The High Court in Kigali has rejected the attraction of Denis Kazungu, who used to be convicted of murdering 13 of us, and upheld the life sentence and a Rwf10 million elegant handed down by the Nyarugenge Intermediate Court in early 2024.
The 36-365 days-former former trainer, who has been below detention since September 2023, has no strategy to attraction the High Court ruling delivered on Friday, July 11.
ALSO READ: Convicted serial killer Kazungu appeals for lesser sentence
The court ruled that Kazungu’s attraction lacked merit and that the lower court’s verdict, rendered on March 7, 2024, remains unchanged.
On June 12, Kazungu requested a lowered sentence, citing cooperation with authorities and expressions of remorse for his actions.
Kazungu used to be realized responsible of 10 payments, including execute, rape, and forgery. He used to be also ordered to pay damages to seven of the victims’ households.
ALSO READ: How three women escaped death at the palms of ‘serial killer’ Kazungu
Kazungu used to be arrested in September 2023 following a dispute along with his landlord in Busanza, Kicukiro District. What began as a landlord-tenant disagreement became correct into a chilling prison investigation after police realized more than one our bodies buried in a pit at the relieve of his dwelling. Most victims had been women.
He later admitted to the execute payments, with investigators uncovering a anxious pattern of premeditated violence and concealment.
At some level of his attraction listening to on June 12, Kazungu and his licensed reliable, Faustin Murangwa, argued that his cooperation, equivalent to voluntarily confessing to the crimes and offering critical aspects of the murders, wants to be belief of a mitigating ingredient.
“I gave the information willingly,” Kazungu suggested the court. “When I remembered another victim, I alerted the authorities. What I did was cowardly. I apologize to the Head of State, the government, and the families. If I could go back, I would not take that path.”
His licensed reliable emphasised Kazungu’s previous efforts to contribute positively to society, noting that he once ran a nursery college for orphans in Remera. After the college shut down in 2016, Kazungu became to spoiled-border liquor alternate but claimed he misplaced goods worth $120,000 in 2018, a monetary downfall that, in step with his testimony, drove him into prison order.
‘No longer desperation’
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On the opposite hand, prosecutors maintained that Kazungu’s crimes had been premeditated, calculated, and completed in a merciless system. They described how he lured his victims, largely women, before killing and burying them.
“This was not desperation. It was a pattern,” one prosecutor talked about. “Even if he admitted to the charges, that does not outweigh the horror of what he did.”
Relatives of Kazungu’s victims, a spread of whom attended the attraction listening to, had been vocal in opposing his ask.
One representative talked about, “To suggest that Kazungu deserves a second chance is a danger to society. Apart from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, it is rare in Rwanda’s history to find one person responsible for this many killings.”
Despite Kazungu’s claims of remorse and rehabilitation, he’ll abet a life sentence and dwell liable for monetary penalties to his victims’ households.
