"Is it okay if I don't answer this question?" For nearly an hour, the voluble journalist, who asked for anonymity, talked to us for an hour about his career, his profession and the lines never to be crossed in Rwanda. But when asked the circumstances of the death of John Williams Ntwali, on the night of January 17, 2023, he suddenly grew quiet. He murmured: "I told him one day he would get himself killed."
Ntwali 43, editor-in-chief of The Chronicles newspaper and founder of the YouTube channel Pax-TV-Ireme News, was hit by a taxi while riding in the passenger seat of a motorcycle taxi – at least, that's the official story. Today in Kigali, at the mere mention of Ntwali's name or of the alleged accident that cost him his life, faces freeze, silence falls and even the most daring refuse to speak.
"Rwanda Classified," an investigation into Paul Kagame's regime, involves 50 journalists from 17 media outlets in 11 countries, coordinated by the Forbidden Stories journalism non-profit. Starting with the suspicious death of journalist John Williams Ntwali in Kigali in January 2023, the investigation aims to reveal the repressive machinery implemented by Rwanda, including beyond its borders, far from the image of a model country promoted abroad. The July 15 Rwandan presidential race is likely to lead to the re-election of Paul Kagame for a fourth term.
In a terrible sort of irony, Ntwali also investigated suspicious car accidents throughout his career, landing him in trouble with the authorities. First, he covered the 2015 death of Assinapol Rwigara, a wealthy Rwandan businessman who had financed Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party in the 1990s. A year after this investigation, Ntwali spent 13 days in detention. A few weeks before his death, Ntwali investigated another suspicious car accident that happened in March 2021, this one involving a bar owner. A friend of his told us Ntwali was convinced it had been staged. He said he'd received threats from the intelligence agencies telling him he was going to be assassinated: "We're going to run you over when you're on your motorcycle." In messages sent a year before his death, Ntwali explained that he was constantly followed by a car and wrote: "They do their business at night: dump the corpse wherever they want and invent their version of events."
The trial for the crash that killed Ntwali took place on January 31, 2023, but did not clear up the many questions surrounding his death. In March 2023, 86 NGOs, including Amnesty International, the African Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists, reiterated their call for "an independent, impartial and effective investigation into the death of the Rwandan journalist John Williams Ntwali."
Several elements remain unclear, even contradictory. Officially, Ntwali died on the night of January 17, 2023. However, his death was not announced until the end of the day on January 19. The precise location of the events and the time and time of the accident also changed with each new statement.
You have 50% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.