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The Court of Cassation put a definitive end on Tuesday to the investigation into the attack against the plane of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, in 1994, considered to be the trigger for the genocide. This case poisoned Franco-Rwandan relations for more than twenty years.
French justice closed, Tuesday, February 15, the investigation into the attack against the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, in 1994, recognized as the trigger for the genocide of the Tutsi.
The Court of Cassation definitively validated the dismissal pronounced in 2018 by Parisian investigating judges in the investigation into this attack, putting an end to this file which poisoned Franco-Rwandan relations for more than twenty years.
On the evening of April 6, 1994, a Falcon 50 carrying President Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down while landing in Kigali by at least one missile.
Habyarimana, a Hutu, was returning from a summit in Tanzania devoted to the Rwandan and Burundian crises and the process of negotiations initiated with the rebellion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF, with a Tutsi majority) led by Paul Kagame, the current president of the country.
Rwanda’s representative to the UN says the two presidents “were assassinated by the enemies of peace”. The Rwandan Ministry of Defense says the plane was “shot down by unidentified elements”.
The day after the attack, Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, ten Belgian UNAMIR blue helmets in charge of his protection and several opposition ministers were killed.
Large-scale massacres then began. Hutu Interahamwe militias and the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) methodically massacred Tutsi, as well as Hutu opponents of Habyarimana’s party. Throughout the country, Tutsi men, women and children were exterminated with machetes.
The population, encouraged by the authorities and the media, including the infamous Free Radio-Television of the Thousand Hills (RTLM), largely took part in the massacres, rapes and looting.
Between April and July 1994, the genocide claimed around 800,000 lives, according to the UN.
End of a legal saga
On March 27, 1998, a judicial inquiry was opened in France, after a complaint from the family of a French pilot killed in the attack.
In November 2006, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, in charge of the investigation, recommended prosecution against President Kagame before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for his “alleged participation” in the attack and signed arrest warrants. targeting his relatives.
In the aftermath, Kigali cut ties with Paris, and embarked on a counter-investigation which accused extremists of the FAR of the attack and blamed France for its support for the “genocidal regime” of Habyarimana.
Diplomatic relations resume three years later. In the meantime, Judge Bruguière has been replaced by Judge Marc Trévidic.
On January 10, 2012, a French expert report on the attack concluded that the plane was shot down by missiles fired from the Kanombe military camp, then in the hands of Habyarimana’s presidential guard.
On December 20, 2017, in Paris, anti-terrorism judges Jean-Marc Herbaut and Nathalie Poux, who took over the case, signaled the end of the investigation.
On December 21, 2018, the investigating judges issued a dismissal order for lack of “sufficient charges” against nine members or former members of Paul Kagame’s entourage.
On July 3, 2020, the Paris Court of Appeal confirms the dismissal. The lawyers of the Habyarimana family and those of the French crew of the plane are appealing in cassation. These appeals were dismissed on Tuesday.
With AFP