Former Commander of Rwanda's Presidential Guard Dies in Custody More Than a Decade After Arrest

Tom Byabagamba, the retired colonel who once commanded Rwanda's presidential guard and served as a personal bodyguard to President Paul Kagame, has died behind bars, twelve years after he was first taken into custody. He was 59.

The former guard chief was detained in 2014 alongside his brother-in-law, Frank Rusagara, a retired brigadier-general who had previously held a senior post at the defence ministry. Both men were accused of offences that included spreading rumours and damaging the reputation of the country and its leadership — charges widely viewed by rights organisations as politically motivated.

Byabagamba's family says it still does not know what caused his death. His brother, David Himbara, told the BBC's Great Lakes service that relatives had been denied access to the imprisoned colonel for the entirety of his detention, leaving them unable to learn anything about his health or circumstances before receiving news of his passing.

At his trial, Byabagamba rejected all accusations against him, maintaining consistently that they had been invented. In 2016, a military court found him guilty and imposed a sentence of 21 years, though an appeals process later lowered the term to 15 years. Rusagara, tried in connection with the same case, received a 20-year prison sentence.

Rusagara did not survive to complete his own punishment. He died inside prison in March of last year, and Human Rights Watch later characterised his passing as the "lonely death of a general", pointing out that his relatives had not even heard his voice in the years following his arrest. According to the advocacy group, officials told the family that the retired general had been suffering from cancer.

Human Rights Watch also condemned the proceedings that led to both men's convictions, describing them as a "flawed trial" shadowed by serious claims of torture and witness tampering. Another organisation, the campaign group Freedom Now, had earlier denounced the pair's imprisonment as arbitrary and incompatible with international legal standards.

Their cases have become emblematic of what activists describe as a broader climate of intimidation in Rwanda. Rights groups have for years alleged that Kagame's administration curbs political dissent and works to silence opponents and critics both inside the country and beyond its borders.

The story of the two officers carries a particular irony: Byabagamba spent years entrusted with protecting the president himself before becoming one of the government's most prominent prisoners. His arrest in 2014 marked the beginning of a confinement that lasted the rest of his life, during which his family was kept almost entirely in the dark about his condition.

Rusagara's own trajectory added weight to the criticism. As a former secretary-general of the defence ministry and a decorated officer, he was among the most senior figures from Rwanda's security establishment to fall out of favour with the authorities. His death in custody, coming a decade after his arrest, drew international attention to the treatment of detained dissidents in the country.

Byabagamba is survived by his wife and two sons. For them, the announcement of his death closes a twelve-year ordeal during which they were never permitted to see him — and which has now ended without any official explanation of how he died.

Calls for accountability from human rights organisations are likely to intensify, with advocates arguing that the deaths of two senior former military figures in state custody, neither explained transparently, underline the urgent need for independent scrutiny of Rwanda's prison system and judicial practices.

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