a French speaker whose network included
African leaders whom he had met while
they were ‘dealing with apartheid South
Africa under the table’. These included Félix
Houphouët-Boigny (Ivory Coast), Mobutu
Sese Seko (Zaire), Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), and Hastings Banda (Malawi). He also
claims to have ‘became a good friend’ of
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
As for Rwanda, Ehlers claims that he had
no contacts with the government and never
visited the country and that he ‘only spoke
[for] three minutes to that Bagosora guy’.
Most of the work he undertook for GMR
involved working his contacts on the African
continent: ‘To do business in Africa back
then, you had to know the boss and know
who the minister of finance is’. Working
with a group of Italian South Africans from
Johannesburg, Ehlers would liaise with the
GMR office in Italy. From his account, they
were a regular ‘import-export’ type company arranging for the supply of products,
ranging from medicine, canned food, and
heavy locomotives to Bohemian glass from
Czechoslovakia.
Ehlers is emphatic that he and GMR
were not involved in the arms trade, nor in
sanctions-busting, while he was working for
them. It was a trading company, albeit with
curious clients, like the Zairean police force
who needed batons. Intermediaries like him
were necessary to facilitate trade, especially
because business with African countries was
difficult. He had a knack for this business because he understood one fundamental thing:
‘When you sell goods in Africa, you have to
secure the payment first’.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 75
A FREE AGENT
In early 1992, Ehlers, by then managing director of GMR, decided to go it alone and
start his own ‘consultancy’. This was essentially facilitation work—he opened the door
for Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha to
meet President René in the Seychelles and
‘took a lot of businesspeople through Africa’.
He either charged an hourly rate or took a
percentage of the profits from the deals that
resulted from these contacts.
Then president FW de Klerk, who learnt
that Ehlers was good friends with Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni, asked Ehlers
to deliver a letter to Museveni. In short, the
South African government wanted to do
business in Uganda and provide aid, but the
quid pro quo was that ANC military training
camps should be closed. Museveni got back
to say that all ANC combatants would be
moved to Tanzania within a month—even if
he would not close the actual camps.
THE MALO ARMS DEAL
In March or April 1994, President René
called Ehlers to say that the Seychelles had
intercepted a shipment of arms [the Malo]
and with this request: ‘If you can find a buyer,
please help me get rid of this stuff. Ehlers explains the Seychelles had no armoury, which
meant the arms could not be safely stored
and posed a security risk given the Seychelles’
history of attempted coups.
Per chance, in May 1994, Ehlers says he
received a call from an unnamed ‘guy from
the military in Zaire’—who he recalled as
Hunda—who were ‘looking for 10,000 AK47
rifles and two million rounds of ammunition’. He says he told the Zaireans that he did
not have the contacts with such a quantity
of weapons to sell, but that he could offer a
small inventory from the Seychelles that included 1,000 AK47 rifles, some ammunition,
and big calibre 23mm anti-aircraft ammunition. Ehlers claims he never saw the actual
inventory, though.
According to Ehlers, he then worked as
the intermediary between the Seychelles,
which needed to get rid of the arms, and
Zaire, which needed them. So he met with
Zairean government officials ‘somewhere
in Johannesburg’. He claims that they introduced themselves as Zairean government
76 – O P E N S EC R E T S
officials, brandishing letters on the official
Zairean government letterhead.
Ehlers says that two or three weeks later,
the Zaireans got back to him and confirmed
they wished to buy the weapons. Hunda paid
for his ticket to the Seychelles and mentioned
that they were to be accompanied by a technical expert. ‘I met him at the airport’, Ehlers
told us, alluding to Bagosora, but stated that
he was referred to as ‘colonel something’. He
further stated that he believes the individuals
he met were Zairean officials because they
had Zairean passports.
Ehlers is adamant that he told the Zairean
buyers he did not want the arms to ‘end up
in Rwanda and I don’t want you to send this
to UNITA’; and that the officials assured him
the arms would be used for fighting in Burundi, in order to avoid the conflict spilling
over into the eastern DRC.
According to Ehlers, it was the Seychelles
government that came up with the amount
of $330,000 for the weapons. Ehlers then returned to South Africa, and two weeks later,
he was contacted and informed that the deal
was on. The Seychellois authorities, in turn,
required the cash in their bank accounts and
the authenticated end-user certificate.
Ehlers says they had to use his Swiss bank
account for the payment. Ehlers was unable
to recall the name of his Swiss bank, which
the records show was UBP. He told us that the
account was one he rarely used, that it was
set up for him by GMR, and that before the
Malo Arms transaction, it only had $10,000
in it from another deal.
According to Ehlers, the Seychelles government banked at the same Swiss bank.
Thus, he would receive the payment in two
parts and pay it on to the Seychellois. Again,
he emphasises they insisted ‘that the EUC
be kosher and accompany the last collection
[of weapons by aeroplane]’. He states that the
collection was broken up into consignments
because the Air Zaire plane that the ‘Zaireans’
wanted to use was a ‘dilapidated’ DC8 aeroplane that could not carry more than 20
tonnes at a time. The plane returned a week
later to collect the second consignment.
In Ehlers’ estimation, the arms reached
Rwanda when the ‘fight was already over’.
We asked about the identity of the Jean
Jacques named in ICTR documents and he
stated that Jean Jacques was a Zairean official. When we asked how he knew Alfred
Kalisa and why Kalisa stated in his affidavit
that he introduced Ehlers, his friend, to the
‘Zaireans’, Ehlers only said that he remembers Kalisa, though not his nationality, and
described him as quite articulate and as a
man who ‘spoke good English’. According to
Ehlers, the only business that he conducted
with Kalisa was for the sale of a container of
wine.
It is important to note that evidence by
Belgian police detective Olivier Bogaert (cited in this report) and Kalisa’s own affidavit
to the South African police contradict this
account. So does the investigation conducted
by Thomas Cook into the attempt to use their
traveller’s cheques to buy arms for Rwanda.
THE BOMB BURSTS
Ehlers says that after the second plane left,
the ‘bomb burst’ and the news that he was
selling arms to Rwanda broke. Apparently,
on the same day, South Africa’s National
Intelligence agency came to ‘raid’ his home.
According to Ehlers, they seized all his documentation and never returned it: ‘I was
worried that I was just going to [be] left in
my underpants’. Ehlers suggests he ‘felt like
Mr Trump’ following the 2022 raid by US
authorities at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to
search for evidence of a crime.
Because he was being monitored by Intelligence, he says that he could not ‘even call
the president of the Seychelles to apologise.’
He says that in contrast to the South African
spooks though, the UN International Commission of Inquiry on Rwanda ‘did a good
job’ of covering his involvement in the deal.
Ehlers provided Open Secrets with the third
report of the commission—which covers the
Malo arms deal. Curiously the content of this
report deal does little to exonerate Ehlers.
When we asked Ehlers about the formation of his company, Delta Aero, and what
that entailed, as well as how it came to be involved in this arms transaction, he stated that
his consultancy work was not a part of Delta
Aero. He said that it really only ever existed
for him to export goods from Czechoslovakia. According to Ehlers, the story about the
Rwandan arms deal had several factual errors, this being one of them. He states that
the source of these errors, or smears, is a
family member—Elmie Eksteen.
