Mbaye diagne

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Captain Diagne Mbaye Senegal was a Senegalese Army captain and a member of UNAMIR during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He is credited with saving innumerable lives during his time in Rwanda.

Captain Mbaye was stationed at the Hotel des Mille Collines depicted in the movie Hotel Rwanda. From literally the first hours of the genocide, Capt. Mbaye ignored the Rules of engagement#ROE failures of the United Nations not to intervene, and secretly began efforts to save the lives of potential victims of the genocide.

On the morning of April 7, 1994, he rescued the children of the moderate Prime Minster Agathe Uwilingiyimana who was assassinated by the presidential guards assigned to protect her. The Prime Minister's compound was also protected by peacekeepers from Belgium and Ghana. The presidential guards forced the peacekeepers to surrender their weapons. The prime ministe' husband and ten Belgium peacekeepers were also murdered.

In the days and weeks that followed, Capt. Mbaye became a legend among U.N. forces in Kigali. He continued his solo rescue missions, charming his way past checkpoints full of killers. On one occasion he found a group of 25 Tutsis hiding in a house in Nyamirambo, a Kigali neighborhood that was particularly dangerous. Capt. Mbaye ferried the Tutsis to the UN headquarters in groups of five -- on each trip passing through 23 militia checkpoints with a Jeep-load of Tutsis. Somehow, he convinced the killers to let these Tutsis live. It is now widely believed that Capt. Mbaye personally saved hundreds of Rwandan lives.

On May 31st, Capt. Mbaye was driving alone back to U.N. headquarters in Kigali when a random mortar shell, fired by the Rwandan Patriotic Front towards an extremist checkpoint, landed next to his Jeep. He was killed instantly.

UNAMIR Force Commander Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire wrote Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda: "As one of his fellow MILOBs said: 'He was the bravest of all'. The BBC's Mark Doyle who considered Diagne a friend, recently wrote to me, "Can you imagine the blanket media coverage that a dead British or American peacekeeper of Mbaye's bravery and stature would have received? He got almost none."

Captain Mbaye is remembered in the 2004 PBS Frontline documentary, Ghosts of Rwanda. The documentary includes actual footage taken by Mbaye himself.

Capt. Mbaye, a devout Muslim, was one of nine children from a poor family on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal's capital. He was the first in his family to go to college. After graduating from the University of Dakar, he joined the army and worked his way up through the ranks. After his death, he was buried in Senegal with full military honors. He was survived by a wife and two young children.

In mid-May 1994, about a month into the genocide, someone gave Capt. Diagne a video camera, and he started filming U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers in Kigali. His tape is a rare glimpse inside the U.N.'s force in Rwanda -- humorous, poignant and very human. But there are no clues as to how Capt. Mbaye managed to save so many lives. He never took his camera on his rescue missions, and so the true source of his heroism remains a mystery.

After Capt. Mbaye died, one of his closest friends -- Lt. Col. Babacar Faye, another Senegalese officer in Kigali -- found his videotape and later gave it to Capt. Mbaye's family in Dakar. Lt. Col. Faye and Capt. Mbaye's widow kindly made the tape available to FRONTLINE so that the memory of this remarkable soldier and hero can live on.