By Eric Vandebroeck
and co-workers
A review
in the NYT today about How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation by the
longtime Africa specialist Michela Wrong similar to our
2003 article about the subject describes how a cycle of the tragedy began
under European rule when first Germans and then Belgians began formalizing
ethnicity in what is now Rwanda and Burundi. And proceeds with what led to the
April violence between the two groups escalated monstrously in 1972, with a
coup attempt in Burundi, whose ethnic composition mirrors that of Rwanda.
Little heed was paid to it at the time, and Wrong mentions it only in passing,
but the coup turned into one of the worst ethnic killing sprees of the 20th
century. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu were slaughtered by a Tutsi army, and
thousands of others streamed into Rwanda, where tales of their persecution
further radicalized the Hutu majority. Twenty-two years later, the much larger
genocide against Rwandan Tutsi took the world by surprise, but the Burundi coup
had set the stage.
On 7 April, exactly
27 years after the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis began, Rwanda's permanent representative
to the UN said that a rise in denial of the Genocide against the Tutsi in
academia, media, and even some circles in government institutions, has been
observed.
The Rwandan genocide
erupted following the plane crash of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana. For
the next 100 days, armed militias engaged in a killing spree against the ethnic
minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In total, some 800,000 people died. The French,
who were allies of the Hutu government under Habyarimana, had sent a special
force to evacuate their citizens and set up safe zones. Although they witnessed
the horror all around them, to this day, they are accused
of having done very little to stop the killing.
As we will see, part of
that might be because some of the perpetrators still have their abode in
France.
Having covered the
subject and from a different perspective in 2003, particularly the French side (which contradicts a disputed article
in the Larousse Junior edition 2020), it is time to revisit this subject.
In fact, since 2003,
there has been a fair share of misleading information, so for example, in The
Politics of Genocide (2010), writers Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, while
not denying the scale of the killing during the period of the extreme violence
of April–July 1994, questioned the distribution of the victims for those
months, arguing among others that Hutus comprised the majority of the dead, not
Tutsis.
Africa
specialist Gerald Caplan rightfully criticized Herman and
Peterson's account, charging that "why the Hutu members of the government
'couldn't possibly have planned genocide against the Tutsi' is never remotely
explained." Herman and Peterson's position on the genocide was found
"deplorable" by James Wizeye, first secretary at the Rwandan High
Commission in London. Adam Jones has compared Herman and Peterson's approach to
Holocaust denial, a term rejected by said authors.
This while U.S.
officials in Rwanda had been warned more than a year before the 1994 slaughter
began that Hutu extremists were contemplating the extermination of ethnic
Tutsis, according to a review panel’s released transcript and declassified
State Department documents obtained by Foreign Policy from the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum.
An August 1992
diplomatic cable to Washington, written by Joyce Leader, the U.S. Embassy’s
deputy chief of mission in Kigali, cited warnings that Hutu extremists linked
to Rwanda’s ruling party were believed to be advocating the extermination of
ethnic Tutsis. On the morning the killing began in April 1994, there was little
doubt about Rwanda's happening.
A good example of the
denial campaign could be seen when a few weeks before the tenth anniversary of
the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, in March 2004, a news story on the front page
of Le Monde caused a sensation. It claimed to have untied a Gordian knot and
offered new information about who assassinated President Habyarimana on
Wednesday, 6 April 1994. After six years of investigation, the paper announced
that a French judge determined that the responsibility belonged to the Rwanda
Patriotic Front (RPF) and that the current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame,
gave the order.1
The story was timed
to perfection, dominating the anniversary coverage and continuing into the
following weeks. The information had come from the office of a French
investigating magistrate, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who, in March
1998, began an inquiry on behalf of the families of the three French aircrews
whose salaries were paid by the French state and who had died in the missile
attack on the Falcon jet. Le Monde claimed the judge had ‘hundreds of
witnesses’ including dissidents, who had spoken of a ‘network commando,’ a hit
squad under the orders of Kagame and responsible for the attack.
The newspaper quoted
a key witness, Abdul Ruzibiza, who explained, ‘Paul Kagame did
not care about the Tutsi living in Rwanda, and they had to be
eliminated.’ Ruzibiza revealed how he had helped to stake out the
assassins' location at a farm in Masaka some four kilometers from the
airport. He saw them arrive in a Toyota, the missiles hidden in the back under
rubbish and empty cardboard boxes. Ruzibiza eventually wrote a book
published in 2005 at over 400 pages, provided a litany of alleged
RPF human rights violations.2
When Le Monde
published its scoop, the trial of Bagosora had
been underway for two years at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR). This new element was quickly introduced into the courtrooms and used to
support the idea that Hutu Power was the victim of a monster plot and that a
French judge had proved it. The story in Le Monde supported the claims already
suggested in the trial that the killing was an angry reaction to the death of
the president.3
After the publication
of his report two years later, on 17 November 2006, Bruguière wrote to Kofi
Annan, UN secretary-general, to ask the then prosecutor of the ICTR, Carla Del
Ponte, to take action. He lobbied Del Ponte to put Kagame and the RPF in the dock.
The reaction at the ICTR came from spokesperson Everard O’Donnell, who told
excited reporters the court thought that the assassination did not cause the
genocide.4 In response to the publication of the full report, the Rwandan
government, severed diplomatic relations with France.
Later in November,
Judge Bruguière issued international arrest warrants for nine members of the
RPF he deemed responsible for the assassination. As a classified cable from the
US embassy in Paris informed the state department in Washington, the judge could
simply have gone to Rwanda and asked to interview the nine rather than make
them the objects of international arrest warrants.5 All nine were currently
serving in senior government positions in the government. Kagame himself was
immune from prosecution under French law as a head of state.
In early 2007, Judge
Bruguière met the US ambassador, Craig Roberts Stapleton, in Paris. The judge
admitted to Stapleton that he consulted President Jacques Chirac before issuing
the warrants to ensure the French government was prepared for a backlash from
Rwanda. Bruguière explained that the ‘international community had a moral
responsibility to pursue justice. Stapleton reported how Bruguière did not hide
his personal desire to see Paul Kagame's government isolated and had warned him
that closer US ties with Rwanda would be a mistake. Bruguière casually
mentioned that he was standing for a parliamentary seat later in the year and
that a cabinet post as minister of justice would be his first choice.6
In the years to come,
the story of the guilt of Kagame and the RPF filled books, newspaper articles,
and academic research. Not everyone was fooled.7 Colette Braeckman, a member of the editorial board and African
editor of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, said she had heard the story
before in an ‘investigation’ produced by an investigator at the ICTR, Michael
Hourigan, an Australian prosecutor researching evidence against Bagosora. Witnesses had come forward just as Colonel Théoneste Bagosora made
his first appearance in court in February 1997. They approached investigators
in a Kigali bar to say they knew all about the assassination and were part of a
secret ‘network’ that Paul Kagame created. They were implicated in the
assassination, they said.
Strangely, however,
none was subject to arrest, and Hourigan told superiors he could not ‘provide
any advice as to the reliability of these informers.8 Hourigan explained how
his team members began to meet former members of the defeated Rwandan army in Kenya
and Europe, who urged them to investigate another ‘possibility’ and the
secretive Paul Kagame. He seemed to believe without question what he was told.
