Rwandan soldier and popular musician, Sergeant Major Robert Kabera, who is the subject of a defilement investigation, has fled the East African nation to Uganda.
Sgt. Maj. Kabera is seeking asylum in Uganda and has cited threats to his life as the reason for leaving Rwanda, local media quoted sources close to the soldier.
Earlier this week, the Rwanda Defence Force announced an investigation into “defilement allegations” made against Kabera, renowned solo singer and member of the Rwandan military band.
The RDF said the crime was alleged to have taken place on November 21 in Kigali, and that it was working “to trace the fugitive”.
However, Sgt. Kabera dismissed the allegations as false, insisting there was no way he could have committed the crime, as he had crossed into Uganda on 19 November.
He said he was being tracked because he knew something about the death of gospel singer Kizito Mihigo, who died in a police cell earlier this year.
“Some of the officers in intelligence that I have trained over the time intimated that I was being targeted. I got another warning via a phone call and on 18 November, I fled,” he said.
He said he fled with his wife but left behind three children – one of them aged seven months – as it was too risky to swim across the river on the border with the child.
In August, another soldier attached to Rwandan military intelligence, Lieutenant Gerald Tindifa, was reported to have fled to Uganda earlier in the year.