Emmanuel Ndindabahizi, who served as Rwanda’s Minister of Finance during the so-called Abatabazi government in 1994, has died in prison in Benin, where he had been serving a life sentence handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) after being convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Registrar of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), Aboubacar M. Tambadou, informed the Mechanism’s President, Graciela Gatti Santana, that Ndindabahizi died on October 5, 2025, at around 4:30 p.m. in Cotonou, Benin, where he had been imprisoned.
Tambadou said that official documents confirming Ndindabahizi’s death were received from Beninese authorities on the evening of October 8, 2025. He was 75 years old at the time of his death.
Ndindabahizi was arrested and tried by the ICTR in 2004 in Arusha, Tanzania, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
In 2009, he was transferred to Benin to serve the remainder of his sentence. The tribunal found that, while serving as Minister of Finance, he incited and facilitated attacks against Tutsi civilians who had sought refuge at Gitwa Hill on two separate occasions.
According to the ICTR’s judgment, his words and actions directly led to the deaths of thousands of Tutsi, marking him as one of the key figures involved in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Born in 1950 in Gitesi Commune, Kibuye Prefecture (now Karongi District), Ndindabahizi pursued his early education in Kirambo and Nyagato, later attending Shyogwe Secondary School (1964–1967) and Collège Officiel de Kigali (1967–1970).
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Social Welfare from the National University of Rwanda in 1974, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Management in 1976.
Throughout his career, he held various positions in public and private institutions. Between 1976 and 1981, he worked as Finance Director at Trafipro Cooperative; from 1981 to 1985, he served as Director of
Finance and Administration at Electrogaz.
Between 1985 and 1991, he was Head of Domestic Finance at the Ministry of Planning, later becoming a consultant at Audico, a private financial auditing firm.
In 1992, Ndindabahizi joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and became its Executive Secretary in Kibuye in 1993. That same year, he was appointed Director of the Minister’s Office at the Ministry of Finance the ministry’s second-highest position.
On April 9, 1994, he was sworn in as Minister of Finance in the interim government known as the Abatabazi Government, a position he held throughout the Genocide against the Tutsi. During that period, he played a major role in atrocities committed in his home region of Kibuye, before fleeing the country in July 1994 as the government collapsed. He later fled to Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Author: Justinmind HARERIMANA