For Braeckman, the only new element in the Le Monde article in
March 2004 was testimony provided by Ruzibiza, the star witness. Braeckman met him a year earlier in May 2003 in
Kampala, Uganda, when he was peddling information about the
assassination. Braeckman had spent the
evening with him when he suggested they write a book together and look for
finance. Braeckman asked about the
topography of the places he mentioned; where had the team of assassins waited?
How did they get
there? How long had they waited? Who told them the plane’s arrival was
imminent? Ruzibiza was confused, said Braeckman,
and unsure of details. She never saw him again and was told later he had gone
to Paris. Braeckman thought the French
intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) picked him up and until the story
broke in Le Monde, she had no news of him.9 Braeckman may
not have known that a year earlier, Ruzibiza had been in touch with
investigators from the ICTR, and had given a statement in Kampala in May
2002.10
One claim in the
Bruguière report cast doubt on all the others, calling into question the
thoroughness of his ongoing investigation. In his report, Judge Bruguière
accused the RPF of the earlier assassination in February 1994, only weeks
before the genocide of the Tutsi began, of the popular, moderate, and
conciliatory politician Félicien Gatabazi. Gatabazi was shot three times in the back as he ran
from his vehicle to escape his killers. Bruguière claimed he had information
from witnesses and took this information at face value. As a result, he failed
to acknowledge an investigation carried out by three members of an
international unit of sixty civilian police officers from the UN Civilian
Police (CIVPOL), a UN Assistance Mission component in Rwanda (UNAMIR). Their
inquiries had shown Hutu Power operatives killed Gatabazi, and
the assassination was the subject of a high-level cover-up in an attempt to
blame the RPF. Two vital witnesses, a female taxi driver and a driver for the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who saw the killers make a
getaway, died soon afterward, one in a grenade attack the following day and the
other in a supposed suicide.
The CIVPOL officers
had cooperated with the public prosecutor, François-Xavier Nsanzuwera, who conducted his own inquiries into the murder
of Gatabazi immediately after the event. On
28 March, two CIVPOL officers witnessed his arrest of Faustin Rwagatera, the Las Vegas bar manager in Kigali who operated
his own gang of Interahamwe, was a brothel-keeper, and allegedly accompanied
the assassins. He was spotted with four suspects, three of the Presidential
Guards.
When Rwagatera refused to provide information about the
murder, Nsanzuwera charged him with
obstruction of justice and sent him in handcuffs to the 1930 prison.
Immediately afterward, Nsanzuwera received a death
threat and wrote the next day to General Augustin Ndindiliyimana,
the gendarmerie's head, for immediate protection.11 At the same time, the
minister of defense, Major-General Augustin Bizimana, warned the CIVPOL
officers to find a ‘new orientation’ in their work.
Despite these
attempts at the highest level to prevent their investigation, the CIVPOL police
inspectors continued to make headway. They obtained access to the white
Mitsubishi that Gatabazi had abandoned that
night, fleeing a hail of bullets. The police officers retrieved four cartridges
from the vehicle from R-4 rifles used by both Rwandan gendarmes and the army.
The CIVPOL
investigation was further hampered by the Centre de Recherche Criminelle et de Documentation (CRCD), a corrupt
criminal investigation branch of the national gendarmerie, a largely
incompetent force. An officer of the CRCD refused to hand over an AK-47,
complete with a shoulder strap, found hidden near the crime scene. The CIVPOL
officers made sure their superior officers were aware of their difficulties and
sent regular reports on the Gatabazi inquiry
to the head of CIVPOL, Colonel Manfred Bliem, an
Austrian police commissioner.12 They copied their information to the UN special
representative, the Cameroonian diplomat Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh.
Their superiors were informed that they needed to interview senior politicians,
army officers, and Presidential Guards and that there was interference with
their investigation at the highest possible levels in the course of their
inquiries. No one seemed interested.13
Eventually, the
CIVPOL police acquired the names of the alleged organizers of the assassination
and the identities of four suspects who fired the shots. Nsanzuwera believed that if events in April had not
intervened, the case could have gone to trial. Instead, as the genocide of the
Tutsi began, the gates of Kigali’s prisons were opened, and Rwagatera was among the hundreds of prisoners
released. He went looking for Nsanzuwera,
breaking into his house in Rugenge, a
residential district in the capital, on Tuesday, 12 April, along with a gang of
Interahamwe, and found and killed a student, Médard Twahirwa,
Nsanzuwera’s brother-in-law. Nsanzuwera also
discovered that gendarmes and Interahamwe had broken into his office and taken
away his safe.14 Inside were the files on the murder of Félicien Gatabazi that were now lost forever.15
If Judge Bruguière
had wanted to interview Nsanzuwera on what
he knew of the assassination of Gatabazi, again,
he would have been able to do so. After the genocide, Nsanzuwera went
to work in Arusha for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Here he wrote a landmark report on the Interahamwe for the prosecutors. It
provided a valuable list of the terrorist crimes of this militia between 1992
and 1994.16 From its early beginnings as the youth wing of the presidential
party, Mouvement Révolutionnaire National
pour le Développement (MRND), it had been
transformed into a killing machine. Unlike the other political parties' youth
groups, this was a criminal organization, he wrote, with an effective command
structure, comprising a national committee divided into six commissions. It had
support at the highest level, from the ruling Hutu elite, the gendarmerie's
senior ranks, and the Presidential Guard.
There was no doubt
that the Bruguière report was flawed. Another failure of his argument was the
lack of forensic work, ballistics, or on-the-ground investigation of the crash
site. A credibility gap existed in the report’s material evidence that only included
five photographs showing parts of missile launchers and some serial numbers.
These photographs had already been dismissed in a 1998 French National Assembly
report and could have come from anywhere.17
The story of missile
launchers and serial numbers originated with Colonel Théoneste Bagosora.18
The numbers were on missile launchers apparently discovered by chance on 25
April 1994 on Masaka Hill by an anonymous peasant. The missile parts
were then taken to an army camp where a Rwandan soldier, Lieutenant Augustin Munyaneza, had examined them and written a report. Colonel Bagosora gave the information on the launchers to a
Belgian academic, Filip Reyntjens, who wrote a
book about the assassination. By this time, inconveniently, the launchers had
apparently been taken abroad and given to a Zairean general, where they had
disappeared. According to the Bruguière report, the numbers on these missiles
corresponded with missiles that could be traced and ‘sold by Russia to Uganda
and then given to the RPF.’
The Bruguière
investigators appeared not to have interviewed any of the direct witnesses to
the event. Within minutes of the assassination, Colonel Luc Marchal,
commander of the Kigali sector of UNAMIR, was aware of two eyewitnesses close
enough to see where the missiles came from, both agreeing it was the military
camp at Kanombe. Another witness, Dr.
Massimo Pasuch, a Belgian military doctor, was
at his home in the heavily fortified Rwandan camp with all windows and doors
open and so close that he distinctly heard the ‘whoosh’ as each missile left
its casing. Pasuch described traces in the night sky as they went towards the
plane. Lieutenant Colonel Walter Balis, the liaison officer between
UNAMIR and the RPF, saw the missiles depart and believed it impossible for the
RPF to infiltrate Kanombe camp. A Belgian
corporal, Mathieu Gerlache, Gerlache, on the viewing platform of a
disused air control tower, had a perfect view as the missiles left from the
direction of Kanombe, the second scoring a
direct hit when the aircraft exploded.
