'Kagame started genocide'

2004-03-09 21:32

Paris - A police report for a French judicial enquiry blames the Rwandan President Paul Kagame for the 1994 rocket attack that killed the country's then leader Juvenal Habyarimana and triggered the genocide of half a million Tutsis, Le Monde newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The report - by the anti-terrorist division of the judicial police - found that Kagame, who was head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel movement, gave orders for the two missiles to be fired at Habyarimana's plane as it prepared to land at Kigali airport on April 6, Le Monde said.

The following day the majority Hutu population began the massacres of Tutsis that lasted till July 17.

The police findings, which have been handed over to France's leading anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, were based on interviews with hundreds of witnesses, including one member of the cell ordered by Kagame to carry out the attack, Le Monde said.

Bruguiere has been investigating the crash for the last six years, after the families of French victims who died in it filed suit in Paris.

According to Le Monde, the case is fraught with diplomatic complications because when Bruguiere presents his conclusions to the prosecutor's office it could lead quickly to international arrest warrants for senior members of Kagame's entourage.

Kagame would himself be protected by his presidential immunity.

The police report quoted the member of the assassination cell as saying that Kagame - a Tutsi who had fled Rwanda - had little regard for Tutsis who had stayed behind, who he thought had assimilated too closely with their Hutu masters.

"The Tutsis of the interior were potential enemies who had to be eliminated just like the Hutus in order to take power, which was Kagame's essential aim," the man was quoted as saying.

Relations between Paris and Kigali have been tense for many years as a result of accusations that France - Habyarimana's main backer - connived in the genocide.

Le Monde reported that France has helped opponents of Kagame to escape from the country, and that the authorities in Kigali have "physically eliminated several of Bruguiere's informers".

- AFP