Protais Mpiranya

Protais Mpiranya (30 May 1956 – 5 October 2006), also known as Sambao Ndume, was a Rwandan military officer and war criminal who was internationally wanted for his alleged role in the Rwandan genocide. Regarded as Rwanda's most wanted fugitive, he was described in 2022 as "one of the world’s most brutal killers", and was internationally recognised as the most sought génocidaire.

Born to a Hutu family in Gitarama, Mpiranya was a major in the Rwandan Armed Forces at the time of the war and commanded the Presidential Guard. He became highly involved with the leadership of the Interahamwe shortly thereafter and was radicalised as an avowed Hutu supremacist. Leading Hutu militias, forces under his command tortured, sexually mutilated and murdered Prime Minister Agathe Unwilingiyimana and a force of UN peacekeepers from Ghana and Belgium assigned to protect her. Many more government officials, such as Faustin Rucogoza, were murdered by Mpiranya before he and his forces embarked on the genocide of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians. He became a fugitive from justice after the RPF defeated the genocidal government in the Rwandan Civil War, and disappeared without a trace in the aftermath. Initially believed to be hiding in the DR Congo or Zimbabwe, Mpiranya was indicted on multiple genocide-related charges by the United Nations in 2002, war crimes and crimes against humanity. His whereabouts remained unknown, but in 2012, under pressure from Kigali, the Zimbabwean government admitted that he could possibly be at large in the country, and promised to find him "dead or alive". However, no new leads were found.