As a result of these
failings, Bruguière received wide criticism for his partial text. He seemed
determined to accuse the president of Rwanda rather than seek the truth.19 This
did not prevent journalists from happily quoting him while not apparently having
read his report. For example, in 2007, the BBC’s Stephen Sackur on HARDtalk accused
President Kagame directly:
You know that Judge
Jean-Louis Bruguière has been working on that case for many, many years. You
also know that he is one of the most respected judges in all of France. He has
a track record of tracking down terrorists, bringing them to justice. He has been
working on your case, and he has, I have it here, about seventy pages of
documentary evidence …
Judge Bruguière comes
up with this conclusion: ‘the final order to attack the presidential plane was
given by Paul Kagame himself during a meeting held in Mulindi on
31 March 1994’. In a major development, the investigating magistrate
Marc Trévidic and his colleague Nathalie Poux assumed
responsibility for the outstanding Judge Bruguière dossiers in Paris. Bruguière
had left the service, having been told that his political activity was
incompatible with judicial duties.20 Trévidic was to become one of
the best-known investigating magistrates in France. In interviews, he made a
point of saying that being a nuisance to governments was exactly what an
investigating magistrate was meant to do. Old investigations never died, he
said. It was often the case that with unsolved crimes, the information could
surface many years later. The dossier he inherited on the assassination of the
presidents of Rwanda and Burundi proved his point.21
Trévidic suspended
the arrest warrants for the nine Rwandan officials, and, with a team of six
French scientists and his colleague Nathalie Poux, he visited the crash
site. The team included experts in missile technology and aviation, air accident
investigators, a geometrician, and an explosives expert. They carried out a
series of tests on the Falcon 50 jet wreckage that remained where it had fallen
sixteen years earlier.
The investigation
broadened in other ways. In the course of the visit, they interviewed
previously ignored Rwandan witnesses who had seen the missile fire in the sky
and took them back to where they had been standing that night. They included
the president’s bodyguards and soldiers from Kanombe camp
who had given evidence to Rwanda’s own commission of experts established in
2008 to investigate the assassination. The commission, named after its chair,
Justice Jean Mutsinzi, a former president of the
Supreme Court, brought in experts from the United Kingdom’s National Defence Academy for scientific advice and analysis.22
In a detailed report in January 2010, it had concluded that Hutu extremists
brought the plane down to destroy the Arusha Accords, and the missiles came
from an area controlled by the Presidential Guard.23
The French judges'
keen interest in the Mutsinzi report was
matched only by a concern to properly understand events in the immediate
aftermath, including the targeted killings of pro-democracy politicians, among
them the prime minister and the president of the Constitutional Court. They
asked for information on the circumstances of the murder of the ten Belgian
peacekeepers. They asked for copies of Hutu extremist newspapers and magazines
and the transcripts of recordings of the hate radio station, RTLM, all of which
predicted that the president would die for having agreed to share power with
‘Tutsi rebels.
An initial 400-page
report published by the French investigating magistrates in January 2012
explained how the first missile missed the plane, but the second ignited 3,000
liters of kerosene in the fuel tank.24 The plane, traveling at 222 kilometers
an hour and an altitude of 1,646 meters, became a ball of fire in
the night sky and, traveling onwards for some seven seconds, eventually hit the
ground, disintegrating as it did so. The plane fell into the presidential
villa's garden, where the president’s wife was preparing a barbecue for her
husband. The mangled bodies of the twelve victims were in the wreckage.
The missile fire
came, in all probability, from a 300-meter radius within the confines of the
most secure army camp in the country at Kanombe,
adjacent to the airport. This domain of some thirty hectares was under
twenty-four-hour surveillance by platoons of soldiers operating a shift system
and linked to the presidential villa by a private track. The missile fire could
only have come from within the camp perimeter, mostly the scrubland to the
south.
The new report
effectively destroyed the Bruguière conclusions that the missiles had been
fired from Masaka, a hill four kilometers east of the airport. The judge
had relied solely on witness testimony, and all of them, including several
convicted génocidaires, convinced him that the
missiles came from Masaka, where a peasant found the launchers. Bruguière
apparently fell for an elaborately staged deception. It was fake news from the
start, intended to cause a diversion, propped up with false statements, manufactured
evidence, manipulated witnesses, and forged testimony.
Jean-François Dupaquier, author and expert on these matters, described it
as having been responsible for malevolent people who had taken part in the
corruption of the judicial process. They aimed to ‘lend support to their
extremist Rwandan friends who launched genocide’.25
On the day of the
report's release, a series of filmed interviews became available, including one
with survivor Esther Mujawayo, author,
sociologist, psychotherapist, and trauma specialist, who lived in Germany and
worked for the Psychosocial Centre for Refugees (PSZ) in Düsseldorf.26 Mujawayo wondered why so many people were taken in:
At last. How could he
[Bruguière] possibly have advanced such a thesis? How could anyone have
believed this for an instant? The intellectuals, people in universities who
were taken in like this? Even if the RPF had magic powers … how
could they have got into the camp? With this lie, a million people died. They
killed my husband. They killed my mother, my parents in law … they killed
everyone … killed the Tutsi because of a fable invented for the purpose that
said ‘their’ president was killed by us [the Tutsi], and they wanted revenge.
She had always known
who was responsible: ‘It was so obvious.’
But the suspicions
persisted.
A panel discussion on
the English-language channel on France 24 included the journalist Stephen
Smith, who broke the story in Le Monde in 2004. A visiting professor of African
& American Studies at Duke University, Smith said that Trévidic provided
a new thrust to the investigation. Still, one should not dismiss the serial
number evidence that traced missiles to Uganda. Smith argued that
the Trévidic report was only part of an ‘ongoing discussion’ and was
‘another element’ to take into account. Smith also maintained his position that
there was no master plan to commit genocide. ‘The special court … charged with
trying genocidal planners and killers has found no one guilty of conspiracy to
commit genocide,’ he claimed in the London Review of Books a year earlier.27
On 22 September 2010,
the key witness for Bruguière, Abdul Ruzibiza, died in Norway, where he
been granted asylum. He turned out to have been a nurse in the RPF and had
pretended to have an inside track, claimed to have known all about the
assassination but at the time was miles away in the north, in Ruhengeri. He
eventually retracted his testimony, like some of the other witnesses involved
with the Bruguière inquiry.28
In October 2006,
another key witness, Emmanuel Ruzigana, had
written to Bruguière to deny he ever belonged to a ‘network commando’ and say
he was ignorant about the plane. He did not speak or understand the French
language and had been interviewed without an interpreter.29 In an interview on
2 December, on Radio Rwanda, Ruzigana said
he had wanted to go to Europe, and a friend at the embassy of France in Dar es
Salaam had helped him out. As soon as he arrived at the airport in Paris, there
had been men who worked in the office of Judge Bruguière waiting for him.
Only later would it
emerge that a Kinyarwanda interpreter used in interviews by Judge Bruguière, a
man at the heart of his investigation, was Fabien Singaye.
This man had operated a European spy ring for President Habyarimana and had
occupied the post of the first secretary at the Rwandan embassy in Bern,
Switzerland. Some of his secret reports were discovered in the abandoned
presidential villa.30 His father-in-law was Félicien Kabuga, the
businessman who provided large sums to finance the genocide and who remains a
fugitive to this day. Singaye was thrown
out of Switzerland in August 1994 and found a haven living comfortably in
France.
