"He spends his days watching television in his villa," people in Kigali say about Laurent Nkunda. Once feared in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the former Congolese rebel leader has been living under house arrest in the Rwandan capital for close to one year. Kigali wants the world to forget about him.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

"If you believe that the man is a danger or a risk to peace then you have to make your case in court. But you can't just do that arbitrarily without making your case," says Nkunda's lawyer Stephane Bourgon. He says his client has been illegally detained and that Rwanda has even refused to grant him access to his client. Bourgon used to communicate with Nkunda through his wife. But since December, she is no longer allowed to visit her husband.

“Nobody is visiting Nkunda anymore. This is a total violation of every international instrument to which Rwanda is a party to, and this is very bad," says Bourgon.

Nkunda led a force of an estimated 4,500 men called the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). The group purported to protect minority Tutsis in the eastern Kivu provinces but the United Nations and human rights groups say it has uprooted hundreds of thousands people.

The former general ruled his own 'mountain state' from his villa in Kitchanga in North Kivu. Nkunda raised road tolls, taxes on the sale of timber, coltan, gold and other natural treasures. But his small empire collapsed following the restoration of relations between Rwanda and the DRC after two wars and years of trading allegations of aiding each other's rebels.

Nkunda's arrest was key to a deal between the Great Lakes neighbours to end the region's conflicts and ultimately to crush Hutu rebels. Rwandan and Congolese soldiers - including Nkunda's former men - then jointly turned their guns on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a splinter group of Rwanda's former Interahamwe militia.

Rwanda connection
Laurent Nkunda Batware's life is intertwined with the history of the Tutsi in Rwanda and Congo. Nkunda was born in Congo as one of the sons of thousands of Tutsi's who fled Rwanda's ethnic persecutions in the 1960's. He studied psychology and was a school teacher before he took up arms. In 1993 he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF)rebellion against the Hutu regime in Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, Nkunda was among the fighters who invaded Congo to rout Hutu extremists.

Nkunda stayed in Congo. He fought along with Laurent Kabila's rebels who overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 but shifted sides to a Rwandan-backed militia - the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD)- during the country's back-to-back civil wars. He turned down a promotion to 'Général major' in the Congolese army (FARDC) because he believed it supported Hutu rebels. He then retreated with hundreds of his former troops to the forests of Masisi in North Kivu where he was said to have been protecting Congolese Tutsis from genocide.

Atrocities
Although Nkunda fought in both the Rwandan and Congolese conflicts, he first came to widespread notice when he led the brutal repression of an attempted mutiny in Kisangani in 2002, where more than 160 civilians were summarily executed. Two years later, he captured Bukavu, the capital of South-Kivu, where his men allegedly went on a killing spree, torturing and raping civilians. Human Rights Watch also reported that Nkunda's forces killed at least 150 people in Kiwanja in late 2008.

Kinshasa dy issued an arrest warrant for Nkunda in September 2005, charging him with desertion and war crimes.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has not publicly indicted Nkunda, but has opened investigations into the actions of his militia as the UN has accused his CNDP of serious human rights abuses, including sexual violence and recruitment of child soldiers during his five-year rebellion in eastern Congo. The CNDP's current leader, Bosco Ntaganda, has been promoted to general in the Congolese army while he is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ituri.

"Expired arrest warrant"
Rwanda has not taken Nkunda to court or yielded to Congolese calls to extradict him to Kigagli to face charges of war crimes and desertion. "Congo's position has not changed. Our contacts with the Rwanda authorities are continuing. We wish him to be handed over to the Congolese courts," said government spokesman Lambert Mende.

Bourgon says Laurent Nkunda is not scared of being sent to Kinshasa to be tried if there are valid accusations and valid charges pressed against him. “But the Congolese indictments against Nkunda have expired and have not yet been re-validated, nor have any new arrest warrants been issued.”

But there is no talk about extradition in Kigali. Rwanda's Supreme Court again postponed a hearing on the rebel's release to March 1st, 2010. “They are basically doing everything they can to let the world forget about him. They don’t know what to do with him,” concludes Bourgon.