Tom Byabagamba, a former commander of President Paul Kagame’s elite presidential guard who was later convicted of inciting insurrection, has died in prison after roughly 12 years behind bars. He was 59.
His death was announced Tuesday by his older brother, David Himbara, a former economic adviser to Kagame who is now an outspoken government critic living in exile. “It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of our beloved brother, Colonel Tom Byabagamba, who passed away while in prison in Rwanda,” Himbara said in a statement posted on X. He gave no cause of death, telling the BBC’s Great Lakes service that the family had not been allowed to see Byabagamba in all the years he was imprisoned. There was no immediate comment from Rwandan authorities, for whom the case has long been a sensitive subject.
From Kagame’s inner circle to a military tribunal
Byabagamba spent much of his career close to the president, serving in Kagame’s personal protection detail from 1990 before rising to command the Republican Guard the unit responsible for protecting the president and key state installations — from 2003 to 2010. He was removed from that post in 2010 after an apparent falling-out with Kagame, went on to serve with a UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, and was arrested upon his return to Rwanda in August 2014.
He was tried jointly in 2016 before the Kanombe Military High Court alongside his brother-in-law, retired Brig. Gen. Frank Rusagara, and Rusagara’s driver, retired Sgt. François Kabayiza. Prosecutors accused the men of inciting insurrection and tarnishing the government’s image, pointing to remarks in which Byabagamba had reportedly suggested state involvement in unspecified killings, questioned the guilt of a convicted former presidential bodyguard, and criticized Rwandan taxes on Tanzanian trucks. The court convicted Byabagamba and sentenced him to 21 years, stripping him of his rank; Rusagara received a 20-year sentence in the same ruling. An appeals court upheld Byabagamba’s conviction in 2019 while cutting his sentence to 15 years.
The case drew international criticism. Human Rights Watch raised concerns about the fairness of the proceedings, and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found in 2017 that the charges against Byabagamba and his co-defendants stemmed from the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression. Rwandan authorities have consistently rejected claims that the justice system is used to silence political opponents.
A second death from the same case
Byabagamba’s death is the second involving a senior figure from that 2016 trial. Rusagara died in prison in March 2025, Human Rights Watch described it at the time as the “lonely death of a general,” noting his family had not heard his voice since shortly before his 2014 arrest and that authorities had told relatives he had been ill with cancer.
Byabagamba’s death lands against the backdrop of long-running scrutiny of Rwanda’s political and military establishment. Kagame is widely credited with helping rebuild the country after the 1994 genocide and has held tight political control since. Rights groups have repeatedly accused his government of restricting political opposition and independent media, and of driving a wave of senior army officers several of whom had fallen out with the president into exile or prison. Rwandan officials deny using the courts to target dissenters.
The circumstances of Byabagamba’s death remain unclear, his family has not given a cause, and authorities had not issued an explanation as of publication. His death closes another chapter in a long and politically fraught case involving some of the country’s former military elite one that, more than a decade on, still has no full public accounting.