BLAME IT ON THE IN-LAW
According to Ters Ehlers, the source of much
of the material concerning his involvement
in the Malo weapons shipment to Rwanda
was his sister-in-law, Elmie Eksteen. Ehlers
dolefully dishes out a tale of family betrayal,
involving the murder of his parents-in-law in
1990 and Eksteen’s alleged role in manipulating the estate, which derived its profits from
a family mine. Acoording to Ehlers a warrant
was eventually issued for Eksteen’s arrest, and
he claims that detectives found a storage unit
belonging to her, which contained an apple
crate filled with documents and tapes, which
the police handed over to Ehlers. Ehlers ran
his hand over some of these tapes in his briefcase but showed no interest in sharing these.
Ehlers feels maligned by Eksteen because she
was feeding journalists with a particular narrative of ‘Ehlers, the Arms Dealer’, who fuelled the genocide in Rwanda. He also claims
it was Eksteen who spread a falsehood that
he is a family member of former apartheid
spy chief Niël Barnard. Ehlers paints a picture of an individual who led a campaign to
turn public opinion against him: ‘she fooled
all’. This was all as an act of vengeance for the
role of Ehlers and his wife in removing her as
an executor of his parents-in-law’s estate and
the money she wished to access.
As Elmie Eksteen passed away more than
a decade or more ago, we were unable to
pursue any questions with her—but Ehlers’
explanation that he was the victim of a jealous sister-in-law does not sit well with the
volume of evidence linking him to the Rwandan genocide. His conversation with us was
peppered with commentary about Eksteen’s
mental well-being and alleged romantic
relationship with an SABC journalist who
reported on the matter in the 1990s.
He stated, ‘Obviously, I feel very bitter.
Inside my heart cries. Inside I know that I am
not that person. I thought that I was doing a
favour for the President of the Seychelles …
what more proof can you get than EUCs and
official passports?’ He carried on, ‘I couldn’t
go sit in the church. That’s how badly I felt. I
now carry the label. It is painful, very painful’.
While Ehlers had brought a briefcase,
supposedly containing some of the documents and tapes from Eksteen’s apple crate,
with him, we were unable to verify his claims
about Eksteen as he declined to show us all
the documents. Rather, he hand-picked a
few, many of which already exist in the public domain and are cited in our investigative
report.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 7 7
SCAVENGER
MANUFACTURING
Given the fallout from the Rwanda deal,
Ehlers decided to drop his consulting work.
In the late 1990s / early 2000s, Ehlers started
to assist the UN with developing a demining
suit for its work across the continent. Ehlers
then went about finding a company that
manufactured mining harnesses, to make
and design the equipment. This is how he
came upon Scavenger Manufacturing. He
had so much faith in this company and their
design that he eventually bought shares in
the company.
The demining suit took six months to
develop, and Scavenger Manufacturing eventually received the UN tender for the creation
of these suits for demining. Ehlers stated, ‘At
least I can say that I was instrumental to save
many a life that way’.
At this point, we pressed Ehlers again
about the other arms sales he is alleged to
have been a part of, such as the gunboats for
Iran—to which he responded that Eksteen
pushed this agenda. He emphatically stated:
‘I can categorically state that I sold two years
before the Seychelles transaction; I sold a
small amount of ammunition to the Zaire
police’, which was all above board. Ehlers
implied that his work was otherwise mostly
benign import-export activity.
COLOMBIAN CONNECTIONS
Among the documents Ehlers showed us,
there was one he said he is very proud of—it
is his certificate, signed by President Nelson
Mandela, appointing him as honorary consul
of Colombia.
He says that this was the result of work he
conducted for the Colombians at the behest
of a good friend who held an ambassadorial
post at the UN in Geneva. This friend told
him that Colombia was ‘struggling with
Armscor’. While Armscor and Colombia had
a relatively good relationship and Colombia
already bought lots of ammunition from
Armscor, the South African state-owned
arms company was reluctant to sell a Mirage
aircraft part that it had developed, which cost
half of what it did in France and lasted five
times longer.
78 – O P E N S EC R E T S
To assist the Colombians, Ehlers called
the chairman of Armscor. Later, in 1995,
‘the friend in Geneva’ called to say that the
Colombians had managed to secure the deal
with his help. Two months later, the Colombian ministry of foreign affairs offered Ehlers
an honorary consul position in South Africa, as Colombia did not have an embassy in
South Africa at the time.
When asked how he would characterise
his work, Ehlers summed up his business
model, which he denies is arms dealing: ‘My
business is contacts. If you have contacts, you
can move’.
Above: A general view of the Bisesero Genocide Memorial,
in Bisesero, Rwanda. An estimated 40 000 – 50 000 people
were murdered in the Bisesero Hills during the Genocide.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 79
NOTES:
INTRODUCTION
1: Mahmood Mamdani (2002), When Victims Become Killers:
Colonialism, Nativitism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University Press), p. 185.
2: Nelson Mandela (1994), Long Walk to Freedom (Little,
Brown), pp. 1268–1270.
3: Nelson Mandela (1994), Long Walk to Freedom (Little,
Brown), p. 1270.
4: Ters Ehlers (5 July 1989), Nelson Mandela and P.W. Botha’s
Secret Meeting, South Africa [Still image], URL: https://
archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/nmfpc-1-1-3-0197-1
5: Ters Ehlers (5 July 1989), Nelson Mandela and P.W. Botha’s
Secret Meeting, South Africa [Still image], URL: https://
archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/nmfpc-1-1-3-0197-1
6: Africa Intelligence (25 June 1994), ‘Arms for Zaire?’, Indian
Ocean Newsletter, Iss. no. 629, URL: https://www.africaintelligence.com/eastern-and-southern-africa/1994/06/25/
arms-for-zaire,26066-art [Accessed: 30 August 2021].
7: Definition: In Kinyarwanda, Interahamwe can be translated
as ‘those who work together’ or ‘those who fight together’.
8: ‘Malo Arms for Rwanda’ (1 July 1994), Regar, Vol. 3, Iss.
no. 23.
9: eNCA (30 April 2019), ‘Thabo Mbeki (Part 1)’, The First
Citizen, URL: https://youtu.be/oqRnBSFknYk
10: eNCA (30 April 2019), ‘Thabo Mbeki (Part 1)’, The First
Citizen, URL: https://youtu.be/oqRnBSFknYk
11: eNCA (30 April 2019), ‘Thabo Mbeki (Part 1)’, The First
Citizen, URL: https://youtu.be/oqRnBSFknYk
12: eNCA (30 April 2019), ‘Thabo Mbeki (Part 1)’, The First
Citizen, URL: https://youtu.be/oqRnBSFknYk
13: eNCA (30 April 2019), ‘Thabo Mbeki (Part 1)’, The First
Citizen, URL: https://youtu.be/oqRnBSFknYk
14: United Nations International Residual Mechanism for
Criminal Tribunals (2022), ‘The Genocide’, International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), URL: https://unictr.
irmct.org/en/genocide
15: Sometimes in April (2005), Directed by Raoul Peck (HBO
Films: Rwanda, France, United States).
100 DAYS IN RWANDA
1: United Nations (9 December 1948), General Assembly
resolution 260 A (III), Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [Ratified 12 January
1951], art. 2.
2: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 31.
3: South African History Online, ‘Rwanda’, URL: https://www.
sahistory.org.za/place/rwanda.
