Rebels want Kagame arrested

2004-03-15 20:44

Nairobi - Exiled Rwandan Hutu rebels have called for the arrest of President Paul Kagame because of his alleged "involvement" in the 1994 killing of his predecessor, which sparked the 100-day genocide in the country.

The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) want "the arrest of all people involved in this attack, including Paul Kagame and his accomplices, so they can account for their acts before the appropriate jurisdictions," an FDLR statement said.

Rwanda's former president Juvenal Habyarimana, a member of the Hutu majority, was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994, an act which was immediately followed by the genocide of some 800 000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The French daily Le Monde last week reported that a police report prepared for French judge Jean-Louis Brugiere named Kagame, then a leader of a Tutsi rebel movement, as the main decision-maker behind the attack on Habyarimana's plane, while about 10 of his officers played commanding roles.

Kagame and his now ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, have denied the allegations and dismissed the report, saying it brought nothing to new to back up charges already made in the past.

"Having pressed in the past for the creation of a committee of inquiry into the attack of April 6, 1994, the FDLR are convinced that Judge Brugiere's report constitutes an important element in the bringing equitable justice."

Fighters of the FDLR, set up in the east of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo on Rwanda's western border and consisting of Hutu extremists who allegedly took part in the genocide, have been encamped and disarmed in principle, but the group still has exiles in the DRC and in Europe, particularly Belgium and Germany.

- AFP