consultation

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

Rwanda genocide: What if Kagame killed Habyarimana?

afrol News, 24 November - The French judiciary claims to have proof indicating Rwanda's President Paul Kagame ordered his rebels to shoot down the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana in April 1994. The Kigali government blames radical Hutu groups. But does this question really matter? Would Mr Kagame's assumed guilt mean the Rwandan genocide needs to be looked on differently?

Those most interested in claiming President Kagame is guilty of killing thus-President Habyarimana are the defence lawyers at the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The lawyers, who defend those accused of the worst thinkable crimes against humanity during the 1994 genocide, claim that this would make the current regime in Rwanda co-responsible.

Kingsley Moghalu, a former special counsel of the Tribunal, reached a horrible conclusion in his recent book, "Rwanda's Genocide: the Politics of Global Justice". He claims that if Mr Kagame and the Tutsi rebels he led in April 1994 shot down the President's plane, then they triggered the genocide. Therefore, guilt for the genocide would need to be divided between the Tutsis and Hutus of Rwanda.

Critics of Mr Moghalu's conclusions - in the case they are not too outraged to be able to respond at all - say this theory is like saying the Germans and the Jews needed to share responsibility for the Holocaust, as the Jews had "triggered" bad feelings among Germans.

"Triggering" has become a word commonly used when mentioning the Habyarimana assassination. It "triggered the genocide", all journalists agree when writing about the current French case against President Kagame. If rebel leader Kagame killed President Habyarimana, then he "triggered" the genocide. That makes him co-responsible.

Forgotten is the fact that radical Hutu groups had been preparing for genocide for a long time. The Interahamwe militia was radicalised, armed and trained to start slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus at a given signal. Hate speech had been transmitted through Hutu media, radicalising the population, which was easy to lead into supporting the slaughtering of their neighbours when the Interahamwe led the way. Lists of "enemies" to slaughter were ready. The apparatus was built.

This was when President Habyarimana was still alive. President Habyarimana, a close friend of the French, was himself not among the most radical Hutus, but his government included several of the leaders of the genocide, the Akazu.

The official story in contemporary Rwanda - where President Kagame undoubtedly has contributed to a conscious rewriting of history - is that it was the Akazu that stood behind President Habyarimana's assassination. These radical Hutus were against a power sharing deal agreed upon with Mr Kagame's Tutsi rebels in Arusha in 1993, and decided to get rid of the President and get on with the genocide they had planned.

But what if that is not true? What if President Kagame is covering up his own role from when he was commander of the Uganda-based Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels. What if it was the RPF that wanted to get rid of President Habyarimana to avoid power sharing and grab total powers for themselves?

That would make Mr Kagame a coupist, for sure, but would it make him co-responsible for the genocide? Of course not. If based in Germany and trying to discuss whether the Jews were co-responsible for the Holocaust, one commits a criminal act, out of understandable reasons. This should not be different regarding the Rwandan genocide, because it was not the result of a war or an assassination, but of careful planning committed by Hutu extremists.

This has also been understood by the ICTR. Louise Arbour, when heading the Arusha tribunal, therefore ordered the court's prosecutor to stop investigations into the shooting down of President Habyarimana's plane. It was "not within the Tribunal's mandate," she said, acknowledging that the incident may have caused the Hutu extremists to start executing their genocide plan but that this plan was already developed and approved of.

The ICTR has failed to shed light on all the crucial details one needs to understand how the genocide was all planned and how the orders for its execution were given. But much is known about the detailed planning of the extremists in power in Kigali and their long preparation for the cruellest episode ever in African history. Enough to place guilt where it belongs.

Mr Kagame may have the blood of President Habyarimana, his Burundian counterpart and the airplane's partly French staff at his hands. This would however make him guilty of just another coup d'état in Africa in the 1990s. And - if interpreted very widely - of a terrorist attack; if interpreted more conservatively, of a political assassination that saw civilian victims. History and today's world is full of such, and although they should not be approved of, they are not prosecuted if not being part of systematic war crimes. Nobody accuses the RPF of that.

Rebel Kagame, while he may have stood behind the Habyarimana killing, later made more than up for himself. He led the RPF to victory over Rwanda's genocidal rulers without foreign help and as the outside world did nothing to stop the extremists from slaughtering around 800,000 civilians. Thanks to Mr Kagame and the RPF, there are still Tutsis in Rwanda and the genocide could be stopped before hundreds of thousands of more Rwandans were killed. And just that will for always be Mr Kagame's legacy.



The elimination of the suspects in the death of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana is moving slowly but surely.

On April 6, 1994 the plane carrying President Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart was shot down near Kanombe International Airport. All people aboard died and no group claimed responsibility.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front, human rights organizations, academics, and journalists immediately announced that Hutu extremists had killed Habyarimana because he had agreed to share power with the RPF.

Last year, former RPF military officer Jean-Pierre Mugabe spoke out against this theory after seeking asylum in the United States and described how the RPF planned and carried out Habyarimana's assassination.

Using information Mugabe made available to the public, AfroAmerica Network has found that the Rwandan Patriotic officer who fired the missile was executed in Bugesera but the Rwandan military told his family and friends he had committed suicide.

Another officer allegedly involved in the assassination is Major Kwikiriza. Kwikiriza served a two-year sentence after his battalion was decimated by Hutu insurgents in Gitarama. After his release the Rwandan army sent him to the United States for military training and he did not return to Rwanda.

According to Mugabe Lieutenant Colonel Kayonga, advisor to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Major Rose Kabuye, Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe, and Colonel Theoneste Lizinde were also involved in this assassination. The source that spoke to AfroAmerica Network confirmed Mugabe's information.

There is a civilian who drove the commando that fired the missile. AfroAmerica Network has been unable to identify him but the source said he is a businessman in Kigali.

RPF members connected to this assassination are dying one after another. An RPF commando allegedly assassinated Colonel Lizinde in Nairobi and the officer who fired the missile committed suicide according to Rwandan authorities.

A source said, "The practice here is to silence individuals who might reveal RPF dirty secrets".

There is concern that Rose Kabuye may be the next casualty. General Kagame has expelled her from the National Transitional Assembly, from the RPF, and from the Rwandan Patriotic Army. Her husband, a lieutenant stationed in Ruhengeri attempted to flee the country but was arrested before he could cross into Uganda. The army beat him up then threw him in jail.

A source told AfroAmerica Network that Kabuye belongs to a group of women who joined the RPF guerrilla war. After the RPF victory, most of the women were rewarded with very important positions. Kabuye became Governor of Kigali-Ville, Christine Umutoni Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Rehabilitation, Aloysia Inyumba Minister of family. This source said: "What the public does not know is that RPF leaders abused most of these women during the bush war. In western countries the public would be outraged if something like this happened and there would be investigations to find out the truth and punish the perpetrators."