4: Nigel Eltringham (2006), ‘“Invaders Who Have Stolen the
Country”: The Hamitic Hypothesis, Race and the Rwandan
Genocide’, Social Identities, Vol. 14, Iss. no. 4, pp. 431–432.
5: Nigel Eltringham (2006), ‘“Invaders Who Have Stolen the
Country”: The Hamitic Hypothesis, Race and the Rwandan
Genocide’, Social Identities, Vol. 14, Iss. no. 4, pp. 430–435.
6: Nigel Eltringham (2006), ‘“Invaders Who Have Stolen the
Country”: The Hamitic Hypothesis, Race and the Rwandan
Genocide’, Social Identities, Vol. 14, Iss. no. 4, pp. 433–435.
7: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 38.
8: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 38.
9: Nigel Eltringham (2006), ‘“Invaders Who Have Stolen the
Country”: The Hamitic Hypothesis, Race and the Rwandan
Genocide’, Social Identities, Vol. 14, Iss. no. 4, p. 434.
10: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 41.
11: Mahmood Mamdani (2002), When Victims Become Killers:
Colonialism, Nativitism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University Press), pp. 164–166.
12: English trans.: National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development.
13: Mahmood Mamdani (2002), When Victims Become Killers:
Colonialism, Nativitism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University Press), p. 173.
14: Mahmood Mamdani (2002), When Victims Become Killers:
Colonialism, Nativitism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University Press), p. 184.
15: Helen C. Epstein (12 September 2017), ‘America’s secret role
in the Rwandan genocide’, The Guardian, URL: https://www.
theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-rolein-the-rwandan-genocide
16: Helen C. Epstein (12 September 2017), ‘America’s secret role
in the Rwandan genocide’, The Guardian, URL: https://www.
theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-rolein-the-rwandan-genocide
17: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 53.
18: Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
19: France 24 (19 April 2019), ‘France’s role casts a long shadow, 25 years after the Rwandan genocide’, URL: https://
www.france24.com/en/20190406-france-role-rwandagenocide-25-years-hutu-tutsi-un-turquoise-kagame-juppemitterrand
20: Boubacar Boris Diop (23 March 2018), ‘Françafrique: A
brief history of a scandalous word’, New African Magazine,
URL: https://newafricanmagazine.com/16585/
21: Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
22: Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
23: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR),
URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unamirS.
htm [Accessed: 3 July 2020].
24: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR),
URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unamirS.
htm [Accessed: 3 July 2020].
25: Arusha Accord: Peace Agreement between the Government
of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front
(4 August 1993).
26: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR),
URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unamirS.
htm [Accessed: 3 July 2020].
27: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR),
URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unamirS.
htm [Accessed: 3 July 2020].
28: Mahmood Mamdani (2002), When Victims Become Killers:
Colonialism, Nativitism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton University Press), p. 185.
29: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 45.
30: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 45.
31: Radio France Internationale (RFI) (3 July 2020),
‘French court confirms dismissal of Habyarimana
plane shooting probe’, URL: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20200703-french-court-affirms-dismissal-habyarimana-plane-shooting-probe-rwanda-genocide .
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 81
32: Radio France Internationale (RFI) (3 July 2020),
‘French court confirms dismissal of Habyarimana
plane shooting probe’, URL: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20200703-french-court-affirms-dismissal-habyarimana-plane-shooting-probe-rwanda-genocide
33: The Interahamwe were formed in 1990 as the youth wing
of the MRND and were a paramilitary organisation supportive of and supported by the Hutu Power movement.
34: Radio France Internationale (RFI) (3 July 2020),
‘French court confirms dismissal of Habyarimana
plane shooting probe’, URL: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20200703-french-court-affirms-dismissal-habyarimana-plane-shooting-probe-rwanda-genocide
35: The Listening Post (5 September 2020), ‘Felicien
Kabuga: The man who put hate on Rwanda’s airwaves’
[Documentary], Al-Jazeera, URL: https://www.aljazeera.
com/programmes/listeningpost/2020/09/felicien-kabuga-man-put-hate-rwanda-airwaves-200905085506803.
html ; Hotel Rwanda (2005), Directed by Terry George
(Santa Monica, California).
36: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, pp. 77–78.
37: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (3 December
2003), Judgement and Sentence in the case of The Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and
Hassan Ngeze, Case no. ICTR-99-52-T.
38: France 24 (19 April 2019), ‘France’s role casts a long shadow, 25 years after the Rwandan genocide’, URL: https://
www.france24.com/en/20190406-france-role-rwandagenocide-25-years-hutu-tutsi-un-turquoise-kagame-juppemitterrand
39: France 24 (19 April 2019), ‘France’s role casts a long shadow, 25 years after the Rwandan genocide’, URL: https://
www.france24.com/en/20190406-france-role-rwandagenocide-25-years-hutu-tutsi-un-turquoise-kagame-juppemitterrand
40: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR),
URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unamirS.
htm [Accessed: 3 July 2020].
ARMING THE CIVIL WAR, ARMING THE
GENOCIDE
1: Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
2: Helen C. Epstein (12 September 2017), ‘America’s secret role
in the Rwandan genocide’, The Guardian, URL: https://www.
theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-rolein-the-rwandan-genocide
3: Helen C. Epstein (12 September 2017), ‘America’s secret role
in the Rwandan genocide’, The Guardian, URL: https://www.
theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-rolein-the-rwandan-genocide
4: Stephen D. Goose and Frank Smyth (3 September 1994),
‘Arming Genocide in Rwanda’, Foreign Affairs, URL: https://
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/rwanda/1994-09-01/arming-genocide-rwanda-high-cost-small-arms-transfers
5: Tim Gallimore (11 June 2014), ‘A closer look at where
Rwanda’s lethal weapons came from’, Huffington Post, URL:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-closer-look-at-whererw_b_5135559 [Accessed: 11 March 2022].
6: Interview transcribed by Linda Melvern.
7: Mark Doyle (26 March 2004), ‘Ex-Rwandan PM reveals
genocide planning’, BBC, URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
africa/3572887.stm
8: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 166.
9: Gustave Adolphe Messanga and Marios Yannick Duclair
Tajeugueu (2021), ‘The Role of Radio-Télévision Libre Des
Mille Collines in the Rwandan Genocide: An Analysis from
the Theoretical Perspectives of Intergroup Threat and Ag82 – O P E N S EC R E T S
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:
16:
17:
18:
19:
20:
21:
22:
23:
24:
25:
26:
27:
28:
29:
30:
31:
32:
33:
34:
35:
36:
gression’, International Journal of Research and Innovation
in Social Science, Vol. 5, Iss. no. 9.
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR),
URL: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unamirS.
htm [Accessed: 3 July 2020].
Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 990.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 990.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 990.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 990.
Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
Human Rights Watch (2000), ‘South Africa: Question of
Principle: Arms Trade and Human Rights’, United Nations,
Vol. 12, No. 5A, p. 3.
Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 439.
Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 439.
Human Rights Watch (2000), ‘South Africa: Question of
Principle: Arms Trade and Human Rights’, United Nations,
Vol. 12, No. 5A, p. 3.
Lindiwe Mabena (29 August 2019), ‘This week in 1994:
Democracy 25’, SABC News Online, URL: https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/this-week-in-1994-democracy-25-6/
‘Mandela’s arms’ (20 January 1997), Wall Street
Journal, URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/
SB853719701992416500
Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. (A601.
Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan Wa’, No. A601.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, pp. 710–711.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 711.
Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 713.
SABC News (19 August 2019), 1994 Special Report on the
Rwandan Genocide, URL: https://youtu.be/ytxQmbNqiXo
SABC News (19 August 2019), 1994 Special Report on the
Rwandan Genocide, URL: https://youtu.be/ytxQmbNqiXo
United Nations (26 January 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda).
United Nations (26 January 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda).
Robert Block (10 March 1993), ‘Seychelles holds mystery
arms ship’, The Independent, URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/seychelles-holds-mysteryarms-ship-1496730.html [Accessed: 13 March 2022].
Robert Block (10 March 1993), ‘Seychelles holds mystery
arms ship’, The Independent, URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/seychelles-holds-mysteryarms-ship-1496730.html [Accessed: 13 March 2022].
Robert Block (10 March 1993), ‘Seychelles holds mystery
arms ship’, The Independent, URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/seychelles-holds-mysteryarms-ship-1496730.html [Accessed: 13 March 2022].
37: Steve Boggan (23 November 1996), ‘Bloody trade that
fuels Rwanda’s war’, The Independent, URL: https://www.
independent.co.uk/news/world/bloody-trade-that-fuelsrwanda-s-war-1353751.html The allegation that the ship’s
engine was in trouble comes from small newspapers in the
Seychelles and blog posts such as https://www.facebook.
com/todayinsey/posts/1379663728738100:0 and http://
lavwa-seychelles.blogspot.com/2010/05/genocide-in-rwanda-seychelles.html
38: Kathi Austin (2002), ‘Illicit Arms Brokers: Aiding and
Abetting Atrocities’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. IX,
Iss. no. 1, p. 210.
39: Kathi Austin, (2002), ‘Illicit Arms Brokers: Aiding and
Abetting Atrocities’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. IX,
Iss. no. 1, p. 210.
40: ‘Malo Arms for Rwanda’ (1 July 1994), Regar, Vol. 3, Iss.
no. 23.
41: United Nations (26 January 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda).
42: United Nations (14 March 1996), Report of the International
Commission of Inquiry into the Sale or Supply of Weapons
to Former Rwandan Government Armed Forces, S/1996/195.
Africa Intelligence (25 June 1994), ‘Arms for Zaire?’, Indian
Ocean Newsletter, Iss. no. 629, URL: https://www.africaintelligence.com/eastern-and-southern-africa/1994/06/25/
arms-for-zaire,26066-art [Accessed: 30 August 2021].
43: ‘Seychelles Merchants of Death’ (2 July 1994), Indian Ocean
Newsletter.
44: Chris McGreal (23 June 1994), ‘Paris stands by as arms
pour through Eastern Zaire’, The Guardian.
45: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 5.
46: Interview with Danny Bimbo, Goma, 11 March 1995. See
Human Rights Watch (1995), Rwanda/Zaire: Rearming with
Impunity: International Support for the Perpetrators of the
Rwandan Genocide.
47: Kathi Austin (2002), ‘Illicit Arms Brokers: Aiding and
Abetting Atrocities’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. IX,
Iss. no. 1, p. 211.
48: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., para. 1815.
49: Seychelles People’s Defence Forces, telex 2365 SPDF SZ
[Telegram], file no. K0053345.
50: Sherpa Association, Ibuka France, and CPCR (29 June
2017), ‘Sherpa press pack: Rwandan genocide – Sherpa,
CPCR and Ibuka France launched a complaint against BNP
Paribas on the basis of complicity in a genocide, in crimes
against humanity and in war crimes’.
51: Annual inflation over this period was 2.34 percent.
52: The exchange rate, as at 21 March 2022, was $1 to R14.96.
53: United Nations (26 January 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda).
WILLEM ‘TERS’ EHLERS: APARTHEID’S
SECRETARY AND GLOBAL ARMS DEALER
1: Nelson Mandela Foundation, Series 1.1.3.4 - Nelson Mandela
and P.W. Botha’s secret meeting, South Africa: [Still image],
URL: https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/nmfpc-1-1-3-0197-1.
2: Stefaans Brummer (8 March 1996), ‘Ehlers linked to flights
in Namibia flightsy’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.
za/article/1996-03-08-ehlers-linked-to-flights-in-namibiaflightsy
3: Brian Wood and Johan Peleman (1999) ‘The Arms Fixers:
Controlling the Brokers and Shipping Agents’, BASIC
Research Report, Peace Research Institute, Oslo, ch. 3, URL:
https://www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=658
4: Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 218.
5: Nelson Mandela Foundation, Series 1.1.3.4 - Nelson Mandela
and P.W. Botha’s secret meeting, South Africa: [Still image],
URL: https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/nmfpc-1-1-3-0197-1.
6: Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 226.
7: Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 439.
8: DIRCO 31 Export of Arms to SA, ‘Export of Arms and
Ammunition, 4.1.71 – 12.9.85, Vol 1, 32/7’, pp. 7–13.
9: DIRCO 31 Export of Arms to SA, ‘Export of Arms and
Ammunition, 4.1.71 – 12.9.85, Vol 1, 32/7’.
10: Hennie van Vuuren (2018), Apartheid Guns and Money
( Jacana),. p. 446.
11: Stefaans Brummer (8 March 1996), ‘Ehlers linked to flights
in Namibia flightsy’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.
za/article/1996-03-08-ehlers-linked-to-flights-in-namibiaflightsy
12: Michael Ashworth (19 November 1996), ‘Tutsis armed by
South Africa’, Independent, URL: http://www.independent.
co.uk/news/tutsis-armed-by-south-africa-1353053.html
13: Stefaans Brummer (8 March 1996), ‘Ehlers linked to flights
in Namibia flightsy’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.
za/article/1996-03-08-ehlers-linked-to-flights-in-namibiaflightsy
14: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379, pp. 165–196, 177.
15: Sunday Star (1987), ‘Nat superspy’s shadowy boss’
16: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379.
17: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379.
18: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379, pp. 165–196, 177.
19: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379, p. 171.
20: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379.
21: Africa Confidential (15 April 1987), ‘South Africa: The
Network of a Spy Master’, Africa Confidential, Vol. 28, Iss.
no. 8.
22: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379.
23: ‘SA arms stoke Burundi fire’ (5 December 1997), Reliefweb,
URL: http://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/sa-arms-stokeburundi-fire ; Human Rights Watch Arms Project (1997),
Stoking the Fires: Military Assistance and Arms Trafficking
in Burundi, p. 113
24: ‘SA arms stoke Burundi fire’ (5 December 1997), Reliefweb,
URL: http://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/sa-arms-stokeburundi-fire
25: ‘Engineer tells of Dr Death’s evil toys’ (19 May 2000), IOL,
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/engineer-tellsof-dr-death-s-evil-toys-1.38136#.UlezqVBHKSo
26: ‘Engineer tells of Dr Death’s evil toys’ (19 May 2000), IOL,
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/engineer-tellsof-dr-death-s-evil-toys-1.38136#.UlezqVBHKSo
27: Chandre Gould and Peter Folb (2002), ‘Project Coast:
Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme’,
UNIDR, p. 207
28: Sam Sole (16 July 1994), ‘Former PW man in Rwanda arms
link’, Sunday Tribune.
