Reporter accused of fabricating stories
MONTREAL — François Bugingo was a Quebec media star, a seemingly fearless foreign correspondent with a knack for showing up in the heart of the action.
He was an eyewitness to a gruesome execution after the fall of Libya’s Gadhafi regime. He came under fire from al-Shabaab militants in Mogadishu in 2011. A year earlier, he had been dispatched to Mauritania to negotiate the release of a journalist held hostage by al-Qaida.
As early as 1993, at the age of 19, he had been on the front lines in Sarajevo, holed up with a Serbian sniper who drank brandy and played guitar into the night.
But on the weekend, Bugingo’s swashbuckling reputation unravelled as La Presse published an investigation revealing that these and several of his other exploits appear to have been invented.
The TVA network, the Journal de Montreal and 98.5 FM — all of whom featured Bugingo’s work regularly — announced his immediate suspension pending internal investigations.
On 98.5 FM, host Benoit Dutrizac said Monday the revelations about Bugingo, a friend as well as a contributor, have shocked the radio station. “I am furious that a friend lied to me,” he said. TVA’s Groupe Media said the allegations against Bugingo are “significant” and being taken seriously.
Bugingo, 41, published a message on Facebook to his listeners and readers Saturday, reacting to what he called La Presse’s “degrading” article.
“I was stunned by this attack, and I am sorry that my current employers have been drawn in despite themselves,” he said. “For the past two years that you have been following me regularly on the radio, TV, in the newspaper and on digital platforms, you know very well that the information I share with you is always verified, solid and respectful of your attention.”
Aside from Radio-Canada’s reporters, there are few full-time correspondents representing Quebec-based media overseas, and Bugingo had carved out a niche as a man with intimate knowledge of the world’s hot spots. A native of Congo, he moved to Montreal in 1997, finding work with Radio-Canada and Radio-Quebec before moving on to his current positions.
In 2010, he spoke at a Montreal conference on peacekeeping, and his biography said he had “covered virtually every conflict of the last 15 years (Rwanda, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Congo, etc.)”
But it was his claim stemming from a more recent conflict — post-Gadhafi Libya — that sparked his fall from grace.
La Presse investigative reporter Isabelle Hachey said Monday a February column in the Journal de Montreal set off alarm bells. At the end of the column, Bugingo recounted meeting Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, “a few months ago” in a Libyan prison. “You’ll see. They are all going to have reason to miss my father soon,” Gadhafi was quoted saying. “You will miss Gadhafi.”
Having reported from Libya and tried unsuccessfully to interview Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, Hachey knew how hard it was. She was surprised Bugingo would mention such a reporting coup at the end of a column.
Questioned on the interview by La Presse, Bugingo said it took place not a few months ago but in 2012. Prison officials in Libya told La Presse Gadhafi had not granted any interviews that year. Asked why he had waited three years to report on his meeting, Bugingo said it was because it was a difficult interview, with Gadhafi’s Arabic translated into butchered English. Hachey noted the younger Gadhafi, who studied at London School of Economics, speaks excellent English.
The Gadhafi story opened the gates to a flood of other dubious stories:
In 2014, Bugingo wrote of witnessing the execution in Misrata, Libya of one of the Gadhafi regime’s worst torturers, who before his death yelled, “I hate the bad man the Guide made of me.”
Bugingo admitted to La Presse he had not been in Misrata. “I must have read that somewhere,” he said.
In 2011, Bugingo told La Presse he had gone to Mauritania the year before to negotiate a hostage release on behalf of the non-governmental organization Reporters sans frontieres. He described being threatened by an al-Qaida representative as planes flew overhead.
Four past and present directors of RSF told La Presse that Bugingo was never sent to negotiate a hostage release.
Through his lawyer, Bugingo said Sunday night he was temporarily “withdrawing from the public space” to prepare a response to the allegations. “I am committed to defending my integrity and proving my professionalism,” he said.
Dutrizac said that after learning the La Presse story was about to be published, he asked Bugingo last week whether he had been lying. Bugingo denied any wrongdoing.
“Did Francois lie because he’s a compulsive liar?” Dutrizac asked Monday. “I’ve heard that theory all weekend. If it’s true, he needs help. But he cannot have a place on our show.”