JOHANNESBURG — The suspicious death of Rwanda’s former spy chief in a plush Johannesburg hotel is resurrecting allegations that President Paul Kagame is orchestrating a campaign to kill opponents at home and abroad.
South African police opened an investigation after former colonel Patrick Karegeya’s body was discovered New Year’s Day.
‘‘He was found in the hotel room dead on the bed,” said Lieutenant Colonel Katlego Mogale. ‘‘A towel with blood and a rope were found in the hotel room safe. There is a possibility that he might have been strangled.”
Rwandan opposition leader Theogene Rudasingwa identified the hotel as the Michelangelo Towers and called the death an assassination that fit a pattern of attacks against prominent opponents of Kagame.
‘‘By killing its opponents, the criminal regime in Kigali [Rwanda’s capital] seeks to intimidate and silence the Rwandan people into submission,” he said in a statement. ‘‘The regime is hugely mistaken. Such criminal activities make Rwandan people more emboldened to struggle to remove the dictatorship.”
Karegeya, 53, was a wartime ally from Kagame’s days as a rebel leader but parted ways with the Rwandan president and reportedly fled to South Africa in 2007. Karegeya told an AP journalist a month ago that his work organizing the opposition to Kagame was risky and could cost him his life.
Rwanda’s government vehemently denies targeting dissidents.