France-backed Hutu killed Habyarimana'
Sunday, 26th November, 2006 E-mail article Print article
ANGRY: Kagame
KIGALI, Sunday - Senior Hutu commanders backed by France shot down the
plane carrying Rwanda's president in 1994, killing him and touching off a
genocide, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told Reuters on Saturday.
Kagame also said in an exclusive interview that France harboured former
government officials who masterminded the slaughter of 800,000 minority Tutsi
and politically moderate Hutu during the 100 days of bloodshed which followed
Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's death in the plane crash in Kigali.
"The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda has information pointing
to people who were responsible for gunning down Habyarimana's plane, and these
are Hutu extremists including senior commanders at the time of that government
with the support of France," Kagame said, at times visibly angry.
Kagame made his comments a day after Kigali severed diplomatic ties with
Paris, furious at a French judge who issued arrest warrants for nine of
Kagame's associates and called for Kagame to face trial over the downing of
Habyarimana's plane.
The case has revived Rwanda's festering enmity towards its former ally
France, which it says armed, trained and gave orders to those who carried out
the genocide.
Shortly after the interview, Rwandan officials said French ambassador
Dominique Decherf had boarded a plane for Paris. The Belgian foreign ministry
said it has agreed with Rwanda that it can protect the French embassy and
French interests in Rwanda. The charges have also dealt a personal blow to
Kagame, whose rebel Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front, defeated the Hutu in a march
across the country to the capital Kigali.
He recalled how the press in 1994 reported plans to assassinate
Habyarimana from within his own camp, and accused French soldiers and
presidential guards of preventing UN forces from accessing the crash site as
part of their inquiry.
"All this is put aside and the blame is apportioned to RPF. The French
know who shot down the plane. It must be them who are responsible," he said.
France, one of the key supporters of the Hutu-led regime that governed
the country in the years leading up to the genocide, has always denied any
involvement in the massacres.
A French parliamentary commission in 1998 cleared Paris of responsibility
for the genocide while admitting that "strategic errors" had been made.
But, a separate inquiry requested by the families of the French crew
flying Habyarimana's plane and the late President's widow Agathe, culminated in
magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere's decision this week to issue arrest warrants
for nine Kagame aides, including the military chief of staff.
Kigali accuses Agathe of being the founder of Akazu, a small but powerful
circle of Hutu family members and relatives who plotted to exterminate the
Tutsis, and the government has long wanted the former first lady to face
justice over the genocide.
"They (France) are harbouring Agathe Habyarimana whose evidence is being
used by the judge and yet she is a killer," Kagame said, adding that other
former government officials had also sought refuge in France.
Kagame said there was evidence France tried to hamper the RPF's fight
against Rwanda's then Hutu-dominated government, citing two events during a
visit to Paris in 1992. He said French authorities arrested him and that a
senior French diplomat warned him that the RPF should stop fighting.
"For a French official as far back as 1992 to have said that - I did not
understand it at that time," Kagame said. "I only understood it after the
genocide took place. They were involved in the planning."
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