Statement: Assassination Threat Against Noble Marara in the United Kingdom

After a hard week working as a mental health nurse manager, Noble Marara was relaxing at home with his family in the United Kingdom when they were visited by two police officers. They warned that he was in grave danger because a foreign government posed an "imminent threat" to his life, and urged him to increase security. We condemn this threat in the strongest possible terms.

Who Noble Marara Is

Marara spent nine years as a bodyguard and driver for the Rwandan leader, standing by his side as the east African country started to recover from the trauma of genocide. Like others, he saw this aloof character as the heroic saviour of his land. Now the man he once protected wants him dead.

Not the First Threat

This was not the first such warning: in 2011, Scotland Yard warned two other Rwandan exiles living in the United Kingdom that a hit squad had been sent to kill them. The pattern is clear. Rwanda hunts down dissidents wherever they live, killing some, kidnapping and threatening others. Those who flee the regime are not safe even on British soil.

The Timing Is Telling

Is it a coincidence that days before the police warning it was disclosed that Marara's insights into the ruthless Kagame were to be offered in downloadable book form in the Kinyarwanda language? He chose to speak the truth to his own people in their own language, and within days his family was told a foreign government wanted him dead.

Our Demands

We call on the United Kingdom to provide Noble Marara and his family with the protection they are entitled to, to investigate who stands behind these threats, and to hold the Rwandan government to account for every campaign of intimidation and violence it conducts against exiled critics on British soil. Decent nations do not tolerate foreign hit squads targeting men, women and children living peacefully in their communities.

We stand with Noble Marara and with every Rwandan exile living under the shadow of these threats. Silence would only embolden those who send them.