A French probe into what sparked the 1994 Rwandan genocide appears to exonerate Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Tutsi allies after Paris had previously accused him of triggering the killing of 800,000 people in 100 days.
Diplomatic relations between Rwanda and France were broken off in 2006 when a French judge said Kagame, the rebel leader at the time of the killings, had orchestrated the assassination of then-Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, to trigger the bloodshed.
After Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, Hutu extremists slaughtered Tutsis and moderate Hutus in some of the fastest mass killings ever perpetrated. Kagame’s Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front seized power in the aftermath of the genocide.
Kagame has accused former French president Francois Mitterrand’s administration of training and arming the Hutu militias responsible for the slaughter.
A team of French investigators, led by two judges, re-examined a dozen eyewitness testimonies to work out where the two missiles that brought down Habyarimana’s Dassault Falcon 50 plane were fired from, in an effort to determine final responsibility. Both sides had bases near the airport.
The judges on Tuesday presented their report to Kagame’s lawyers, who told media that they had concluded the shots could not have come from a military base occupied by Kagame’s supporters. The findings did not specifically point the finger at the Hutus.
“Today’s findings constitute vindication for Rwanda’s long-held position on the circumstances surrounding events of April 1994,” Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Louise Mushikiwabo said in a statement. “With this scientific truth, Judges [Mark] Trevidic and [Nathalie] Poux have slammed shut the door on the seventeen-year campaign to deny the genocide or blame its victims.”
“It is now clear to all that the downing of the plane was a coup d’etat carried [out] by extremist Hutu elements and their advisers who controlled Kanombe Barracks,” Mushikiwabo said.
However, Jean-Yves Dupeux, a lawyer for Habyarimana’s children, said the findings did not support the Rwandan government’s account.
“The findings cannot point the finger at the Hutu camp,” he said. “What the experts are saying is that the shots could not have been fired from Paul Kagame’s camp. That doesn’t mean it is the other side.”
A probe by the Rwandan -government in January 2010 blamed extremists within Habyarimana’s inner circle for downing the plane, saying the murder was designed to scuttle a planned power-sharing deal and act as a pretext for the genocide.
According to the Rwandan inquiry set up by Kagame — known as the Mutsinzi report — Rwanda Armed Forces troops stationed in the Kanombe Barracks near the airport fired the surface-to-air rockets, the culmination of months of planning.
French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere’s 2006 report said Kagame was responsible, arranging for the plane to be shot down to trigger reprisal killings between ethnic Tutsi and Hutu, and give his Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels and allies grounds to take power by force.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not