Central to the
Bruguière report, however, was testimony from Colonel Théoneste Bagosora. On 18 May 2000, Judge Bruguière spent a day
with Bagosora in the UN Detention Facility
outside Arusha, the first of two visits.31 A transcript produced of the
encounter showed the lack of precise questions that the French judge asked
about the assassination. Furthermore, the transcript left a gaping hole in the
story of the whereabouts of Bagosora on the
evening of 6 April. Bagosora claimed that
between 6:30 p.m. and 8:20 p.m., he had been at Amahoro Stadium
with the Bangladeshi contingent at a reception. A Bangladeshi officer could not
recall this event. Bagosora says he then
returned home at 8:20, where he found his wife in tears on the
doorstep, and she told him the news.
The sound of the
destruction of the president’s plane echoed all over Kigali, but Bagosora appeared to be the only person not to hear
it.32 Bagosora had even been unaware that
the president was going to Dar es Salaam that day. However, in his testimony at
his trial, he said he was already at home when his wife received a call from
the army's general staff informing her that the president’s plane had been shot
down.33
Bagosora told the judge the missile attack on the
aircraft was an international plot abetted by UNAMIR. He suspected the ten UN
peacekeepers, Lieutenant Thierry Lotin and
his men, murdered on 7 April, had a role in this plot. On the day before the
assassination, they had escorted RPF personnel, taking the road that
bypassed Masaka Hill, where the missiles were supposedly
launched. Lotin and his men were seen at
the airport at 8:30 p.m., only minutes after the missile fire. They should not
have been there at all. They had stayed there until 3:00 p.m. when ordered to
go into town to form an escort for the prime minister.
The RPF could not
have accessed Masaka without a convincing escort, said Bagosora, and the most convincing escort was UNAMIR. The UN
peacekeepers had freedom of movement. Therefore, UNAMIR escorted the RPF to the
place from where the missiles were fired. ‘There was a coup d’état by the RPF
with UNAMIR as an accomplice, and with a part of the political opposition,
which was pro-RPF, I tell you,’ Bagosora said.
The most senior
French officer in Camp Kanombe, Major Grégoire de
Saint-Quentin, was an adviser to Major Aloys Ntabakuze,
head of the para-commando battalion at Kanombe.
The French officer was a tall and imposing figure who eventually commanded a
brigade with the French army in Senegal and later in 2013, commander of French
forces in Mali. He is today head of special operations. In April 1994, he was
at his home in the Kanombe military camp
when the missiles were fired at the presidential jet. His garden backed onto
that of the camp commander, Félicien Muberuka,
and he could see the comings and goings on the commander’s driveway.34 The
three large windows in his living room overlooked the flight path, while the
presidential villa was a little more than 350 meters away. Saint-Quentin
recalled that the two missiles' launch seemed so close to him he thought the
camp was under attack.
In a house nearby, a
young girl thought the missile fire sounded like an American movie. She was
sixteen and spent the rest of that night awake, sheltering with her mother and
brothers in the front room, just twelve meters from the road. She, too, thought
the missile fire signified the camp was under attack, but, strangely, there was
no further activity. Normally there were tall and effective streetlights left
on all night, and twenty-four-hour patrols, soldiers on foot and in vehicles,
each group assigned individual zones to patrol. This evening, there was no
activity, no trucks, no patrols, and no sounds of soldiers. At dawn, they crept
out and were told that all the families were leaving the camp, and the
transport was already arranged.
Saint-Quentin had
wanted to retrieve the jet’s black box and remembered two French officers in
helmets who carried torches and searched the smoldering wreckage. The bodies of
the casualties were laid out in a reception room in the presidential villa. Still,
they were removed the next morning in an army truck to a cold store at Kanombe Hospital, where other bodies were piling up in
the morgue.35
Saint-Quentin, in his
interview with the judge, told Bruguière that the Rwandan forces did not have
surface-to-air missiles.36 Perhaps he was unaware of them. Human Rights Watch
believed that when the Rwandan army retreated, it took fifty SA-7 missiles and
fifteen Mistral missiles into exile.37 An army would not keep such an arsenal
if it did not know how to use it. While France officially denied giving
French-made Mistral missiles to Rwanda, this did not mean the Rwandan army did
not have any.
A document found in
UNAMIR archives and prepared by senior officers contained a list of the
military hardware in possession of the Rwandan government army, compiled by the
peace agreement, a list dated 6 April 1994.38 The list included fifteen
French-made Mistral missiles and an ‘unknown quantity of SA-7 missiles. The
force commander of UNAMIR, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire,
confirmed the list as genuine and compiled with the greatest difficulty from
sources within the military. This information gathered by his mandate. The
missiles, fired at the Kanombe military camp plane,
had effectively destroyed any hope of his resupply by air during the genocide.
‘They had shot down one plane and could shoot down
another,’ Dallaire said. The peacekeepers were unable to guarantee
Kigali Airport's safety, and no company was found willing to insure an aircraft
that the UN had on standby.
In a declassified CIA
report called ‘Rwanda: Security Conditions at Kigali Airport – Capabilities and
Intentions,’ dated 13 July 1994, there is information that Kigali’s
international airport was less dangerous once the RPF had driven out the troops
of the Interim Government. ‘Hutu regime troops, most likely including elements
of the Presidential Guard, were almost certainly responsible for
downing the airplane of the late President Habyarimana as it was landing at
Kigali.’ When the fighting broke out, the Hutu regime had some thirty-five
pieces of air defense artillery, reported a classified informant, as well as
the fifteen Mistral missiles.
Whole sections of
this fascinating eleven-page CIA cable remain classified, and the US was
clearly well informed.39 The carefully planned operation to escort all the US
citizens from the country on 9 April ensured they went by road. From Paris,
information continued to arrive from the ambassador, Pamela Harriman, who told
Washington at the end of April 1994 that her informant said the accusations of
RPF involvement in the assassination were not credible since the site from
which the attack took place was near the president’s residence and was secured
by forces loyal to Habyarimana.
The death of the
president was a signal for a preplanned ethnic massacre to begin. The RPF
offensive towards Kigali began only after the massacres of Tutsi had started.
The signals
intelligence acquired by the US in the crucial first days was said to have
included intercepted telephone calls from extremist officers in Kigali to
counterparts in Gisenyi in the north, as well as communications captured
between politicians and militia and captured information about the downing of
the presidential jet. Likely, the tracking and recording of the entirety of the
local and regional radio traffic were conducted by the National Security Agency
(NSA). In the Maryland headquarters, people fluent in Kinyarwanda were known to
have worked.
The information
gathered contained invaluable evidence of the activities of the génocidaires as they seized power. The US satellite
imagery was such that burning tires and bodies were visible at the roadblocks.
Despite the wealth of
material that undermined the Bruguière conclusion, some people remained
unconvinced and paid no heed to the retraction of the testimony of the
witnesses upon whom the judge had relied. Ignoring the scientific evidence, a
school of thought persisted that pronounced the RPF guilty of the president's
assassination. As a result, there had been no coup d’état.
In a book published
in 2010 that bolstered the earlier Bruguière conclusion of RPF guilt, a
Parisian academic, André Guichaoua of the
Pantheon-Sorbonne University, dismissed the murder of the political opposition
on Thursday, 7 April, as evidence of a coup and called it a ‘recalibrated
political transition,’ simply part of ‘political infighting.’ In this theory,
the RPF downed the jet and deliberately sacrificed the Tutsi
population. No plan had existed to exterminate Tutsi. Not until 12 April, and
the new Interim Government had been installed, was a genocide policy adopted
and a genocide begun. His theory took no account of the targeted killing of
Tutsi at the roadblocks that began on Thursday, 7 April, nor the first
large-scale massacres of Tutsi in Kigali – one in the church grounds in Gikondo in the morning on Saturday, 9 April, to which
UN military observers were eyewitnesses. Another massacre of Tutsi families who
had sheltered at the École Technique Officielle (ETO)
on Monday, 11 April, saw an estimated 2,000 people killed.
