Agathe Habyarimana

Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana (née Kanziga) (born 1942, Karago, Gisenyi perfecture, Western Province, Rwanda) is the widow of former President of Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana. Kanziga is part of a Hutu lineage that long ruled an independent principality until the late nineteenth century. She was arrested by French authorities on 2 March 2010 in France following the French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Rwanda.

She was frequently regarded as one of the powers behind the throne during her husband's 20-year presidency, and her family connections to powerful Hutu politicians are often regarded as having provided necessary political capital for Habyarimana. She was the centre of a powerful clique of northern Hutus called le clan de madame or akazu (Kinyarwanda for "little house").

On April 9, 1994, immediately following Habyarimana's assassination and the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide, she was airlifted out of Rwanda by French troops and arrived in Paris 8 days later. In this exodus she was accompanied by thirty other members of the akazu, including Ferdinand Nahimana, director of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. Upon arrival in Paris, she received a gift of ₣ 230 000 from the French government, from a budget allocated for "urgent assistance for Rwandan refugees". In September 1997, she moved to Libreville, Gabon, at the invitation of Omar Bongo, and then Gbadolite in Zaire. Fearing the threat of the RPF, she went back to Zaire in late 1995 and later settled in Gabon, where she was granted a diplomatic passport under a false name. In response to threats by the RPF, she left Libreville and smuggled into France where she resides illegally.

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