Man who had de facto kidnapped in Africa murder plot jailed in Melbourne 
 
 Updated 
 
 A Melbourne man has been sentenced to nine years' jail for having his de facto wife kidnapped at gunpoint in Africa and trying to have her murdered because he suspected she was cheating on him. 
 
 Balenga Kalala, who arrived in Australia in 2004 as a refugee, paid almost $7,000 to a group of kidnappers to kill the mother of his three children, Noela Rukundo, when she was attending her stepmother's funeral in Burundi in early 2015. 
 
 The group snatched Ms Rukundo at gunpoint outside her hotel in Bujumbura in February and drove her to a secret location. 
 
 They told her her partner had paid for her to be murdered, but because they did not want to kill a woman, and they knew Ms Rukundo's brother, they would not carry out the killing. 
 
 They gave Ms Rukundo recorded telephone conversations between them and Kalala planning the hit, as well as receipts from Western Union showing proof of Kalala's payment. 
 
 While Ms Rukundo was in Burundi, Kalala, of Kings Park, was at home looking after the couple's three children and his partner's five children from a previous relationship. 
 
 Believing the murder plot had been executed, he told friends that his wife had been killed in a tragic accident while she was in Africa. 
 
 The African community gathered round the family, providing spiritual and financial support. 
 
 But Ms Rukundo was very much alive. 
 
 She arrived back in Melbourne on February 22 and confronted Kalala at their Kings Park home and called the police. 
 
 In September, Kalala pleaded guilty to one count of incitement to murder. 
 
 Kalala 'motivated by unfounded jealousy' 
 
 In sentencing, Chief Justice Marilyn Warren said the crime involved a great breach of trust. 
 
 "Had Ms Rukundo's kidnappers completed the job, eight children would have lost their mother," she said. 
 
 "It was premeditated and motivated by unfounded jealousy, anger and a desire to punish Ms Rukundo." 
 
 She said people should expect protection from the partners, not violence. 
 
 Chief Justice Warren said Kalala had been a hard worker and of good standing in the Australian community prior to this charge. 
 
 She also took into account his troubled childhood in war-torn Africa, and the fact his wife and child had been brutally murdered in the Democratic Republic of Congo when he was aged 24. 
 
 Outside court, Ms Rukundo's son Fostin said his mother still lived in fear. 
 
 Fostin said he was upset by the kidnapping. 
 
 "She works for us, she feeds us, she clothed us and she was doing the same thing for [Kalala]... 
 
 "I looked at him (in court) but I couldn't see a man. Because I believe a man would not do something like that." 
 
 Kalala will be eligible for parole after serving six years' jail. 
 
 Topics: law-crime-and-justice, crime, prisons-and-punishment, kings-park-3021, burundi 
 
 First posted ||||| 'Heartbroken' wife of husband who paid hit men to kidnap, murder her in Africa recalls hearing him order hit in phone call 
 
 Updated 
 
 A Melbourne woman says she has forgiven her husband after he had her kidnapped at gunpoint in Africa and tried to have her killed, but has come under attack from her community for going to police. 
 
 Balenga Kalala, 39, was sentenced to nine years jail for ordering the hit on his wife Noela Rukundo, when she was visiting Burundi for her step-mother's funeral in February. 
 
 The court heard Balenga wanted his wife dead because he suspected she was cheating on him. 
 
 Ms Rukundo, who arrived in Australia as a refugee in 2004, told the ABC she was heartbroken her husband had turned on her. 
 
 "I can't believe this is happening to me because this is the man I lived with for ten years, and I do everything for him to make this marriage work," Ms Rukundo said. 
 
 "I'm feeling stressed, and depressed. I'm feeling very bad." 
 
 The court heard Congolese-born Kalala paid almost $7,000 to a group of kidnappers to kill Ms Rukundo. 
 
 The group snatched Ms Rukundo at gunpoint outside her hotel in Bujumbura in February. 
 
