Joseph Kavaruganda (8 May 1935 – 7 April 1994) was a Rwandan jurist who served as president of Rwanda's Constitutional Court. He was killed at the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Early life Joseph Kavaruganda was born on 8 May 1935 in Tare, Ruanda-Urundi. He attended primary school in Tare, and then attended the Kigali Junior Seminary before studying law in Belgium, earning his Doctor of Philosophy in 1966. He returned to Rwanda in 1967 and took up work as a president of Caisse d'Épargne, a credit and savings institution. Legal career In 1974 Kavaruganda was appointed Prosecutor General of Rwanda. As President of the Constitutional Court, Kavaruganda came into conflict with President Juvénal Habyarimana over legal matters. In 1991 he ruled against Habyarimana in a case involving the denial of certain political privileges to opposition parties which the president had allowed to his own party, the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement (MRND), such as the ability to broadcast positions on the state radio station, Radio Rwanda. Though a Hutu, Kavaruganda rejected the ideology of Hutu Power, which sought to discriminate against Rwanda's Tutsi population. As a lawyer, he believed that Tutsi exiles had a right to return to the country, and believed that the government should pursue negotiations with the Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). His family maintained friendships with Hutus and Tutsis. Kavaruganda came under increased pressure following his break with Habyarimana. In 1991 a bomb was detonated adjacent his bedroom at his country retreat. Soon thereafter he began receiving a steady flow of death threats from Hutu extremists. As the Rwandan Civil War dragged on, Habyarimana would negotiate with the political opposition and agree to reforms only to soon thereafter renege on them. Tired with what he perceived as obstructionism, in 1993 Kavaruganda wrote a letter to the president, listing the occasions in the previous years in which he had violated laws and broken his promises. He questioned, "When you violate the law, do you do it in the interest of the Rwandan people? In the spirit of the constitution? No." On 4 August 1993 the Rwandan government and the RPF signed the Arusha Accords to end the Rwandan Civil War. Kavaruganda had assisted in drafting the agreement, which provoked the further ire of Hutu extremists. One edition of Kangura displayed a cartoon of him hanging from a tree with copies of the