Carine Kanimba may have managed to lobby for an appearance before the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. But her performance only served to expose her personal motives more than drawing a limelight on the global threat posed by commercial spyware technology. Burning with her zeal to tarnish the image of Rwanda, Kanimba sent the congressional representatives into confusion as she spewed sensational and speculative attacks against Rwanda, straying off the subject of the hearing, the alleged (in fact concocted) use of Pegasus spyware against her.
During the proceedings of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday, Kanimba was the only individual in the room talking about Rwanda in relation to the alleged Pegasus spyware. The House Intelligence Committee had invited a team of IT experts who enumerated and expounded the technicalities and threats posed by global commercial spyware proliferation.
But while experts like John Scott-Railton – a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Canada – took the meeting through the global use of the Pegasus spyware and its various known areas of deployment (where he mentioned two African countries), he did not mention Rwanda in his presentation. That’s right – the real experts know nothing of Rwanda’s alleged use of Pegasus. It’s only an overheated rumor promoted and disseminated by those whose goal is to tarnish Rwanda.
The expert’s testimony again disproves Carine Kanimba, and terrorist Rusesabagina’s sympathizers.
When Kanimba’s time came to present as an alleged ‘victim’ of the spyware, she only based speeds speculations. During both her opening remarks, presentation and cross examination by the congressmen, Kanimba not only exposed her deep-seated ignorance of whatever accusations she was leveling against Rwanda but also demonstrated to the house that hers was a mission of vengeance for the arrest, trial and jailing of her terrorist father in Rwanda for terrorism charges. It was clear to everyone watching that her presence at the hearing was the effort of the cynical “free Rusesabagina” lobbyists. She clearly was the odd one out on the panel of experts.
For instance, when asked whether she knew with certainty who had planted the alleged spyware on her mobile phone handset, she drew a blank face, and simplistically said that all she knew was that it was planted “by the same people who kidnapped my father.”
Kanimba exposed her motives by digressing from the subject of the hearing and delving into the unrelated issues of the arrest of Rusesabagina and the cooperation assistance that the United States gives Rwanda. In other words, she only lobbied to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to then try diverting the House into joining the anti-Rwanda crusades of freeing her terrorist father. In other words she is trying to co-opt US authorities into the Rusesabagina lobby’s campaign of blackmail against the Rwandan administration.
Their hope is that US can get Rusesabagina’s terror charges to be dropped, and to get him released from prison (using cooperation assistance as leverage).
But Kanimba and all others in the Rusesabagina camp have to know things don’t work like that. Rwanda is a sovereign state with its institutions and laws. Rwanda is not a colony of any country. Rwanda can bring perpetrators of terror against its citizens to account for their crimes, through its competent courts of law.
That will not change.
Justice must prevail. How does Kanimba feel about the victims of her father’s terrorist activities. She should be human enough to leave the law take its own course. ktheopiste72@gmail.com@gm