These were early
examples of the massacre of large numbers of people that would now recur in a
pattern; Rwandan soldiers and gendarmes sealed exits where Tutsi people sought
shelter and then ushered in the Interahamwe to carry out the killing, thereby
economizing on bullets. It was in Gikondo, on
the afternoon of Saturday, 9 April, the chief delegate of the ICRC, Philippe
Gaillard, recognized that genocide of the Tutsi was by now underway.
In his book published
four years after the Bruguière report, Guichaoua expressed
his belief that the genocide had been a desperate reaction by the most
extremist faction in the face of a military advance by the RPF. Guichaoua categorized the killings as a crime against
humanity committed by a government against a part of its population. Guichaoua wrote the preface for the book by
Abdul Ruzibiza, the star witness used by Judge Bruguière, who had first
introduced the witness to the judge and had persuaded Ruzibiza to
write a book.40
Another member of
this school of thought is the acknowledged expert René Lemarchand, a
French-American political scientist known for his work on Rwanda and Burundi
and professor emeritus at the University of
Florida. Lemarchand insisted the RPF downed the plane. He disparaged
the Mutsinzi report and noted in 2018 that
‘all facts pointing to Kagame’s responsibility were conveniently ignored.’ He
failed to specify which particular facts he meant. ‘The scantiness of the
evidence notwithstanding, the notion of a criminal plot concocted by Hutu
extremists is still the standard explanation advanced,’ he
wrote. Lemarchand believed it a subject fit for debate as people took
up several ‘contradictory positions’.41
Reyntjens, emeritus professor of law and politics at the
University of Antwerp, remained an advocate for the Bruguière report and wrote
about the existence of a ‘whole heap of indications’ that showed the RPF was
responsible for the assassination. In an account of events published in
2017, Reyntjens omitted any mention of
scientific reports about how missiles came from the Kanombe military
camp, which was inaccessible to the RPF. Reyntjens seemed
unaware of the existence of witnesses in Kanombe camp
that night. Reyntjens did not believe in
genocide planning and said the killing happened because of the aggression of
the regime's enemies that set off a chain reaction that led to it. The RPF had
a historical and political responsibility in the extermination of the Tutsi.42
The story
about Masaka Hill lingered on, the scientific and direct eyewitness
testimony continually ignored. In 2017, in a book by Helen C. Epstein, Another
Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror, the author accused President
Paul Kagame of the assassination, repeating the claim in an extract from the
book in the Guardian.43 The missiles came from Masaka Hill, she
wrote, and the weapons used were Russian-made SAM-16s because ‘two SA-16
single-use launchers’ were found near the launch site. She relied on the report
by French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière. She pointed out that
the serial numbers on the Masaka launchers came from a consignment
shipped from Russia to Uganda. Her source was Filip Reyntjens, who
told Epstein the weapons were Russian-made SAM-16s. He said that ‘two SA-16
single-use launchers’ were found near Masaka Hill, a place more
‘accessible’ to the rebel fighters of Kagame’s RPF than the Kanombe military camp. What Reyntjens may
not have told her was that the information about launchers
at Masaka Hill and their serial numbers originated with the prime
suspect, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, a convicted génocidaire.
With little fanfare,
on 24 December 2018, French magistrates in Paris dropped the case brought
against the nine senior RPF leaders suspected of the assassination of President
Habyarimana and for whom there had been international arrest warrants issued. The
twenty-year investigation had ensured the real culprits escaped scrutiny.
The 11 January 1994 cable
An 11 January 1994
cable was difficult to ignore. As a piece of material evidence in court, it
caused severe problems for defense lawyers. It was, perhaps, the most famous
fax in UN history. Sent from Kigali to the UN Secretariat in New York by Lieutenant-General Roméo
Dallaire, it gave details of preparations then underway to register all
Tutsi families in Kigali with a view to their extermination.
The information it
contained came from an informer, a coordinator with the Interahamwe militia,
who claimed intimate knowledge of the Hutu Power movement's activities. He said
lists of Tutsi were being compiled in each sector (termed "secteur" administrative subdivision), going from house
to house, noting every family member. Following this intelligence gathering,
every secteur was provided with a militia of forty
operatives trained to kill at speed. Each group had been secretly trained in
weapons, explosives, close combat, and tactics. Within twenty minutes of
receiving the order to kill, the militia in each secteur
could immediately murder 1,000 people. There were hidden stockpiles of weapons
all over the city.
The informer warned
that President Juvénal Habyarimana had lost control over his old party, the Mouvement Révolutionnaire
National pour le Développement (MRND). Furthermore,
the informer told of plans to goad the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to scupper
the peace agreement and restart the civil war. In violent, coordinated, and
preplanned demonstrations, the Interahamwe would provoke Belgian peacekeepers
and kill some of them to guarantee the contingent's withdrawal, the backbone of
the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR).
The full text of the
famous two-page 11 January fax to UN headquarters emerged in its entirety a few
weeks later and received international press coverage to prove the
extent of the failure over Rwanda. In later years the fax was part of the
prosecution in the trials of the génocidaires at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), disproving the many claims
from defense lawyers that the slaughter had been spontaneous.
For this reason, the
defense lawyers tried to turn the court's attention away from the information
contained in the fax to the informer himself. They launched a sustained attack
on his reputation, and one of the defense lawyers at the ICTR was the Canadian
Christopher Black. In 2002, he had defended the former commander of the
national gendarmerie, Major-General Augustin Ndindiliyimana,
who in April 1994 was in charge of maintaining public order and who was accused
of genocide in the trial known as Military Two. In the courtroom, Black was
determined to nullify the fax and told the trial chamber that Jean-Pierre was a
double agent who worked for the RPF and had set out to smear President Juvénal
Habyarimana.
As New Yorker
reporter Philip Gourevitch dubbed it in 1998, the
Dallaire genocide fax was probably doctored a year after Rwanda's mass killings
ended. In a chapter devoted to the fax in Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda
System, 20 Years Later, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson argue two
paragraphs were added to a cable Dallaire sent to Canadian General Maurice
Baril at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York about a
weapons cache and protecting an informant (Dallaire never personally met the
informant). The added paragraphs said the informant was asked to compile a
Tutsi list for possible extermination in Kigali and mentioned a plan to
assassinate select political leaders and Belgian peacekeepers.
At the ICTR, former Cameroon
foreign minister and overall head of the UN mission in Rwanda, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, denied seeing
this information. There’s no evidence Dallaire warned the Belgians of a plan to
attack them, which later transpired. Finally, a response to the cable from UN
headquarters the next day ignores the (probably) added paragraphs. Herman and
Peterson make a compelling case that a doctored version of the initial cable
was placed in the UN file on November 27, 1995, by British Colonel Richard M.
Connaughton as part of a Kigali-London-Washington effort to prove the existence
of a plan by the Hutu government to exterminate Tutsi.