29: Stephen Ellis (1996), ‘Africa and International Corruption:
The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African
Affairs, Vol. 9, Iss. no. 379, quoting Indian Ocean Newsletter (16 July 1994).
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 83
EHLERS ARMS THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE
1: United Nations (17 May 1994), Security Council resolution
918, S/RES/918.
2: United Nations (17 May 1994), Security Council resolution
918, S/RES/918.
3: United Nations (17 May 1994), Security Council resolution
918, S/RES/918.
4: During the civil war, there were reported groups of Hutu
being mobilised to kill Tutsi indiscriminately. Some of these
groups could be classified as falling under the umbrella of
the Interahamwe, the youth wing of the MRND. Beginning
in 1990, the Interahamwe fought alongside government
forces in the civil war and are viewed to have been the
main perpetrators of the genocide.
5: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2005), ‘Procès
Verbal “Pro Justicia” de Olivier Bogaert du 24 juillet 1995,
à propos d’achat d’armes par BAGOSORA, et 9 annexes’,
Witness code BELGGVT, Case no. ICTR-48-61-T, Exhibit
no. 365, Annex 9, K00077185, Sworn testimony of Alfred
Gakuba Kalisa.
6: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2005), ‘Procès
Verbal “Pro Justicia” de Olivier Bogaert du 24 juillet 1995,
à propos d’achat d’armes par BAGOSORA, et 9 annexes’,
Witness code BELGGVT, Case no. ICTR-48-61-T, Exhibit
no. 365, Annex 9, K00077185, Sworn testimony of Alfred
Gakuba Kalisa.
7: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2005), ‘Procès
Verbal “Pro Justicia” de Olivier Bogaert du 24 juillet 1995,
à propos d’achat d’armes par BAGOSORA, et 9 annexes’,
Witness code BELGGVT, Case no. ICTR-48-61-T, Exhibit
no. 365, Annex 9, K00077185, Sworn testimony of Alfred
Gakuba Kalisa.
8: $1,141,520 in 2022 based on CPI.
9: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2005), ‘Procès
Verbal “Pro Justicia” de Olivier Bogaert du 24 juillet 1995,
à propos d’achat d’armes par BAGOSORA, et 9 annexes’,
Witness code BELGGVT, Case no. ICTR-48-61-T, Exhibit
no. 365, Annex 9, K00077185, Sworn testimony of Alfred
Gakuba Kalisa.
10: Monopolies and Mergers Commission (March 1995),
Thomas Cook Group Limited and Interpayment Services
Limited: A Report on the Acquisition by the Thomas Cook
Group Limited of the Traveler’s Cheque Issuing Business
of Barclays Bank plc, Presented to Parliament by the
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry by Command of
Her Majesty, Cm 2789, pp. 3–5.
11: Fax 1 from Neal Richardson (Interpayment Services) to
Insp. Herman Lefief, Judiciary Police, Brussels, Belgium (9
June 1994).
12: Fax 2 from Neal Richardson (Interpayment Services) to
Insp. Herman Lefief, Judiciary Police, Brussels, Belgium (9
June 1994).
13: Kigali Institute of Science, Technology, and Management
(KIST) (2003), Strengthening Our Core Business: Progress
Report 1997–2003, p. 36.
14: The Prosecutor v. Yussuf Munyakazi (2 August 2008),
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): Appeals
Chamber, Case no. ICTR-97-36-r11bis, p. 65.
15: Asuman Bisiika (15 February 2020), ‘Museveni was
odd man out in Angola capital Luanda’, Monitor, URL:
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/oped/commentary/
museveni-was-odd-man-out-in-angola-capital-luanda-1875408?view=htmlamp [Accessed: 15 February 2022].
16: Africa Confidential (5 December 1997), ‘Kabila’s Banker’,
Africa Confidential, Vol. 38, Iss. no. 24.
17: SearchWorks (2022), CIPC Director search: ‘Alfred Gakuba
Kalisa’.
18: SearchWorks (2022), CIPC Director search: ‘Alfred Gakuba
Kalisa’.
84 – O P E N S EC R E T S
19: Africa Intelligence (23 September 2000), ‘Rwanda National
Opens Bank’, Indian Ocean Newsletter, URL: https://www.
africaintelligence.com/politics—power_regional-diplomacy/2000/09/23/rwanda-national-opens-bank,459278-art
[Accessed: 7 July 2022].
20: Africa Confidential (5 December 1997), ‘Kabila’s Banker’,
Africa Confidential, Vol. 38, Iss. no. 24.
21: Africa Confidential (5 December 1997), ‘Kabila’s Banker’,
Africa Confidential, Vol. 38, Iss. no. 24.
22: Africa Confidential (5 December 1997), ‘Kabila’s Banker’,
Africa Confidential, Vol. 38, Iss. no. 24.
23: Rwanda in Egypt (19 January 2021), Today, Ambassador Alfred Kalisa presented copies of Letters of
Credence to His Excellency Mohamed Taher Siala ,
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Libya. @
RwandaMFA URL: https://twitter.com/rwandainegypt/
status/1351534135760793601?lang=en
24: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2005), ‘Procès
Verbal “Pro Justicia” de Olivier Bogaert du 24 juillet 1995,
à propos d’achat d’armes par BAGOSORA, et 9 annexes’,
Witness code BELGGVT, Case no. ICTR-48-61-T, Exhibit
no. 365, Annex 9, K00077185, Sworn testimony of Alfred
Gakuba Kalisa.
25: Mail & Guardian (18 December 2008), ‘From choir boy to
Rwanda genocide “mastermind”’, Mail & Guardian, URL:
https://mg.co.za/article/2008-12-18-from-choir-boy-to-rwanda-genocide-mastermind [Accessed: 30 September 2021].
26: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 43.
27: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 47.
28: Mail & Guardian (18 December 2008), ‘From choir boy to
Rwanda genocide “mastermind”’, Mail & Guardian, URL:
https://mg.co.za/article/2008-12-18-from-choir-boy-to-rwanda-genocide-mastermind [Accessed: 30 September 2021].
29: Mail & Guardian (18 December 2008), ‘From choir boy to
Rwanda genocide “mastermind”’, Mail & Guardian, URL:
https://mg.co.za/article/2008-12-18-from-choir-boy-to-rwanda-genocide-mastermind [Accessed: 30 September 2021].
30: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 47.
31: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 47.
32: This is a French word.
33: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 50.
34: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 209.
35: Trial International (7 June 2016), ‘Thèoneste Bagosora’, Trial
International.
36: Chris McGreal (18 December 2008), ‘Rwanda’s Himmler:
The man behind the genocide’, The Guardian, URL: https://
www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/18/rwanda-genocide-theoneste-bagosora [Accessed: 15 March 2021].
37: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, pp. 71, 72.
38: Trial International (7 June 2016), ‘Théoneste Bagosora’, Trial
International.
39: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 356.
40: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 77.
41: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 2110.
42: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 35.
43: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, paras. 527–529.
44: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, sec. 1.2.1.
45: Chris McGreal (18 December 2008), ‘Rwanda’s Himmler:
The man behind the genocide’, The Guardian, URL: https://
www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/18/rwanda-genocide-theoneste-bagosora [Accessed: 15 March 2021].
46: The Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora, Case no. ICTR-96-7-I,
Amended indictment, 12 August 1999.
