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Rwanda pans 'arrogant' warrants
02/04/2008 12:40 - (SA)
Kigali - Rwandan President Paul Kagame lashed out against "arrogant" arrest warrants issued by a Spanish court in February for 40 Rwandan army officers accused of genocide, according to a report on Wednesday.
The president said the warrants targeted the whole of his formerly rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), in his first public reaction to the announcement.
"They are actually not indicting the individuals listed, they are indicting RPF," he said, according to the pro-government New Times newspaper.
"Just imagine the arrogance of it! How a Spanish judge sitting in a Spanish village feels a duty to indict a whole leadership of a country!"
Kagame's RPF in July 1994 put an end to the 100-day slaughter of around 800 000 people, mostly from the Tutsi minority, by Hutu extremist militias and government troops.
Spain's top criminal court on February 06 announced it would prosecute 40 Rwandan army officers for genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism related to events that took place between 1994 and 2000.
"All the people indicted, they were all under my command. He should put all the responsibility on my shoulders, and wait until I am out of office," said Kagame, who was immune from prosecution as a serving head of State.
"Some people in the West ... think that Rwandans or Africans are all killers. According to them, we are all the same. But are we really the same? No, I can't accept that. The war we waged was to liberate our country," he added.
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