Even if the final two
paragraphs were in the original version, the information's credibility would be
suspect. Informant “Jean-Pierre” was not a highly placed official in the
defeated Hutu government, reports Robin Philpott in Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful
Imperial Fiction. Instead, “Jean-Pierre” was a driver for the MRDN political
party who later died fighting with the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
Incredibly, the
“genocide fax” is the primary source of any documentary record demonstrating
the UN foreknowledge of a Hutu “conspiracy” to exterminate Tutsi, a charge even
the victor’s justice at the ICTR failed to convict anyone of. According to
Herman and Peterson, “when finding all four defendants not guilty of the
‘conspiracy to commit genocide’ charge, the [ICTR] trial chamber also dismissed
the evidence provided by ‘informant Jean-Pierre’ due to ‘lingering questions
concerning [his] reliability.’”
Tellingly, Dallaire
didn’t even initially adhere to the “conspiracy to commit genocide” version of
the Rwandan tragedy. Just after leaving his post as UNAMIR force commander,
Dallaire replied to September 14, 1994, Radio Canada Le Point question, saying,
“the plan was more political. The aim was to eliminate
the coalition of moderates. … I think that the excesses that we saw were beyond
people’s ability to plan and organize. There was a process to destroy the
political elements in the moderate camp. There were a breakdown and hysteria
absolutely. … But nobody could have foreseen or planned the magnitude of the
destruction we saw.”
Doctoring fax to make
it appear the UN had foreknowledge of a plot to exterminate Tutsi may sound
outlandish. Still, it’s more believable than many other elements of the
dominant narrative of the Rwandan genocide. For instance, the day after their
editorial, the Star published a story titled “25 years after the genocide,
Rwanda rebuilds,” which included a photo of President Paul Kagame leading a
walk to commemorate the mass killings. But, Kagame is the individual most
responsible for unleashing the hundred days of genocidal violence by downing a
plane carrying two Hutu presidents and much of the Rwandan military high
command.
The Toronto Star
published a story titled “Did Rwanda’s Paul Kagame trigger the genocide of his
own people?” For its part, the Globe and Mail have published a series of
front-page reports in recent years confirming Kagame’s responsibility for
blowing up the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, which
triggered mass killings in April 1994. In an October story titled “New information supports claims, Kagame forces were
involved in an assassination that sparked Rwandan genocide,” the Globe all but
confirmed that the surface-to-air missiles used to assassinate the Rwandan and
Burundian Hutu presidents on April 6, 1994, came from Uganda, which backed the
RPF’s bid to conquer its smaller neighbor. (A few thousand exiled Tutsi Ugandan
troops, including the deputy minister of defense, “deserted” to invade
Rwanda in 1990.) These revelations strengthen the case of those who argue that
responsibility for the mass killings in spring 1994 largely rests with the
Ugandan/RPF aggressors and their US/British/Canadian backers.
By presenting the individual
most culpable for the mass killings at the head of the commemoration for said
violence, the Star is flipping the facts on their head. The same might be said
for their depiction of the Canadian general. At the end of their chapter
tracing the history of the “genocide fax,” Herman and Peterson write, “if all
of this is true,” then “we would suggest that Dallaire should be regarded as a
war criminal for positively facilitating the actual mass killings of
April-July, rather than taken as a hero for giving allegedly disregarded
warnings that might have stopped them.”
Also, in US documents
that have been declassified, there are numerous redactions. A scandal exists in
France where successive governments have prevented access for historians and
journalists to crucial military and political archives, including those of President
François Mitterrand and the officials who worked in his unaccountable Africa
Unit in the Élysée Palace.
As we detailed in our initial 2003-4 case study,
France has long faced charges that supported the Hutu leadership before and
even during the massacres. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has called French soldiers “actors” in the genocide, a charge
denied by the former French prime minister, Édouard Balladur, as “a
self-interested lie.” But on Friday, President Emmanuel Macron of France ordered
a two-year government study of France’s role in the Rwandan genocide.
French judges have
heard from a new witness who claims to have seen missiles allegedly used to
kill former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death sparked genocide
in 1994, a source close to the case told AFP on Monday.
The witness says he
saw two surface-to-air missiles at the headquarters of the Tutsi militia headed
by current
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, which were later used to take down
Habyarimana's plane.
A consequence of excessive
government secrecy is the opportunity it afforded the génocidaires.
An information vacuum gave them free rein to spread lies and disinformation to
deny their crime. They deceived the Western press, promoting lies faster than
the facts could debunk them.
Thus, in September
2016, the chief propagandist of Hutu Power, Ferdinand Nahimana, walked free
from prison, having served twenty years and six months in international
custody.44 It was thirteen years since his conviction to a life term imposed in
a courtroom at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where he
was found guilty of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide,
conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity (persecution) and crimes
against humanity (extermination).45
For the survivors of
the genocide of the Tutsi, his release was a devastating development. The
decision betrayed a lack of understanding of the crime of genocide and failed
to acknowledge its magnitude. Nahimana continued to claim his innocence. Given
the Hutu Power propaganda produced by Nahimana and his fellow génocidaires, these prisoners continued to promote the same
poisonous and racist ideology that motivated their criminal acts in 1994. To
have released Nahimana at a time when genocide denial was more entrenched than
ever was irresponsible. The decision showed contempt for the survivors and
their continued suffering.
The Rwandan minister
of justice, Johnston Busingye, called for the removal of the US judge
responsible, Theodor Meron. In coming to his decision, Meron had held no
hearings, took no account of the survivors' views, and had given no say to the
government of Rwanda. His decision was secret and unaccountable. No appeal was
possible. A brief official explanation came in the form of a short, redacted
report that provided necessary background information.46 It included glowing
testimonials from prison wardens who described Nahimana’s impeccable conduct.
In his prison career, Nahimana had lived ‘in perfect harmony with fellow
inmates and the prison administration. He was polite, disciplined, and would
quickly reintegrate into society as someone ‘humble and courteous.
Nahimana served his
sentence in a community with his colleagues, a group of Rwandan génocidaires who lived together in a purpose-built compound
within the high-security Koulikoro prison, some thirty-five miles (fifty-seven
kilometers) from Bamako, the capital of Mali.47 The special compound,
constructed at United Nations expense, was segregated from the misery found in
the rest of the prison. Within yards of this ‘international wing,’ there were
unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, a lack of medical care, and not all the
prisoners had access to potable water. The génocidaires,
on the other hand, had separate cells, showers, a gym, a well-stocked library,
a dining room, and a church.
The UN, an
organization, intended by its founders to uphold human rights, required that
the Rwandan génocidaires live in conditions that met
the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs). Initially
adopted by the UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of
Offenders in 1955, they were given final approval by the UN Economic and Social
Council in 1957.48 Conditions had to comply with the Body of Principles for the
Protection of all Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, approved
by UN General Assembly resolution 43/173 of 9 December 1988, as well as the
Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, affirmed by UN General
Assembly resolution 45/111 of 14 December 1990. These requirements are
non-binding on UN member states. To ensure the proper application of these
international standards, the particular compound in the Koulikoro prison
received visits from global humanitarian groups, including the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
In this special
community, according to the wardens, Nahimana had a crucial role. ‘It was quite
an achievement among a group of intellectuals in which each member is intent on
promoting his ideas.’ They praised his character and personality. A former warden
noted the contribution of Nahimana to the smooth running of the unit: he helped
to ‘restrain and keep his compatriots in check.’ Even the Ministry of Justice
in Mali weighed in with a letter to support his early release, telling Judge
Meron that between 2009 and 2013, Nahimana was the ‘Rwandan group’
representative, helping his fellow inmates ‘resolve many issues.’
