By FELLY KIMENYI & GASHEEGU MULAMIRA
The New Times

The Senate, yesterday, approved Martin Ngoga as the new Prosecutor General, replacing Jean de Dieu Mucyo. Mucyo was early this year named the Chairman of the commission investigating the French role in the 1994 Genocide, leaving the post of the Prosecutor General vacant. Subsequently, Ngoga together with Jean Damascene Habimana were nominated as candidates for the post during the Cabinet Meeting of June 28 and, according to the Constitution, the two were subject to vetting by the Senate before approval.

“I am glad to take this new challenge, it is continuity because I have worked in the judiciary for the last three years and I am going to take up most of the policies I had initiated,” Ngoga told The New Times minutes after the Senate’s approval.

Asked whether the new job will not affect his other duties such as being head of the national committee overseeing the ICTR completion, Ngoga said it will instead facilitate him. “Now that I head the National Prosecution, it will ease my work,” he said.

Ngoga, who has also represented Rwanda at the ICTR, was Rwanda’s Agent at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Rwanda won a lawsuit that had been filed by the DRC, alleging plunder of her natural resources.

During the same session, Alphonse Hitiyaremye was approved as the Deputy Prosecutor General after beating Tigrius Cuicredidi. Hitiyaremye is the immediate former Inspector General of the National Prosecution.