 "A man, when he come close to me [I see] he have a gun," she said, recounting the ordeal. 
 
 "He pointed it at me and then he said 'see that car there? Go slowly by yourself and enter the car'." 
 
 She was blindfolded and driven to a secret location. 
 
 "I hear the men and they said 'you woman, what did you do for this man to pay us to kill you?' "I said, 'What are you talking about?' 
 
 "The boss says 'Balenga sent us to kill you'. I say 'You lie. My husband can't send anyone to kill me.' They laughed and said 'You're a fool, you're stupid'." 
 
 To prove that her husband was indeed the person behind the plot, the kidnappers rang him on speaker phone. 
 
 Ms Rukundo said she heard her husband order for her to be killed. 
 
 "I fainted because I heard his voice," she said through tears. 
 
 Kidnappers refused to kill women, children 
 
 The kidnappers told Ms Rukundo they would not kill her because they did not want to kill women or children. 
 
 But they would keep her husband's money, and tell him that she was dead. 
 
 She was held for two days and then released. 
 
 She flew back to Melbourne a few days later where she confronted her husband, who had already been telling members of the African community his wife had been killed in a tragic accident. 
 
 "He came to me, he touched me. Are you still alive? I just look at him and said 'Surprise! I'm still alive'." 
 
 He apologised to her and begged for forgiveness but she rang police. 
 
 Local community 'angry' wife went to police 
 
 Ms Rukundo said many people from within the Congolese community were angry with her for informing police about Kalala's offending. 
 
 She said she had received threatening messages and her home has been targeted. 
 
 "I come home and the back door broken, the front doors broken," she said. 
 
 "I don't know exactly who is behind [it] and what it is they want from me." 
 
 She has asked the Department of Human Services to find her and her children new accommodation because she does not feel safe. 
 
 Remarkably, after all she has been through, Ms Rukundo said she did not judge her husband. 
 
 "He's a human being. From my heart, I forgive him," she said. 
 
 "Let God judge him." 
 
 Balenga Kalala will be eligible for parole after serving six years' jail. 
 
 Topics: courts-and-trials, melbourne-3000 
 
 First posted ||||| Image copyright ABC News 
 
 One year ago a group of gunmen in Burundi was hired to kill a woman visiting from Australia. But the hit did not go as planned, leaving her with a chance to turn the tables on the man who wanted her dead. 
 
 "I felt like somebody who had risen again," says Noela Rukundo. 
 
 She was supposed to be dead. The hired killers had been paid. They had even explained how they would dispose of the body. 
 
 But now, waiting outside her house for the last of the mourners to leave, she was ready to face down the man who had put out a contract for her murder. 
 
 "When I get out of the car, he saw me straight away. He put his hands on his head and said, 'Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?'" 
 
 "Surprise! I'm still alive!" she replied. 
 
 Noela's ordeal began five days earlier, and 7,500 miles away in her native Burundi. She had returned to Africa from her home in Melbourne, Australia, to attend her stepmother's funeral. 
 
 Image copyright iStock 
 
 "I had lost the last person who I call 'mother'," she says. "It was very painful. I was so stressed." 
 
 By early evening Noela had retreated to her hotel room. As she lay dozing in the stifling city heat of Bujumbura, her phone rang. It was a call from Australia - from Balenga Kalala, her husband and father to her three youngest children. 
 
 "He says he'd been trying to get me for the whole day," Noela says. "I said I was going to bed. He told me, 'To bed? Why are you sleeping so early?' 
 
 "I say, 'I'm not feeling happy'. And he asks me, 'How's the weather? Is it very, very hot?' He told me to go outside for fresh air." 
 
 Noela took his advice. 
 
 "I didn't think anything. I just thought that he cared about me, that he was worried about me." 
 
 But moments after stepping outside the hotel compound, Noela found herself in danger. 
 
 "I opened the gate and I saw a man coming towards me. Then he pointed the gun on me. 
 