A psychosocial report
described his behavior as exemplary. He was ‘always willing to listen to his
co-detainees.’49 Furthermore, Nahimana submitted his petition for release,
written by three lawyers. They stressed his family ties, which he managed to
maintain, and that he hoped to ‘work for peace and reconciliation in Rwanda.
However, it was not explained by the lawyers how this might be achieved.50
Meron wrote in his report that the prisoner showed ‘some signs of
rehabilitation.’ The judge seemed not to care that Nahimana continued to deny
his responsibility in ‘these crimes.’ While his lawyers maintained that their
client did not question or minimize ‘the genocide,’ or his ‘profound regret’
for the ‘crimes committed in Rwanda,’ what he did not accept was a role in the
broadcasts' criminal nature RTLM. Nahimana had not once offered to help the
office of the ICTR prosecutor. This was something Meron regarded as a ‘neutral
factor.’
It remains unclear
whether the judge critically assessed the information he received about
Nahimana. His short report contained no detail at all about how the prisoner
was ‘rehabilitated.’ Afterward, there were doubts expressed about the capacity
of the prison authorities in Mali to develop rehabilitation programs for these
Rwandan prisoners, particularly given the language and cultural differences.51
In their special
compound, the génocidaires kept in touch with world
events, received frequent visitors, and were interviewed by journalists and
academics. They received $2 a day to buy newspapers, and payment was
provided for telephone calls. They posed no problems for the prison authorities.
They spent their time working on their campaign of denial, and the facilities
provided for them helped them write books and communicate with publishers who
were willing to produce their work. The prison warders noted how educated these
prisoners were and how they kept to themselves and worked on their ‘political
activities’. A member of the Koulikoro prison management gave a radio interview
in which he explained that these prisoners demanded ‘justice for all victims without
exception,’ whether Tutsi or Hutu.52
From the special
compound in Mali and another prison in Benin, the génocidaires
continued to protest their innocence, influence newcomers to the subject, find
new and receptive audiences, and seek out conspiracy theorists and gullible
journalists and academics. Their written work repeated the familiar stories of
genocide denial. How more Hutu people died than Tutsi, how the killing was
self-defense, the deaths not intentional, there was no planning and no central
direction, and the Hutu were the real victims. From this particular compound,
the chief propagandist, Ferdinand Nahimana, had two books on sale on Amazon (in
France), and the author described himself as a political prisoner.53 In their
community, the génocidaires spent time analyzing
numerous ICTR and UN documents and wrote appeals to the authorities. Only the
truth could save the people of Rwanda, wrote Nahimana.54
The supporters of
their campaign of denial praised the Mali prison authorities for not succumbing
to ‘the demonization of Rwandan Hutus’ that had turned them into monsters in
Western public opinion. These men deserved our pity. They had been uprooted from
the lush green lands of home to a hot, dry, and dusty Mali. Furthermore, Rwanda
was a Christian and Mali Muslim. The Montreal journalist and publisher Robin
Philpot wrote: ‘For prisoners convinced of their innocence, the worse problem
is the distance from their families.’ Philpot wrote about ‘the colonial nature
of these new forms of UN-sanctioned penal colonies.’ How could they make their
cases known and hope to reopen them? This was nothing less than banishment, and
these prisoners were condemned to a long slow death. Philpot reported
complaints from the génocidaires that they ‘had been
made to disappear from the news.’55
This was not strictly
true. An invaluable glimpse inside Mali's special compound, where the génocidaires lived, came in filmed footage broadcast on ITV
news in the UK on 21 July 2015. It was billed as a world scoop and was an
interview with Jean Kambanda, the world’s first head of government to plead
guilty to the crime of genocide. The Africa correspondent for ITV, John Ray,
had gained access to a top security prison, he said, that housed the men behind
Africa’s ‘final solution.’
The on-camera
interview with Kambanda, economist and banker, the prime minister of the
Interim Government that oversaw the extermination program of the Tutsi, took
place in the library. Kambanda was the world’s highest-ranking political leader
held to account for the crime of genocide, and he was serving a life term, but
he had later retracted his plea. In the television footage, Kambanda walked
through gardens with a briefcase and talked and laughed with the British
journalist. He appeared portly, having gained weight since the last day of the
trial in September 1998. He began the interview in faltering English, ‘I cannot
express any regrets for something I have not done. Someone else did it.’ The
truth was still in dispute, the journalist said at the end. Kambanda admitted
to Ray that he had distributed weapons, but only so people could protect
themselves. His conscience was clear. He had been a ‘puppet’ and felt no sense
of guilt. ‘We are fighting to be free,’ Kambanda told Ray.
After the
announcement of the release of Ferdinand Nahimana, Justice Navi Pillay, the
South African judge who presided in the media trial at the ICTR, said no one
had consulted her about the early release of Nahimana, and, as the presiding
judge in the trial, she thought this would have been appropriate. Pillay
expressed concern at the lack of any post-release conditions imposed on
Nahimana and wondered why no realistic possibility existed to monitor him,
supervise his activities, or determine whether his racist propagandizing
continued. Meron had simply granted ‘an irreversible and unconditional form of
release, an unconditional reduction in the sentence’ that had resulted in
complete freedom. The decision threatened the credibility of international
justice, Pillay believed.
That Meron had
decided the fate of Nahimana after having earlier played a role in reducing his
sentence on appeal was of concern. On 28 November 2007, the Appeals Chamber had
reduced Nahimana’s life sentence to thirty years. Meron had written a dissenting
view in the appeal judgment, wanting to reduce further the thirty-year sentence
agreed upon by the two other appeal judges. He thought the punishment of thirty
years too harsh. In his dissenting view, Meron was scathing the media trial and
pointed to the ‘sheer number of errors’ in the trial judgment. He called for a
new trial because ‘mere hate speech was not the basis for a criminal
conviction.56 Meron believed that the liability connected to hate speech was
illegitimate in light of freedom of expression, and this was explicitly
grounded in the free speech guarantee of the US First Amendment.57
I believe that the
only conviction against him that can stand is for direct and public incitement
to commit genocide under Article 6(3) and based on specific post-6 April
broadcasts. Despite the severity of this crime, Nahimana did not personally
kill anyone and did not personally make statements that constituted incitement.
In light of these facts, I believe that the sentence imposed is too harsh, both
about Nahimana’s culpability and the sentences meted out by the Appeals Chamber
to Barayagwiza Ngeze (co-accused),
who committed graver crimes. Therefore, I dissent from Nahimana’s sentence.
Fellow ICTR judges
were not alone in their concerns at these developments. Professor Gregory S.
Gordon, professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Faculty
of Law, worked on the media trial from its beginnings and was an expert on atrocity
speech in the circumstances of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi. Gordon, who had
helped gather prosecution evidence, believed that the media trial was so
significant that it had helped define the distinction between hate speech and
speech used to incite genocide from a historical perspective.
Gordon published
Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition in 2017. In an
interview in London that year, he explained the crucial role of Ferdinand
Nahimana and claimed that, without him, the hate radio RTLM would not have
existed. The connection between hate speech and atrocity in Rwanda was so
secure that the media trial ‘served as a virtual laboratory for the development
of atrocity speech law.’58 Ideology and propaganda were integral to the crime
of genocide, and the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda showed how mass media
was a causal factor in mass atrocities.
