Cyprien Ntaryamira

Cyprien Ntaryamira (6 March 1955 – 6 April 1994) was the Hutu President of Burundi from 5 February 1994 until his death two months later. He was travelling in an aircraft with Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana that was shot down near Kigali, Rwanda.
Early life.
Ntaryamira was born in the Mageyo Zone's commune of Mubimbi, Bujumbura Rural Province, in what was the Belgian-administered United Nations Trust Territory of Ruanda-Urundi. He entered school in Bujumbura, but after an abortive Hutu rebellion in 1972, he and thousands of other ethnic Hutus fled the country.
Ntaryamira eventually received a degree in agriculture from the National University of Rwanda in Butare in 1982. He became politically active in socialist movements and returned to his native country in 1983 to work as an agricultural official. He was briefly a political prisoner during the regime of Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza in 1985.
Political career.
In August 1986, he became a founding member and economic policy director of the Hutu-dominated Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU). His party gained power after Burundi's first democratic elections in 1993, which ended a long history of rule by the Tutsi minority and the Union for National Progress (UPRONA). The new president, Melchior Ndadaye, appointed Ntaryamira Minister of Agriculture.
In October 1993, however, Ndadaye and his two top officials were assassinated, which sparked a parliamentary deadlock and the Burundi Civil War. Ntaryamira was selected as president on 5 February 1994 as a compromise since he was Hutu but was considered a moderate in Ndadaye's tradition. Anatole Kanyenkiko, a UPRONA figure, was made prime minister.
Death.
The respite was brief, as the plane carrying Ntaryamira and Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a fellow Hutu, was shot down on April 6, 1994, by unidentified men while it was landing at the Rwandan capital, Kigali. Both were killed, which started the Rwandan genocide.
Two days later, on 8 April, power was passed to Ntaryamira's longtime associate, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, the president of the National Assembly.