 "He just told me, 'Don't scream. If you start screaming, I will shoot you. They're going to catch me, but you? You will already be dead.' 
 
 "So, I did exactly what he told me." 
 
 The gunman motioned Noela towards a waiting car. 
 
 "I was sitting between two men. One had a small gun, one had a long gun. And the men say to the driver, 'Pass us a scarf.' Then they cover my face. 
 
 "After that, I didn't say anything. They just said to the driver, 'Let's go.' 
 
 "I was taken somewhere, 30 to 40 minutes, then I hear the car stop." 
 
 Noela was pushed inside a building and tied to a chair. 
 
 "One of the kidnappers told his friend, 'Go call the boss.' I can hear doors open but I didn't know if their boss was in a room or if he came from outside. 
 
 "They ask me, 'What did you do to this man? Why has this man asked us to kill you?' And then I tell them, 'Which man? Because I don't have any problem with anybody.' They say, 'Your husband!' I say, 'My husband can't kill me, you are lying!' And then they slap me. 
 
 "After that the boss says, 'You are very stupid, you are fool. Let me call who has paid us to kill you.'" 
 
 The gang's leader made the call. 
 
 "We already have her," he triumphantly told his paymaster. 
 
 The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to hear the reply. 
 
 Her husband's voice said: "Kill her." 
 
 Just hours earlier, the same voice had consoled her over the death of her stepmother and urged her to take fresh air outside the hotel. Now her husband Balenga Kalala had condemned her to death. 
 
 "I heard his voice. I heard him. I felt like my head was going to blow up. 
 
 "Then they described for him where they were going to chuck the body." 
 
 At that, Noela says she passed out. 
 
 Image copyright Alamy 
 
 Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Balenga Kalala had arrived in Australia in 2004 as a refugee, after fleeing a rebel army that had rampaged through his village, killing his wife and young son. 
 
 Settling in Melbourne, he soon found steady employment, first in a seafood processing factory and then in a warehouse as a forklift operator. 
 
 "He could already speak English," recalls Noela, who also arrived in Australia in 2004. "My social worker was his social worker, and they used him to translate Swahili." 
 
 The two fell in love. They set up home in the Kings Park suburb of the city. Noela had five children from a previous relationship and went on to have three more with Kalala. 
 
 "I knew he was a violent man," admits Noela. "But I didn't believe he can kill me. I loved this man with all my heart! 
 
 "I give him, beautiful and handsome, two boys and one girl. So I don't know why he choose to kill me." 
 
 Find out more 
 
 Noela Rukundo spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service 
 
 Get the Outlook podcast for more extraordinary personal stories 
 
 As the gang's leader ended the call to Kalala, Noela was coming round. 
 
 "I said to myself, I was already dead. Nothing I can do can save me. 
 
 "But he looks at me and then he says, 'We're not going to kill you. We don't kill women and children.' 
 
 "He told me I'd been stupid because my husband paid them the deposit in November. And when I went to Africa it was January. He asked me, 'How stupid can you be, from November, you can't see that something is wrong?'" 
 
 He might have been a hit-man with principles, but the gang's leader still took the opportunity to extort more money from Kalala. He called him back and informed him that the fee for the murder had increased. He wanted a further 3,400 Australian dollars (£1,700) to finish the job. 
 
 Back at the hotel, Noela's brother was getting worried about her disappearance. He called Kalala in Australia to ask for $545 to pay the police to open an investigation - Kalala feigned concern and duly wired the money. 
 
 After two days in captivity, Noela was freed. 
 
 "'We give you 80 hours to leave this country,'" Noela says the gang told her. "'Your husband is serious. Maybe we can spare your life, but other people, they're not going to do the same thing. If God helps you, you'll get to Australia.'" 
 
 Before leaving Noela by the side of a road, the gang handed her the evidence they hoped would incriminate Kalala - a memory card containing recorded phone conversations of him discussing the murder and receipts for the Western Union money transfers. 
 