47: Théoneste Bagosora interview with Kathi Austin. See Kathi
Austin (2002). ‘Illicit Arms Brokers: Aiding and Abetting
Atrocities, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. IX, Iss. no.
1, p. 210.
48: Testimony of Thèoneste Bagosora (9 November 2005),
ICTR, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T, p. 66.
49: Michael Marchant et al. (2021), ‘Profiting from Misery:
South Africa’s Complicity in War Crimes in Yemen’, Open
Secrets, p. 4.
50: Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), pp. 437–438.
51: Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 439.
52: UNITA, backed by apartheid South Africa and the US,
fought the Soviet and Cuban-backed MPLA.
53: Testimony of Théoneste Bagosora (9 November 2005),
ICTR, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T, p. 73.
54: Testimony of Thèoneste Bagosora (9 November 2005),
ICTR, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T, p. 68.
55: Testimony of Théoneste Bagosora (9 November 2005),
ICTR, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T, p. 68.
56: Testimony of Théoneste Bagosora (9 November 2005),
ICTR, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T, p. 72.
57: Open Secrets (3 September 2020), Dossier Prepared for
the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on the Potential
Criminal Liability of Certain Foreign Banks That Aided
and Abetted the Crime of Apartheid as a Crime Against
Humanity, Ref. no. AB/DOC/2020, pp. 47–57.
58: Michael Marchant, Mamello Mosiana, Paul Holden, and
Hennie van Vuuren (2020), ‘The Enablers: The Bankers,
Accountants and Lawyers That Enabled State Capture’,
Open Secrets, p. 18.
59: Michael Marchant, Mamello Mosiana, Paul Holden, and
Hennie van Vuuren (2020), ‘The Enablers: The Bankers,
Accountants and Lawyers That Enabled State Capture’,
Open Secrets, p. 18.
60: Michael Marchant, Mamello Mosiana, Paul Holden, and
Hennie van Vuuren (2020), ‘The Enablers: The Bankers,
Accountants and Lawyers That Enabled State Capture’,
Open Secrets, p. 18.
61: The National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) was established in
April 1964, with the aim of guaranteeing the stability of
the currency issued on Rwandan territory. The Commercial
Bank of Rwanda (BCR) was opened in 1963 and was owned
by the government of Rwanda until it was privatised in
2004. Jacques Morel (27 July 2017), ‘L’achat d’armes aux
Seychelles par le Rwanda pendant le genocide des Tutsi’,
Pages personelles de Jacques Morel, Vol. 13, pp. 16–18, URL:
http://jacques.morel67.pagesperso-orange.fr/
62: Jacques Morel (27 July 2017), ‘L’achat d’armes aux Seychelles par le Rwanda pendant le genocide des Tutsi’, Pages
personelles de Jacques Morel, Vol. 13, p. 18, URL: http://
jacques.morel67.pagesperso-orange.fr/
63: Nelson D. Schwartz (23 December 2008), ‘Madoff dealings
tarnish a private Swiss bank’, New York Times, URL: https://
www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/business/worldbusiness/24ubp.html [Accessed: 14 December 2021]. Ridhima
Sharma (3 January 2020), ‘UBP to pay additional $14m
for undisclosed accounts in US tax dispute’, International
Investment, URL: https://www.internationalinvestment.net/
news/4008647/ubp-pay-additional-usd14m-undisclosed-accounts-us-tax-dispute [Accessed: 14 December 2021].
64: Sherpa Association, Ibuka France, and CPCR (29 June
2017), ‘Sherpa press pack: Rwandan genocide – Sherpa,
CPCR and Ibuka France launched a complaint against BNP
Paribas on the basis of complicity in a genocide, in crimes
against humanity and in war crimes’.
65: Brian Wood and Johan Peleman (1999), ‘The Arms Fixers:
Controlling the Brokers and Shipping Agents’, BASIC
Research Report, Peace Research Institute, Oslo, ch. 3,
p. 19, URL: https://www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=658
66: Jacques Morel (27 July 2017), ‘L’achat d’armes aux Seychelles par le Rwanda pendant le genocide des Tutsi’, Pages
personelles de Jacques Morel, Vol. 13, p. 24 URL: http://
jacques.morel67.pagesperso-orange.fr/
67: Brian Wood and Johan Peleman (1999), ‘The Arms Fixers:
Controlling the Brokers and Shipping Agents’, BASIC
Research Report, Peace Research Institute, Oslo, p. 19, URL:
https://www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=658
68: Martin Arnold (25 September 2017), ‘BNP Paribas under
investigation over role in Rwanda Genocide’, Financial
Times, URL: https://www.asso-sherpa.org/bnp-paribas-under-investigation-over-role-in-rwanda-genocide [Accessed:
18 August 2020].
69: The Herald (30 June 2017), ‘French bank accused of
complicity in Rwanda genocide, URL: https://www.herald.
co.zw/french-bank-accused-of-complicity-in-rwanda-genocide/
70: Sherpa Association, Ibuka France, and CPCR (29 June
2017), ‘Sherpa press pack: Rwandan genocide – Sherpa,
CPCR and Ibuka France launched a complaint against BNP
Paribas on the basis of complicity in a genocide, in crimes
against humanity and in war crimes’.
71: Sherpa Association, Ibuka France, and CPCR (29 June
2017), ‘Sherpa press pack: Rwandan genocide – Sherpa,
CPCR and Ibuka France launched a complaint against BNP
Paribas on the basis of complicity in a genocide, in crimes
against humanity and in war crimes’.
72: Sherpa Association, Ibuka France, and CPCR (29 June
2017), ‘Sherpa press pack: Rwandan genocide – Sherpa,
CPCR and Ibuka France launched a complaint against BNP
Paribas on the basis of complicity in a genocide, in crimes
against humanity and in war crimes’, p. 5.
73: Sherpa Association, Ibuka France, and CPCR (29 June
2017), ‘Sherpa press pack: Rwandan genocide – Sherpa,
CPCR and Ibuka France launched a complaint against BNP
Paribas on the basis of complicity in a genocide, in crimes
against humanity and in war crimes’, p. 5.
74: Martin Arnold (25 September 2017), ‘BNP Paribas under
investigation over role in Rwanda Genocide’, Financial
Times, URL: https://www.asso-sherpa.org/bnp-paribas-under-investigation-over-role-in-rwanda-genocide [Accessed:
18 August 2020]
75: AFP (25 September 2017), ‘Rwanda: BNP Paribas accusée
de “complicité de génocide”’, Le Vif, URL: https://www.
levif.be/actualite/international/rwanda-bnp-paribas-accusee-de-complicite-de-genocide/article-normal-728161.
html?cookie_check=1598342906 [Accessed: 18 August
2020].
76: ‘Here are the 50 Largest Banks in Europe’ (2019), Business
Insider, URL: https://www.businessinsider.com/largestbanks-europe-list?IR=T
77: ‘The world’s 100 largest banks, 2020’ (2020), S&P Global,
URL: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/
news-insights/latest-news-headlines/the-world-s-100-largest-banks-2020-57854079
78: ‘The world’s 100 largest banks, 2020’ (2020), S&P Global,
URL: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/
news-insights/latest-news-headlines/the-world-s-100-largest-banks-2020-57854079
79: Hennie van Vuuren (2017), Apartheid Guns and Money: A
Tale of Profit ( Jacana Media, Cape Town), p. 443
80: ‘Story of the Deal’ (1 July 1994), Regar
81: Testimony of Thèoneste Bagosora (9 November 2005),
ICTR, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T, p. 68.
