Few
events have been the subject of as many rumours and lies as the assassination
on 6 April 1994 of Rwanda's President Juvénal Habyarimana. We may never know the
identity of the assassins who fired the two missiles that blew his jet apart as
it came in to land at Kigali International Airport; yet this one key event
signalled the targeted elimination of Rwanda's political opposition, and triggered
the genocide of the Tutsi people.
Since
that night there has been a ceaseless propaganda war, with each side blaming the
other for what happened. One version is that the rebel Tutsi RPF assassinated
the Hutu president in a cynical bid to oust his regime; another version blames
Hutu extremists who, faced with the possibility of power-sharing with the Tutsi
minority, carried out a coup d'etat in order to create a "pure Hutu"
state.
This
is why the publication of an expert investigation into the aircraft crash in
Paris today will have such tremendous repercussions. After 18 years it has
essentially settled the central question of who was morally responsible for
triggering the genocide.
In
some 400 detailed pages, including the conclusions of six experts who visited
the crash site in 2010, the report has provided scientific proof that, as the
plane made a final approach, the assassins were waiting in the confines of
Kanombe military camp – the highly fortified home of Rwanda's French-trained
elite unit known as the Presidential Guard, and which is directly under the
flight path. This secure military barracks would have been inaccessible to RPF
rebels, a point made some years ago in a report on the crash produced by the
Rwandan government. The government will feel vindicated, but it will be keen
nonetheless to consign this episode to the history books: its priority remains
to create a united society.
In
France the report is likely to cause considerable embarrassment – certainly and
most immediately for Judge Jean-Louis
Bruguière, an investigating magistrate who first looked at the
assassination in 1997 and was convinced the missiles were fired by an RPF
hit-squad from a farm near the airport. In his own report he named current
Rwandan government officials, including the head of Rwanda's army, as being
responsible, and in 2006, amid worldwide publicity, he issued nine
international warrants for their arrest. There was a storm of outrage in Kigali
and diplomatic ties with France were broken, although there has since been a
rapprochement.
But
the Bruguière report did not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. He had relied
on the testimony of former RPF soldiers who claimed firsthand knowledge but who
eventually retracted their testimony. A new investigation by Judge Marc Trévidic and his colleague Nathalie
Poux began in 2007. Trévidic's reputation was as a fiercely independent
investigator: Paris Match called him a "judge who defies state
power".
It is
ironic, given the murky past of France in Rwandan affairs – and France was the
staunchest of allies to the Hutu regime in Kigali – that the truth of the
assassination seems to now reside in the hands of French lawyers. There are
certainly implications for those French military officials and politicians who
were involved in the foreign policy towards Rwanda in 1994, and the report will
do nothing for the reputation of President François Mitterrand, who ran the
secretive Africa unit at the Elysée Palace and who steadfastly supported the
Hutu regime. France's policy towards Rwanda has for years remained
unaccountable to either parliament or the press.
This
week's report will certainly give pause for thought for defence teams at the
international criminal court for Rwanda, where the Bruguière report has become
the cornerstone in many cases. Rwandans facing genocide charges have for years
accused the RPF of the assassination, claiming the Tutsis were killed not as
the result of a conspiracy to murder but in spontaneous revenge attacks by
Hutus devastated at their president's murder by Tutsis.
In
spite of the new information, there remain some difficult questions. On the
night of the crash there were senior French military officers living in the
Kanombe camp embedded with the Rwandan elite units. As UN peacekeepers were
prevented from getting to the wreckage these French officers are said to have
taken away the cockpit voice recorder and black box.
And
no one has yet identified a group of French military officers who, within hours
of the crash, had approached the commander of the UN Mission for Rwanda,
offering him a team of French aviation experts to enquire into the crash, an
offer Dallaire immediately refused.
Sooner
or later the truth will emerge about how the misleading Bruguière report came
to be written, and why over so many years so many people were taken in by it.
The story is far from over.
No comments:
Post a Comment