Théoneste Bagosora (16 August 1941 – 25 September 2021) was a Rwandan military officer. He was chiefly known for his key role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 2011, the sentence was reduced to 35 years' imprisonment on appeal. He was due to be imprisoned until he was 89. According to René Lemarchand, Bagosora was "the chief organizer of the killings". On 25 September 2021, he died in a prison hospital in Mali, where he was being treated for heart issues. Early life and career Bagosora was born in Giciye in what is now Nyabihu District, Western Province, Rwanda. In 1964 he graduated from the École des officiers (Officers' School) in Kigali with the rank of second lieutenant. In 1982, he graduated with a commendation from the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale in France. During his military career, he served as second-in-command of the École supérieure militaire (Superior Military School) in Kigali and as commander of Kanombe military camp. On 29 April 1970, he was promoted to the rank of captain. He became a full colonel in October 1989. He was appointed to the position of directeur du cabinet (chief of staff) in the Ministry of Defence in June 1992. Despite officially retiring from the military on 23 September 1993, he retained this post until fleeing the country in July 1994. Role in the genocide Bagosora was born in the same northern region as Juvénal Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda from 1973 to 1994. He was linked to le Clan de Madame, known later as the akazu, a group associated with Agathe Habyarimana, the president's wife, who was at the nexus of the Hutu Power ideology. Although he was present at the negotiations of the Arusha Accords in August 1993, he never supported them. He is widely cited as saying, in the context of the Arusha Accords, that he was returning to Rwanda to "prepare for the apocalypse", but that is apocryphal. Luc Marchal, a Belgian officer, who served as Kigali sector commander in UNAMIR, reported that Bagosora told him that the only way to solve Rwanda's problems was to get rid of the Tutsi. Bagosora was responsible for establishing paramilitary "self-defense" units, the Interahamwe, that would operate in every commune in the country. These groups were to act in concert with