82: ‘Seychelles arms for Rwanda’ (2 November 2006), United
States Department of State, Review authority: Harry R
Melone, Case ID 200103014. [Declassified cable].
83: Interview with Théoneste Bagosora. See Alison Des Forges
(1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’, Human Rights Watch,
p. 7.
84: United Nations (14 March 1996), Report of the International
Commission of Inquiry into the Sale or Supply of Weapons
to Former Rwandan Government Armed Forces, UN,
S/1996/195, pp. 5–6.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 85
85: United Nations (27 January 1998), Letter dated 22 January
1998 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1998/63, p. 6.
ARMS DEALERS AND THE KILLING FIELDS OF
BISESERO
1: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 209.
2: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 210.
3: Guillaume Ancel (16 February 2016), ‘Rwanda: Pourquoi
l’armée française a tardé à intervenir à Bisesero’, Le Monde,
URL: https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/02/16/
rwanda-pourquoi-l-armee-francaise-a-tarde-a-intervenir-a-bisesero_4866453_3212.html [Accessed: 2 December
2021].
4: Prosecutor v. Édouard Karemera et al., Case no. ICTR-9844-T, para. 1133.
5: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1793.
6: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1793.
7: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 152.
8: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 152.
9: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 152.
10: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 152.
11: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1794.
12: Prosecutor v. Édouard Karemera et al., Case no. ICTR-9844-T, para. 1133.
13: Letter from Karemera to Nsengiyumva, 17 June 1994,
ICTR-LO document code RWINTGT-04.
14: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1821.
15: Fabrice Arfi (25 September 2018), ‘Massacre de Bisesero au
Rwanda: la justice clôt son enequête sans mise en examen’,
Mediapart, URL: https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/250918/massacre-de-bisesero-au-rwanda-fin-delenquete-pas-de-mise-en-examen [Accessed: 2 December
2021].
16: Alison Des Forges (1999), ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’,
Human Rights Watch, p. 12.
17: Chris McGreal (23 June 1994), ‘Paris stands by as arms
pour through Eastern Zaire’, The Guardian.
18: ‘Malo Arms for Rwanda’ (1 July 1994), Regar, Vol. 3, Iss.
no. 23.
19: Letter from Bagilishema to Kayishema, 24 June 1994.See
Karemera, para. 1217
20: Letter from Bagilishema to Kayishema, 24 June 1994,
Exhibit no. P57C,
21: Testimony for Witness KJ (19 April 2004); see Prosecutor
v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no. ICTR-98-41-T,
para. 1801.
22: Prosecutor v Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1815.
23: Prosecutor v Kayishema et al. Case no. ICTR-95-1, para. 28.
24: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1794.
25: Transcript of ICTR-98-41-T Chamber I (6 October 2006),
p. 2.
26: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1794.
27: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1795.
28: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, paras. 2155, 2156.
86 – O P E N S EC R E T S
29: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, para. 1794.; Kathi Austin (2002), ‘Illicit Arms
Brokers: Aiding and Abetting Atrocities’, Brown Journal of
World Affairs, Vol. IX, Iss. no. 1, p. 211; Chris McGreal (23
June 1994), ‘Paris stands by as arms pour through Eastern
Zaire’, The Guardian.
30: Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and others, Case no.
ICTR-98-41-T, paras. 2155, 2156.
31: Human Rights Watch Arms Project ( January 1994), Arming
Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the
Rwandan War, No. A601.
32: Human Rights Watch (May 1995), ‘Rearming with Impunity:
International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan
Genocide’, United Nations, Vol. 7, No. 4.
33: Human Rights Watch (May 1995), ‘Rearming with Impunity:
International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan
Genocide’, United Nations, Vol. 7, No. 4.
34: Human Rights Watch (May 1995), ‘Rearming with Impunity:
International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan
Genocide’, United Nations, Vol. 7, No. 4.
THE FRUITS OF IMPUNITY: EHLERS AND OTHER
WARS
1: Stefaans Brummer (2 June 1995), ‘SA’s arms dealing underworld’, Mail & Guardian, URL: https://mg.co.za/article/199506-02-sas-arms-dealing-underworld/.
2: Christopher D. Carr ( January 2000), ‘The Security Implications of Micro-disarmament’, The Counterproliferation
Paper no. 5, p. 15.
3: Kathi L. Austin (May 1995), Human Rights Watch Arms
Project, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 18–19.
4: Kathi L. Austin (May 1995), Human Rights Watch Arms
Project, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 18–19.
5: United Nations (20 March 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda), No. 805,
para. 40.b–45.
6: United Nations (20 March 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda) No. 805.,
para 40.b-45
7: United Nations (20 March 1996), Final Report of the
International Commission of Inquiry (Rwanda), No. 805,
para. 40.b–45.
8: Commission of Inquiry, Second Report, p. 3, in Human
Rights Watch (2000), ‘South Africa: Question of Principle:
Arms Trade and Human Rights’, United Nations, Vol. 12, No.
5A, p. 12.
9: Stefaans Brummer (2 June 1995), ‘SA’s arms dealing underworld’, Mail & Guardian, URL: https://mg.co.za/article/199506-02-sas-arms-dealing-underworld/.
10: Cameron Commission (1995), First Report, ch. 2.4.
11: Paul Kirk (20 April 2003), ‘Scorpion’s re-look at Vermaak’s
dealings at Armscor, Rapport, URL: http://www.armsdeal-vpo.co.za/articles03/re-look_vermaak.html
12: Cameron Commission (1995), First Report, ch. 4.1.1.
13: AlJazeera (25 July 2013), ‘Report says 220,00 died in
Colombia conflict’, URL: https://www.aljazeera.com/
news/2013/7/25/report-says-220000-died-in-colombiaconflict
14: DIRCO, ‘Foreign representatives in South Africa’, URL:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150923214345/http://www.
dfa.gov.za/foreign/forrep/forc.htm
15: DIRCO, ‘Foreign representatives in South Africa’, URL:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150923214345/http://www.
dfa.gov.za/foreign/forrep/forc.htm
16: Papilio Designs, ‘Home’ URL: http://www.papiliodesigns.
co.za/index.aspx?c=services Papilio Designs, ‘Home’ [Facebook Page], URL:https://www.facebook.com/Papilio-Designs-120753957954394/community/?ref=page_internal
17: Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act 37 of 2001,
Republic of South Africa, Article 27.
18: Zolani Skosana (2002), ‘Arms Control, South Africa Style:
The Dynamics of Post-1994 Arms Export Control Policy’,
Paper no. 62, Institute for Security Studies; Sanusha Naidu
(2006), ‘The South African Arms Industry: Redefining the
Boundaries’, in Roger Southall (ed.), South Africa’s Role in
Conflict Resolution and Peace-Making in Africa: Conference
Proceedings (HSRC Press, Cape Town).