 Image copyright Alamy 
 
 "We just want you to go back, to tell other stupid women like you what happened," the gang told Noela as they parted. "You must learn something: you people get a chance to go overseas for a better life. But the money you are earning, the money the government gives to you, you use it for killing each other!" 
 
 Noela immediately began planning her return to Australia. She called the pastor of her church in Melbourne, Dassano Harruno Nantogmah, and requested his help. 
 
 "'It was in the middle of the night. I says, 'It's me, I'm still alive, don't tell anybody.' He says, 'Noela, I don't believe it. Balenga can't kill someone!' And I said, 'Pastor, believe me!'" 
 
 His voice always comes to me in the night - 'Kill her, kill her' Noela Rukundo 
 
 Three days later, on the evening of 22 February 2015, Noela was back in Melbourne. 
 
 By now, Kalala had informed the community that his wife had died in a tragic accident. He had spent the day hosting a steady stream of well-wishers, many of whom donated money. 
 
 "It was around 7.30pm," Noela says. "He was in front of the house. People had been inside mourning with him and he was escorting a group of them into a car." 
 
 It was as they drove away that Noela sprang her surprise. 
 
 "I was stood just looking at him. He was scared, he didn't believe it. Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like he was walking on broken glass. 
 
 "He kept talking to himself and when he reached me, he touched me on the shoulder. He jumped. 
 
 "He did it again. He jumped. Then he said, 'Noela, is it you?'… Then he start screaming, 'I'm sorry for everything.'" 
 
 Noela called the police who ordered Kalala off the premises and later obtained a court order against him. Days later, the police instructed Noela to call Kalala. Kalala made a full confession to his wife, captured on tape, begging for her forgiveness and revealing why he had ordered the murder. 
 
 "He say he wanted to kill me because he was jealous," says Noela. "He think that I wanted to leave him for another man." 
 
 She rejects the accusation. 
 
 In a police interview, Kalala denied any involvement in the plot. "The pretence," wrote the judge at his trial in December, "lasted for hours." But when confronted with the recording of his telephone conversation with Noela and the evidence she brought back from Burundi he started to cry. 
 
 Kalala was still unable to offer any explanation for his actions, suggesting only that "sometimes [the] devil can come into someone to do something but after they do it, they start thinking, 'Why I did that thing?'" 
 
 On 11 December last year, in court in Melbourne, after pleading guilty to incitement to murder, Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison. 
 
 "His voice always comes in the night - 'Kill her, kill her,'" says Noela of the nightmares that now plague her. "Every night, I see what was happening in those two days with the kidnappers." 
 
 Ostracised by many in Melbourne's African community, some of whom blame her for Kalala's conviction, Noela sees a difficult future for her and her eight children. 
 
 "But I will stand up like a strong woman," she says. 
 
 "My situation, my past life? That is gone. I'm starting a new life now." 
 
 Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. ||||| Balenga Kalala's plan was to have his de facto wife of 10 years kidnapped and murdered in Africa, where she was attending her stepmother's funeral, because he wrongly suspected she was cheating on him. 
 
 The Congolese forklift operator from Kings Park, who arrived in Australia in 2004 as a refugee, paid almost $7000 to the kidnappers but they eventually freed his de facto and the mother of his three children, Noela Rukundo, because they did not kill women. 
 
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 Link Balenga Kalala paid $7000 for his partner to be kidnapped and murdered. 
 
 On her release, the kidnappers gave Ms Rukundo two receipts from Western Union for the $7000 "blood money". Kalala had used a redraw facility on the couple's home loan to get the money. 
 
 When Ms Rukundo returned home to Melbourne and confronted her husband in their front yard, he was shocked she was still alive. 
 
 He had been telling friends in his local African community in Melbourne's west how his wife had died in a tragic accident in Burundi, and they had rallied around him to offer significant financial support to help him and the children. 
 
