page_title: Louis Rwagasore
section_title: Assassination
hierarchical_section_title: Louis Rwagasore / Biography / Assassination
caption_attribution_description: Prince Rwagasore Tomb
context_page_description: Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore was a Burundian Royal and politician who is considered a significant figure in the history of Burundi nationalism. He was prime minister, and was assassinated shortly before Burundian independence.
context_section_description: Just two weeks later, on 13 October 1961, Rwagasore was assassinated while dining at the Hotel Tanganyika in Usumbura (modern-day Bujumbura). The assassin, a Greek national named Jean Kageorgis, was accompanied by three Burundians, all members of the pro-Belgian Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Within three days, all four suspects were arrested and they quickly implicated two high-ranking members of the PDC (Jean-Baptiste Ntidendereza and Joseph Biroli), with one initially admitting his guilt but later retracting his confession. Following the assassination inter-ethnic rivalries between the Hutu and Tutsi within UPRONA flared.
  Historians have suggested that the Belgian colonial authorities may have played a significant role in the assassination although no official inquiry has ever been carried out. As early as the 1970s, René Lemarchand, an expert on Burundian history, claimed that the PDC's European secretary, Ms Belva, was allegedly told by the Belgian regent Roberto Régnier that "Rwagasore must be killed". In addition, several days before his assassination, Rwagasore filled a complaint against seven Belgian officials including the
  Belgian Governor-General, Jean-Paul Harroy and Régnier. Before being executed for the murder, Kageorgis explicitly accused Harroy and Régnier of responsibility. 
  In 2011 the Belgian journalist, Guy Poppe, published De moord op Rwagasore, de Burundese Lumumba (The Death of Rwagasore, the Burundian Lumumba) which claimed that irregularities in the investigation of the Prince's murder included, among other details, a lack of questioning of witnesses including Harroy, Régnier, Kageorgis' Belgian fiancee, and Ms. Belva. Poppe discovered that files from the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs's archives, including a transcript from an interview that was conducted with Régnier following his return to Belgium from Burundi, had been lost. Poppe also claimed that the Foreign Ministry had threatened to fire three former colonial officers if they traveled to Burundi in order to testify during Kageorgis' trial. Poppe noted the investigation's failure to follow up links between the Burundian PDC party and the Belgian Christian Social Party (PSC-CVP).
  In october 2018, Burundi officially accused Belgium to be responsible of the assassination.
caption: Contemporary photograph of Rwagasore's mausoleum in Bujumbura
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