Rwanda National Police

Separate security operations conducted in Gisagara and Huye District on Sunday destroyed fourteen illegal breweries that were distilling illicit brew commonly known locally as muriture.

Muriture, which is classified as a narcotic drug in Rwanda, is made out of mixed industrial fertilizers, dissolved bricks, water, sugarcane residues, banana juice, water and sugar among others.

Police also seized about 3770 litres of the illicit drink from the breweries, whose owners were also taken into custody.

At least 3320 litres were seized in Mukindo Sector of Gisagara District alone, where thirteen distilleries were destroyed and owners arrested.

The other suspect; Vedaste Twagirayezu was also arrested in Nyabisindu Cell of Kigoma Sector in Huye District after he was found distilling muriture. About 450 litres and raw materials were recovered from his brewery.

Police also recovered about 5000 bottles of Heineken, which Twagirayezu was using the pack and sell the psychotropic substances.

All the seized substances were disposed of in presence of residents, where Police and local leaders also took an opportunity to inform them on dangers of consuming the illicit drinks and criminal repercussions to distillers as well as their role in reporting distillers.

“This is a continuous operation against illegal distilleries and to fight illicit drugs in general,” Chief Inspector of Police (CIP) Emmanuel Kayigi, the Police spokesperson for the Southern Province, said.

The operations comes at the time when the government and Rwanda National Police (RNP) is intensively engaged in community awareness programmes and operations against all sorts of narcotic drugs labeled as the major obstacle to youth development and affecting the education sector in particular.

“There are standard healthy and legal procedures to start a brewery, which also prescribes the raw materials that are not harmful to consumers, which should be followed; contrary to that it becomes our duty as police to enforce the law,” CIP Kayigi said.

Article 594 of the Rwandan penal code, partly, provides that any person who, unlawfully, makes, transforms, imports, or sells narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances within the country, shall be liable to a term of imprisonment of three to five years and a fine of Rwf500,000 to Rwf5 million.

Late last year, RNP and Rwanda Standards Bureau (RSB) started operations against illegal distilleries, with at least 80 of them closed for either operating illegally or contrary to the set standards.

RSB specifies that “only food grade processing aids recognized as safe for human consumption shall be used during the manufacture.”

Other standard requirements include labeling as a prerequisite; the name of the products, physical and postal address of manufacturer; net contents in milliliters or liters; ethyl alcohol content; date of manufacture and expiry date; storage instruction; statutory warnings; and list of ingredients in descending order.

Last month, RSB announced that it had suspended all distilleries without the S-Mark – Standard Mark. As of October last year, there were only 12 licensed distilleries that met all the requirements.