Rwandans have long been used to Pegasus-style surveillance | Michela Wrong

Information-gathering always was a speciality of President Paul Kagame. Modern technology has simply extended his remit

It was a silver BlackBerry, surprisingly heavy in the hand, belonging to a businessman who had flown from Kigali to South Africa to visit the exiled former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya. The businessman, Apollo Kiririsi Gafaranga, boasted that he had bought it in Qatar.

It cost me $10,000," a friend of Karegeya's remembers the businessman telling them. It's a model you can only buy in the Middle East, a phone you can't be tracked on." Karegeya picked it up, weighed it, and put it back down on the counter where it was charging. You've been robbed," the ex spy chief joked.