GLPOST

Genocide in Rwanda: how Paul Kagame can count on the French press

After ensuring the impunity of international jurisdictions, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) succeeded, helped among other things by the activism of its Parisian relays, to torpedo the proceedings initiated on French territory.

At the end of an investigation of “several months”, Mediapart announced on July 24 that it had flushed out Aloys Ntiwiragabo, head of military intelligence in Rwanda until July 1994, and presented by the site owner Edwy Plenel as a ” pillar of the genocide of the Tutsi ”. Confusing this alleged ” genocidal ” was not easy, tell our sleuths, as ” his past as a master spy and head of a clandestine organization (1) forced to redouble discretion and prudence. “.

Following the revelations of Mediapart, which suspects France of having granted its benevolent protection to the one that anonymous “survivors” nickname the “Rwandan Eichmann “, the national antiterrorist prosecution opened in the wake of a preliminary investigation for  crimes against humanity. », While Kigali demanded a few weeks later the arrest and extradition of Aloys Ntiwiragabo. In reality, presumed innocent, and not subject to any arrest warrant, neither in France nor internationally, the latter did not live in hiding. Far from the elementary rules of ” discretion and prudence “, the ” master spy»Had the luxury of publishing a book in 2018 (2). And even to send on October 17 of the same year a letter to the examining magistrate Jean-Marc Herbaut, then in charge of the investigation of the attack of April 6, 1994 against the Falcon 50 of President Juvénal Habyarimana, with a copy to the lawyer of one of the civil parties, Maître Philippe Meillac. At the head of this letter, Aloys Ntiwiragabo specified his exact address – floor and apartment number included – without forgetting his email, his landline and mobile phones …

SMOKE SCREEN

But for Paul Kagame’s regime, Aloys Ntiwiragabo is not just an alleged “genocidaire”. He is also a political opponent coupled with an embarrassing witness in a legal case that embarrasses him to the point, that of the assassination of President Habyarimana, considered to be the trigger of the genocide of 1994. And the legal threat still looms: after an order dismissing the attack, issued in July, the case remains likely to be referred to cassation.

In the Kigali agenda, the procedures launched in France and abroad against the Hutu genocidaires act as a powerful smoke screen to hide the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) since the outbreak of civil war in 1990.

WASHINGTON SUPPORT

Thanks to the decisive diplomatic support of Washington and its roving ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper, Paul Kagame first succeeded in preventing the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), then headed by Swiss prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, from respecting its initial mandate (3) to focus on the only abuses perpetrated by elements of the Hutu army, the interim government in power during the genocide and the Interahamwe militias. During a conference organized at the Senate in Paris in April 2014, Carla Del Ponte had detailed the small maneuvers of Kigali to oust him from his post, to torpedo his “office of special investigations»Dedicated to the crimes of the RPF. She also testified to the fury of Paul Kagame engaged in the unconditional protection of his troops, while throwing on the “French” political responsibility for the genocide committed against the Tutsi.

Despite political changes in France since July 1994, when the RPF took power, the latter persists in claiming to be the victim of a vast plot hatched by Paris. During an interview granted on October 29, 2017 to RFI, Le Monde, and TV5, the head of Rwandan diplomacy Louise Mushikiwabo was indignant at the slowness of the judicial investigation devoted to the April 6 attack, an investigation carried out under the influence of ” certain (French) officials who supported a regime which committed genocide, and who have been trying for twenty-three years to hide their tracks, to cover their tracks. “Before contesting any independence from French justice:”As if by chance, when political relations were good (under Nicolas Sarkozy), justice progressed well (4). It is not justice, it is politics ”.

JUDICIAL COOPERATION

After the parenthesis François Hollande, considered disappointing by Kigali, Emmanuel Macron did not spare his efforts to please again a Rwanda considered essential to weigh in the Great Lakes region. First by supporting Louise Mushikiwabo – yet a member of a government that replaced school learning of French with English – at the head of the International Organization of la Francophonie, then by committing to improve judicial cooperation between the two countries.

An agreement to say the least problematic, so much does Rwanda disregard the most basic rights of the accused and is regularly blacklisted by human rights organizations for acts of torture, assassinations of opponents, and by the massive use of false testimony.

Out of ignorance or complacency with the Rwandan dictatorship, the French press sometimes resorted to this latter process without blinking, as illustrated by the Mediapart investigation devoted to Aloys Ntiwiragabo. Which quotes the inevitable Valérie Bemeriki, host at the Radio Télévisée des Mille Collines (RTLM) during the genocide.

FALSE WITNESSES

” Rwanda has never renounced the use of false witnesses, or even the invention of improbable proofs “, explains for example the academic André Guichaoua (5), about the possible trial of Félicien Kabuga, another suspected genocidal arrested in France on May 16. “ One can wonder if (the Rwandan authorities will dare) to have Valérie Bemeriki testify. Sentenced to life imprisonment in Rwanda, she has become the obligatory witness of the authorities in many proceedings, despite the rejection of all of her testimony, described as “deplorable” by the ICTR judges in the media trial “(6).

As for other sources of Mediapart in the Aloys file, whether it is the journalist-activist pro-RPF Jean-François Dupaquier, who has dual nationality or the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR), assuming for its part to work hand in hand with the Rwandan prosecution, they all demand the transfer of the “ pillar of genocide ” to Kigali. As if the regime of Paul Kagame remained a rule of law…. On September 14, the hero of the film “Hotel Rwanda” Paul Rusesabagina, celebrated around the world for having saved more than 1,000 Tutsi refugees in the hotel of 1,000 hills in Kigali, was indicted for “terrorism, murder and rebellion financing. ” By a court in the Rwandan capital.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which regularly points to kidnappings and other assassinations of opponents of Paul Kagame’s regime, Hutu and Tutsi alike, denounced a “ forced disappearance ”, the man having mysteriously vanished from Dubai to reappear, handcuffs and exhibited in front of cameras in Kigali. ” Rwanda has an established track record of using illegal, covert methods to target those perceived to be threats to the ruling party, ” said Lewis Mudge, HRW director for Central Africa. Unsurprisingly, Paul Kagamé – who is used to publicly congratulating himself on the death of his opponents – softly denied the kidnapping, simply suggesting that Paul Rusebagina could have been deceived on his final destination.


(1) Aloys Ntiwiragabo participated in the creation of the FDLR, a Hutu armed group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of war crimes

(2) Rwanda: the evil of the Great Lakes region, from the October 1990 war to the 1996-2002 refugee genocide. Scribe Editions.

(3) The ICTR was to consider all the crimes committed in Rwanda from 1 st January to 31 December 1994, regardless of the author

(4) The former boss of the French right, after his election to the supreme office in 2007, had indeed initiated a spectacular rapprochement with Rwanda under Paul Kagame, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner.

(5) Rwanda: the challenges of the trial of Félicien Kabuga , The Conversation, August 30, 2020

(6) Valérie Bemeriki had notably testified in the ICTR trial which had led to the conviction of Ferdinand Nahimana, presented as the “ideologue” of the genocide against the Tutsi.

By Etienne Cassagne
https://www.marianne.net/

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