 Ms Rukundo told him, "Surprise! I'm still alive. You are a wicked man. Why did you want me to be killed? What about your small children (aged five, 10 and 11)? Who was going to look after them?" 
 
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 Police were called but Kalala initially denied any wrongdoing. 
 
 Crown prosecutor Douglas Trapnell, QC, told the Supreme Court that police secretly recorded a phone conversation between Kalala and his de facto on February 28, 2015, in which he begged her to forgive him and confirmed he had arranged for her to be murdered. 
 
 He believed she had been having an affair and wanted to punish her for being unfaithful. 
 
 "Sometimes Devil can come into someone, to do something, but after they do it they start thinking, 'Why I did that thing?', later," he told her. 
 
 Outlining the details of the case after Kalala had pleaded guilty to one charge of incitement to murder, Mr Trapnell said Ms Rukundo had flown to Burundi on January 21, 2015, to attend her stepmother's funeral and visit relatives. 
 
 Ms Rukundo was staying at a hotel in Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, during her trip and was in regular contact with Kalala. Kalala had stayed at home to look after the couple's three children, as well as Ms Rukundo's five children from previous relationships. 
 
 Kalala called Ms Rukundo at about 8pm local time on February 17 and after talking about the hot weather, he told her to go outside to get some fresh air. 
 
 Ms Rukundo walked outside and was suddenly approached by a man armed with a gun. 
 
 "This male threatened her with the firearm, told her to remain quiet and forced her into a vehicle," the prosecutor said. "Two other unknown males were in the vehicle. The offenders covered Ms Rukundo's face and drove away." 
 
 Ms Rukundo was driven to a secret location where a fourth man told her Kalala had paid for her to be killed, but the kidnappers did not wish to kill a woman. 
 
 One of the kidnappers called Kalala on February 18 and told him in Swahili how they had completed the "big job" for him. 
 
 The kidnapper told Kalala: "We've killed your wife and you are the one winning." 
 
 Kalala expressed his gratitude and said, "We are like family." 
 
 Ms Rukundo was released on February 19 and her kidnappers handed her a mobile phone memory card containing the recorded telephone conversations they had had with Kalala over her planned murder and the receipts from her partner's payment. 
 
 After her release, Ms Rukundo sought help from the Kenyan and Belgian embassies to return to Australia and arrived in Melbourne on February 22 before going straight from the airport to confront Kalala. 
 
 Chief Justice Marilyn Warren remanded Kalala for sentencing at a later date.
– Noela Rukundo had been with her husband, Balenga Kalala, for 11 years when, last year, she flew from their home in Melbourne, Australia, to her native Burundi for her stepmother's funeral. While there, Kalala ordered gang members to have her killed. They abducted her and told her what they had been hired to do; Rukundo even heard her husband's voice on speakerphone telling them to kill her, the Australian Broadcasting Company reports. The gang members decided not to murder her because they knew her brother and they didn't believe in killing women, but they kept Kalala's money and told him the job was done. She was able to get back home, where, on Feb. 22, 2015, she walked up to Kalala after her own funeral; he'd told everyone she died while in Burundi. "Is it a ghost?" the scared man, who has since been sentenced to nine years for incitement to murder, per the ABC, asked. Rukundo tells the BBC her husband touched her shoulder to make sure she was real, then began screaming. He apologized, but she called police—and, though Kalala first denied he'd had anything to do with Rukundo's ordeal, she ultimately got him to confess while police secretly recorded one of their phone calls, the Age reports. His explanation to her? He thought she was going to leave him for someone else. "Sometimes Devil can come into someone, to do something, but after they do it they start thinking, ‘Why I did that thing?’ later," he reportedly said. The couple has three children together, and Rukundo also has five from a previous relationship. Since her ordeal, she says, some members of Melbourne's Congolese community have threatened her for reporting Kalala, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo.