Rwandan Genocide
France bears a "grave and overwhelming share of responsibility" for the genocide, says the 1,200-page report prepared by historian Vincent Duclert and 12 collaborators for the attention of Emmanuel Macron.
It says French authorities "failed" during the four years of escalation in Rwanda: they "strengthened" the corrupt, racist dictatorship in the capital, Kigali, and themselves pursued an "ethnicist" view of the conflict. Specifically, France had trained the Rwandan army - from whose circles the Hutu killers came - and supplied it with "considerable quantities of weapons and ammunition."
However, the Duclert report also states that France did not directly equip the murder gangs. Rather, Paris "did not understand" what was going on in Rwanda. There was therefore no actual complicity in the genocide. In short, the report, for which the authors had unrestricted access to the archives, including those of the Élysée Palace, concludes that there was joint responsibility, but not joint guilt.
François Graner and association "Survie" won a long legal battle to gain access to former French president Mitterrand's archive on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Mitterrand was president from 1981 to 1995. His archive was declassified in 2015 but upon request for access, Graner was told the presidential archive should remain secret.
Graner now was granted access by France's highest administrative court "to shed light on a debate that is a matter of public interest".
In the 1994 Rwandan genocide Hutu militias killed over 800,000 Tutsis over the course of 100 days. One of the suspects, Félicien Kabuga, was arrested on May 16th in Paris for his involvement. Prosecutors are indicting him for genocide, incitement to commit genocide and arming the Hutu militias. Kabuga is protesting his innocence: “All of this is lies. I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them.”
Félicien Kabuga, accused of funding the massacres in Rwanda in 1994, was on the run for 25 years.
He has been arrested by the French police today near Paris where he was living under a false identity.
About 800 000 people were killed during the Rwandan genocide.
The French judicial authority should rapidly rule on sending Félicien Kabuga to The Hague international court.