Burundi woman tells of husband’s plot to kill her

SYDNEY, Saturday

One year ago, gunmen in Burundi were hired to kill a woman visiting from Australia. But the hit did not go as planned, giving her a chance to turn the tables on the man who wanted her dead.

“I felt like somebody who had risen from death,” said Noela Rukundo.

The killers 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 the man who had put out a contract for her murder.

“When I got out of the car, he saw me and put his hands on his head saying, ‘Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?’”

Noela’s ordeal began five days earlier, and 7,500 miles away in her native Burundi.

She returned to Africa from her home in Melbourne, Australia, to attend her stepmother’s funeral.

“I had lost the last person I call mother,” she says.

THE TRAP

By early evening, she retreated to her hotel room. As she dozed in the stifling heat of Bujumbura, her phone rang. It was a call from Australia - from Balenga Kalala, her husband and father of her three children.

“He said he’d been trying to get me the whole day,” Noela says. “He asked why I was sleeping so early. I said I was not well but he told me to go outside for fresh air,” she says.

Noela took his advice. She didn’t think much about it.

Moments after stepping outside the hotel compound, Noela found herself in danger.

“I opened the gate and saw a man heading in my direction. Then he pointed a gun on me,” she says.

He said he would shoot if she screamed. The gunman motioned Noela to a car.

“I was sitting between two men with guns. They covered my face. After that, I didn’t say anything,” she adds.

The car stopped after about 30 or 40 minuets. Noela was pushed in a building and tied to a chair.

She says one of the kidnappers told his friend to call the boss. “I didn’t know if their boss was in a room,” she goes on.

Then they asked her what she had done to the man who sent them to kill her.

“I didn’t have any problem with anybody so I asked them which man they were talking about,” she says.

They told Noela it was her husband who had sent them. She refused to believe what she heard and one of them slapped her hard.

The leader made a call. “We already have her,” he told his paymaster. The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to hear the reply.

“Kill her,” she heard her husband’s voice.

Just hours earlier, the same voice had consoled Noela over the death of her stepmother.

“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 dump the body,” goes on. She passed out.

Born in the DR Congo, Kalala 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.

He soon found steady employment in Melbourne, first in a seafood processing factory then as a forklift operator.

“He could speak English,” recalls Noela, who also arrived in Australia in 2004. “My social worker was his social worker too.”

They set up home in the Kings Park suburb. 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 could kill me. I loved him.”

As the gang’s leader ended the call to Kalala, Noela was coming round.

HIT-MAN WITH PRINCIPLES

“He looked at me then said, ‘We’re not going to kill you. We don’t kill women and children.’ He told me I was stupid because my husband paid them the deposit in November. It was January when I went to Burundi,” she says.

He said Noela was stupid because she couldn’t see that something was 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 and increased the murder fee by 3,400 Australian dollars.

At the hotel, Noela’s brother was getting anxious. He called Kalala to ask for $545 to pay the police to open an investigation. Kalala duly wired the money.

After two days in captivity, Noela was freed.

“We give you 80 hours to leave this country,” the gang leader told her. “Your husband is serious. Maybe we can spare your life, but other people, will not do the same,” he told her.

Before leaving, the gang handed her evidence they hoped would incriminate Kalala — a memory card with recorded phone conversations and receipts for the Western Union money transfers.

“We want you to go back and tell stupid women like you what happened,” the gang leader told Noela. “You people get a chance to go overseas but you use your money to kill one another.”

Noela called the pastor of her church in Melbourne, Dassano Harruno Nantogmah, and requested help.

“It was in the middle of the night. I asked him not to tell anybody. He didn’t believe that my husband could kill anybody,’ she says.

Three days later, Noela was in Melbourne. By now, Kalala had informed the community that his wife had died in a car 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 to a car,” she says.

As they drove away, she sprang a surprise.

“I stood looking at him. He was scared and didn’t believe it. Then he started walking towards me. It was like he was walking on broken glass,” she says.

“He kept talking to himself and when he reached where I was, he touched my shoulder and jumped.” 

“Is it really you?” he asked. Then he began screaming that he was sorry.

Noela called the police who ordered Kalala off the premises. She obtained a court order against him.

Days later, the police instructed Noela to call Kalala. He made a full confession to his wife, captured on tape, begging for forgiveness.

“He said he wanted to kill me because he was jealous,” says Noela. “He thought I was about to leave him for another man.”.

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 phone conversation with Noela and the other evidence, he began 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”.

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 plague her. “Every night, I see what happened 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.