{"id":8682,"date":"2014-06-05T08:30:27","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T12:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/?p=8682"},"modified":"2014-06-05T08:30:27","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T12:30:27","slug":"top-rwandan-opposition-politician-freed-from-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/8682","title":{"rendered":"Top Rwandan opposition politician freed from jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/14355-6-1-Bernard-Ntaganda.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8683 alignleft\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/14355-6-1-Bernard-Ntaganda.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"238\" \/><\/a>Bernard Ntaganda, the founder of opposition Social Party Imberakuri, has been released from the Mpanga International Prison in Nyanza\u00a0district, Southern Province, after completing his four-year sentence.<\/p>\n<p>The outspoken lawyer and politician, who had reportedly intended to compete in the 2010 presidential polls, was arrested for allegedly threatening state security, &#8216;divisionism&#8217; and attempting to organize demonstrations without official permission.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the fact that Ntaganda had denied the charges levelled against him, the Supreme Court failed to reduce his sentence in 2012. Several human rights advocacy groups &#8211; including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International &#8211; had campaigned for the unconditional release of Ntaganda to no avail.<\/p>\n<p>Although Ntaganda has revealed that he was being persecuted by the government thus his incarceration, he has announced that he will return to politics.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am not a loser in politics&#8230;I will not give up&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, PS-Imberakuri has reportedly since split into two factions; with one side allegedly with links to the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).<\/p>\n<p>The Rwandan government has been accused of stifling free speech and persecuting opposition groups. Critics say many of the country&#8217;s opposition politicians are either in exile or incarcerated.<\/p>\n<p>Photo\/The New Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bernard Ntaganda, the founder of opposition Social Party Imberakuri, has been released from the Mpanga International Prison in Nyanza\u00a0district, Southern Province, after completing his four-year sentence. The outspoken lawyer and politician, who had reportedly intended to compete in the 2010<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span> <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/8682\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[44,2860,1],"tags":[3106,3108,3109,3107,3110,3105],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}