A 50-year-old Burundian man who had lived near Parma for several years was arrested yesterday on suspicion of organizing the brutal murder of three elderly Italian nuns in the central African country in 2014, BTA reported, citing ANSA.
The man, identified as a farm worker named Guillaume Harushimana, is accused of the murder, which took place in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, between September 7 and 8, 2014, judicial sources said. Sister Olga Rashieti (83), Sister Lucia Pulizzi (75) and Sister Bernardella Bojan (79) were killed in two separate attacks on their mission within less than 48 hours. The bodies of the victims showed signs of brutal violence.
“The murder of the three missionaries originated in Burundian secret services and the investigation was permeated by an atmosphere of terror,“ Parma's chief prosecutor Alfonso D’Avino told a press conference.“The instigator was General Adolf Nshimirimana, a senior military officer in Burundi with whom Guillaume Harushimana had close relations,” he added.”The first to be killed were Sister Olga Rashieti and Sister Lucia Pulizzi. Their throats were slit. At the time, Sister Bernardella Bojan was at the airport to meet other nuns. When they all returned to the mission, they found the two bodies there and called the police. Police officers came to guard the building, but this did not prevent a third attack from being carried out, during which Sister Bernardella Bojan was beheaded during the night.
The investigation showed that the perpetrators had been hiding in the building since the first attack, disguised as police officers, apparently wearing uniforms obtained from the secret services.
The man arrested in Parma did not confess to the crimes. He was not part of the Burundian secret services, but he was a friend of the head of the secret services in the African country and was a confidant of the monks and nuns of the order to which the three murdered nuns belonged. This order had founded a center in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, uniting young people from different ethnic groups, among whom they had previously been at enmity. "In this center, the arrested person acted as an intermediary, organizer and liaison between the youth and the clergy," said the chief prosecutor of Parma.
He added that he had devised a way to come from Burundi to Italy after his name was mentioned on a Burundian radio station in 2015 by two people who claimed to be the perpetrators of the execution of the nuns. At the time, the radio station "African Public Radio", which had broadcast the interview with the two men, was set on fire, leading to the arrest of its director, who remained behind bars for a month. One of the two who confessed to the crime - Nduwimana Juvent Juvenali Kiraga - was also killed.
The investigation into the murder of the three nuns in Burundi was suspended at some point. But it was then renewed after the presentation in Parma on 27 September 2024 of the book “In the heart of the mysteries“ by journalist Giusei Baioni. Based on the journalistic work, the Parma prosecutor's office opened a new case and instructed the Carabinieri investigation unit to start investigations.
The initial investigation in 2014 began on the basis of a brief report from the Italian embassy in Kampala, Uganda, but the case against an unknown perpetrator was dropped in 2015 due to lack of grounds for Italian jurisdiction. In May 2018, the embassy informed the prosecutor's office that Guillaume Harushimana had obtained a visa to Italy to participate in training related to his role in an association in Parma. He was then questioned, but denied involvement in the murder and presented an alibi. This stage was also dropped due to lack of evidence. In September 2024, after analyzing Bayoni's book, a third phase of the investigation began, including statements from several nuns who had never been heard by the Burundian authorities. The author herself also gave testimony.
The investigation revealed "a climate of real terror in Burundi, linked to the fact that all the participants in the case were linked in various ways to the country's secret services, from whose ranks the instigators, organizers and perpetrators of the triple murder came", the prosecutor's office stressed.
Harushimana has lived in Parma since at least 2020, but has been traveling between Italy and Burundi since 2015. He also worked for the association "Parma Alimenta", but was later released when rumors began to spread about his involvement in the case, the investigators said.