French politicians accused of assisting Rwandan genocide

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

French politicians accused of assisting Rwandan genocide
· Investigators say Paris armed Hutu extremists
· 500-page report follows two-year inquiry
Chris McGreal, Africa correspondent
The Guardian, Wednesday August 6 2008

The Rwandan government has called for the prosecution of a number of senior French politicians over the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, after releasing a report from an official commission that accuses the former president François Mitterand and more than 30 senior French officials of aiding the killers.

A two-year investigation by the commission also accuses French forces in Rwanda of crimes against humanity and of using a UN-sanctioned haven for refugees to help those responsible for the 100 days of mass slaughter to escape justice.

The 500-page report is the latest salvo in a bitter struggle between France and Rwanda's Tutsi leadership to pin responsibility for the genocide on each other.

Two years ago a prominent French judge accused Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president today but in 1994 the leader of Tutsi rebels fighting the Hutu government, of ordering the assassination of the then president, Juvenal Habyarimana, which kick-started the killing. The accusation outraged Kagame, whose Rwandan Patriotic Front went on to defeat the Hutu extremist regime that organised the murder of Tutsis.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/06/rwanda.france