19: Human Rights Watch (October 2000), ‘Arms Trade in Practice’, Vol. 12, No.5A https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/
safrica/Sarfio00-05.htm
20: Stefaans Brummer (8 March 1996), ‘Ehlers linked to flights
in Namibia flightsy’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.
za/article/1996-03-08-ehlers-linked-to-flights-in-namibiaflightsy
21: Stefaans Brummer (8 March 1996), ‘Ehlers linked to flights
in Namibia flightsy’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.
za/article/1996-03-08-ehlers-linked-to-flights-in-namibiaflightsy
22: Stefaans Brummer (15 March 1996), ‘A complex tale of
illegal high-flying’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.za/
article/1996-03-15-a-complex-tale-of-illegal-high-flying
23: Stefaans Brummer (15 March 1996), ‘A complex tale of
illegal high-flying’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.za/
article/1996-03-15-a-complex-tale-of-illegal-high-flying
24: Stefaans Brummer (15 March 1996), ‘A complex tale of
illegal high-flying’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.za/
article/1996-03-15-a-complex-tale-of-illegal-high-flying
25: Stefaans Brummer (15 March 1996), ‘A complex tale of
illegal high-flying’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.za/
article/1996-03-15-a-complex-tale-of-illegal-high-flying
26: Stefaans Brummer (15 March 1996), ‘A complex tale of illegal high-flying’, Mail & Guardian, URL: http://mg.co.za/article/1996-03-15-a-complex-tale-of-illegal-high-flying; Gcina
Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September 2010) ‘How
SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail & Guardian,
URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’ .
27: Mark Shaw (2003), ‘“The Middlemen”: War Supply
Networks in Sierra Leone and Angola’, Working Paper 10,
Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, p. 50
28: Scavenger Manufacturing, URL: http://www.scavman.com/
about_us.html [Accessed: 21 March 2022].
29: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.
30: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.
31: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.Jon Stock (20 August 2012), ‘Little boat, big danger: How
a British-made speedboat has become a weapon in Iran’s
standoff with the US’, The Telegraph, URL:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9486815/
Little-boat-big-danger-how-a-British-made-speedboat-hasbecome-a-weapon-in-Irans-standoff-with-the-US.html
32: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.
33: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.Jon Stock (20 August 2012), ‘Little boat, big danger: How
a British-made speedboat has become a weapon in Iran’s
standoff with the US’, The Telegraph, URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9486815/
Little-boat-big-danger-how-a-British-made-speedboat-hasbecome-a-weapon-in-Irans-standoff-with-the-US.html.
34: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
35: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.
36: Scavenger Manufacturing, URL: http://www.scavman.com/
about_us.html [Accessed: 21 March 2022].
37: Gcina Ntsaluba and Stefaans Brummer (24 September
2010) ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’, Mail &
Guardian, URL: ‘How SA company oiled Iran’s war machine’
.
38: Alastair Jamieson (11 August 2010), ‘Iran navy produces
armed copy of Bladerunner 51 speedboat’, The Telegraph,
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/7938334/Iran-navy-produces-armed-copy-ofBladerunner-51-speedboat.html
39: ‘U.S. fears Iran could use powerboat as a weapon’
(5 April 2010), Washington Post, URL: http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/04/
AR2010040402889.html
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 87
OUR PUBLICATIONS
Most of our publications are available for
free download on our website. Just visit:
www.opensecrets.org.za/publications
OUR INVESTIGATIONS:
APARTHEID GUNS AND MONEY:
A TALE OF PROFIT
Published in 2017, this exposé draws on extensive archival research
and interviews to reveal the global covert network of corporations,
spies, banks, and politicians in nearly 50 countries that operated in
secret to counter sanctions against the apartheid regime, and profit
in return.
THE BOTTOM LINE :
WHO PROFITS FROM UNPAID PENSIONS?
This investigative report is the culmination of a year-long
investigation by Open Secrets into the role of corporations in the
erroneous cancellation of pension funds between 2007 and 2013.
The Bottom Line focusses on the role played by the big corporations
who administer these funds, such as Liberty Corporate and Alexander
Forbes. The report also looks into the role of the regulator in creating
an enabling environment for the ‘Cancellations Project’.
THE ENABLERS:
THE BANKERS, ACCOUNTANTS AND LAWYERS
THAT CASHED IN ON STATE CAPTURE
This investigative report focuses on the role of banks, accounting
firms, consultants, and lawyers in facilitating criminal conduct that
formed part of the state capture enterprise. The report shows that the
systems that enable grand corruption and state capture are global in
nature, and that private sector elites are central to the problem. It
was intended to provide evidence and analysis to assist Justice Zondo
and the State Capture Inquiry with their pressing task in 2020.
88 – O P E N S EC R E T S
PROFITING FROM MISERY:
SOUTH AFRICA’S COMPLICITY IN WAR CRIMES
IN YEMEN
This investigative report reveals the South African arms companies
that have cashed in on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two central parties to the Yemeni
conflict.
DIGITAL PROFITEERS:
WHO PROFITS NEXT FROM SOCIAL GRANTS
This investigative report focuses on how the digitalisation of state
services offers opportunities for corporations to generate excessive
profits from digital systems that can harm vulnerable people.
WANTED:
THE STATE CAPTURE CONSPIRATORS
This investigative report traces the networks of capture and
corruption at the Passenger Rail Agency of SA, SA Airways, Denel
and the SA Revenue Service, and identifies the looters, fixers and
politicians who should now be held to account.
BAD COPS, BAD LAWYERS:
THE OFFICIALS AT THE NPA AND HAWKS
DELAYING JUSTICE FOR STATE CAPTURE
CRIMES
Bad Cops, Bad Lawyers — uses evidence submitted to the Zondo
Commission, NPA documents, court judgements, and investigative
reports to document how the Hawks and the NPA have failed to take
on state capture cases. It also recommends that true reform in these
agencies will not be possible unless they hold their own to account.
T H E S EC R E TA RY – 89
OUR REPORTS:
JOINING THE DOTS:
THE LONG SHADOW OF ECONOMIC CRIME
IN SOUTH AFRICA
Prepared for the first People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime, this
report examined continuities in economic crime and corruption
in South Africa related to the arms trade, from apartheid to
contemporary state capture. In doing so it highlighted the powerful
deep state networks that have facilitated these crimes.
CORPORATIONS AND ECONOMIC CRIME
REPORT (VOLUME 1)
The Corporations and Economic Crime Reports (CECR) explores
the most egregious cases of economic crimes and corruption by
private financial institutions, from apartheid to the present day. In
doing so, we aim to highlight the key themes that link corporate
criminality across these periods of time, focusing on the role of
the private sector, a critical blind spot in the discourse around
economic crime. This first volume of the series focuses on the role
of banks and other financial sector actors in corporate criminality.
CORPORATIONS AND ECONOMIC CRIME
REPORT (VOLUME 2)
This second volume in our Corporations and Economic Crime
Reports (CECR) series focusses on the big four auditing firms- PWC,
KPMG, Deloitte and EY and their role in some of the most egregious
examples of economic crime
JOINT SUBMISSION TO THE ZONDO
COMMISSION:
AN AGENDA FOR ACTION
This Agenda for Action is based on detailed submissions made
to the Zondo Commission by organisations of the Civil Society
Working Group on State Capture (CSWG) covering the widespread
impact of state capture on lives of people in South Africa. Open
Secrets acts as the secretariat of the CSWG. Editors: Naushina
Rahim, Zen Mathe and Hennie van Vuuren.
9 0 – O P E N S EC R E T S
SUPPORT OPEN SECRETS
We are building a community that actively supports our work
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