The latest salvo against French influence comes weeks after the Rwandan government accused more than 30 French politicians, officials and military officers of complicity in the genocide, including the late president, Francois Mitterrand, and called for their prosecution.
A two-year investigation by an official commission alleged that French forces in Rwanda committed crimes against humanity and protected those who organized the genocide, helping them to flee the country and escape justice.
The Rwandan inquiry followed allegations by France’s leading anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, that effectively accused Rwanda’s Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, of bringing mass murder on his own people by allegedly ordering the 1994 assassination of the then president, Juvenal Habyarimana, which marked the start of the genocide.
The judge could not indict Kagame as head of state but he issued international arrest warrants for nine of his closest aides and advised the tribunal trying those behind the genocide to pursue Kagame.
RSS