A direct challenge to
the views of Meron on free speech came in a foreword to Gordon’s book, written
by a Nuremberg prosecutor, Benjamin B. Ferencz. Ferencz believed a failure to
criminalize hate speech served only to encourage fanatics, for example, those
responsible for the genocide of the Tutsi. He added: ‘The first amendment to
the US Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech was never intended to
justify the violation of fundamental human rights designed to protect
everyone.’ Hatred generated by vicious propagandists such as Julius Streicher
was one of the main reasons the Nazi crimes could be committed.
Curbing hate speech
was a way to prevent genocide, for it was the case that arousing public fears
could incite it. ‘We have still not recognized that you cannot kill an
ingrained ideology with a gun,’ wrote Ferencz. Gordon recalled a dearth of
jurisprudence to guide them from the start of the media trial. As the tribunal
geared up in 1996, on one set of shelves in an almost empty library was a
complete set of the transcripts of the trials at Nuremberg.59
Judge Theodor Meron
had never sat through a genocide trial. He served only on the Appeals Chamber
and so did not experience the agonizing testimony in the trials. He did not
participate in the debates among the judges about the appropriate length of
sentences imposed on the génocidaires for their
unspeakable crimes. In her interview, Judge Navi Pillay carefully explained why
the judges had decided to impose life sentences in the courtrooms of the ICTR,
something the trial judges had discussed at length and taken seriously. The
scale and magnitude of the crime were never in doubt from the very first trial,
Pillay explained, nor its brutality.
Pillay was one of
three judges in the world’s first genocide trial held at the ICTR to hear the
case of Jean-Paul Akayesu, a middle-ranking official
in local government, a bourgmestre (mayor), a
teacher, and schools inspector. Found guilty of nine counts of genocide, direct
and public incitement to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity – these
included extermination, murder, torture, rape, and other inhumane acts – his
life term was confirmed on appeal.
The trial of Akayesu made legal history in another way. The crime of
rape was not initially in the indictment. Still, in the course of the trial,
and after questioning from Pillay, the testimony from prosecution witnesses
revealed the level of sexual crimes in the genocide. Without Pillay, the courts
might never have addressed this aspect of the genocide, and she went on to
ensure groundbreaking jurisprudence on rape as a crime of genocide. It was a
significant milestone and determined that sexual violence was an integral part
of the process of destruction: the Akayesu judgment
noted, ‘Rapes resulted in physical and psychological destruction of Tutsi
women, their families, and their communities.’60
The collection of
data to determine instances of rape and sexual violence had been fraught with
problems. Today, an accurate number cannot be set. Most experts believe it to
be in the region of 250,000 rapes and sexual assaults.61 The sexual violence in
Rwanda included sexual slavery, forced incest, deliberate HIV transmission,
forced impregnation, and genital mutilation.62 The sexual attacks intended to
humiliate, demoralize, and enslave. The evidence in the Akayesu
trial had shown Tutsi women targeted for sexual violence, which had contributed
to the destruction of the Tutsi group as a whole. In the media trial in 2003
over which Navi Pillay presided, there was expert and witness testimony that
confirmed Hutu Power propagandists had targeted Tutsi women, the targeting
woven into the planning of the genocide in 1994.
In the light of all
this evidence and the magnitude of the crimes, the imposition of life sentences
was appropriate, said Pillay. This was widely accepted by ICTR judges who
expected the génocidaires to serve their sentences in
full. Only those who confessed and cooperated with the prosecutor were eligible
for early release. The tribunal attached significant value to ‘voluntary,
substantial, and long-term cooperation with the prosecutor.’
When appointed
president of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT)
in 2012, known as the Mechanism, Meron had assumed responsibility for all
international prisoners' supervision. Meron was now in charge of making new
rules and judgments upon these cases. A Polish-born US citizen and an
international lawyer with a stellar career, Meron was a French Légion d’Honneur and a Shakespeare scholar. The first president of
the Mechanism, Meron, served from its creation in 2012 until January 2019.
The Security Council
established the Mechanism to complete two international criminal tribunals'
work when they closed – the ICTR and its forerunner, the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).63 A part of the Mechanism mandate was
to supervise those convicted of grave violations of international humanitarian
law in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Meron had served on
the Appeals Chamber used by both the ICTY and the ICTR. He was widely
considered one of the world’s most distinguished specialists in international
human rights law and international penal law; his numerous books and articles
contributing to the advance and development of the discipline, and he advised
the US government and State Department. In his job as president of the
Mechanism, Meron maintained high-level contacts with the governments of UN
member states to facilitate and improve cooperation with the Mechanism: he was
required to make annual reports to the General Assembly and biannual reports to
the Security Council.64
With Meron as
president of the Mechanism, the prospects of the imprisoned Rwandan génocidaires improved considerably. Meron took advantage of
his powers as president to alter the internal procedures already in place. He
used a device known as ‘practice directions’ to adopt new rules for the method
for determining applications for pardon, commutation of sentence, and early
release of persons convicted by the ICTR, the ICTY, or the Mechanism (PDER).
Meron, the only full-time judge on the Mechanism, ensured his new rules by a
plenary of judges via remote communication in June 2012.
His changes had
significant results.65 Meron was no longer required to make public his
decisions on early release and now consider humanitarian and health issues. He
was no longer needed to consult survivors nor to ask the original trial judges
for an opinion. However, when the Security Council created the ICTR, the
enabling resolution mandated that there must be consultation with trial judges
in early-release cases.66 This was also a requirement written into the statute
of the ICTR.67 Although the enactment of the Mechanism did not refer to
consultation with trial judges, its rules and practice specified that the
president should consult with any judges of the sentencing chamber, but only
those who continued to serve as judges on the Mechanism.68 This provision
disappeared, and by 2016, when the time came to release Ferdinand Nahimana,
Judge Meron was no longer required to consult any judges at all. One legal
scholar noted drily, ‘Perhaps release is considered to be an administrative or
executive task at the MICT (Mechanism), but this should not preclude judicial
review of decisions.’69 Another factor that significantly improved the
prospects of the génocidaires was the decision made
by Judge Meron to apply the same rules to the Rwandan prisoners as those that
governed the imprisonment of those responsible for war crimes in the former
Yugoslavia. There was a need for ‘equality among international prisoners, irrespective
of the court that sentenced them.’70 At the ICTY, convicted prisoners, were
eligible for release after they had served two-thirds of their sentences.
Henceforth, the two-thirds eligibility rule applied to the entire prisoner
population over which he, as president of the Mechanism, supervised. While
conceding, this could ‘constitute a benefit for the Rwandan prisoners,’ he
wrote, ‘this alone could not justify discrimination between the groups of
convicted persons under the jurisdiction of the Mechanism.’
When in October 1994,
informal negotiations had taken place in the Security Council to discuss the
establishment of a criminal tribunal, the Rwandan ambassador who was
representing the new government established in Kigali wanted those convicted by
the tribunal to serve their sentences in Rwanda. He sought a voice for the
Rwandan government on any pardon or commutation of sentence and warned that the
members of the former Hutu Power government might ‘be sent to serve their time
in France and would be able to wangle their way out of jail early.’71
It did not turn out
this way. Only in June 2018, and facing criticism for the first time in his six
years as president of the Mechanism, did Judge Theodor Meron consult the
Rwandan government about the next three proposed early releases. Rwanda’s
justice minister, Johnston Busingye, wrote directly to Meron to object in the
strongest terms to any further statements. The severity and gravity of the
crimes should be sufficient to deny the prisoners’ applications.72 ‘Nothing
about these people has changed,’ he said. ‘They have shown no remorse, not even
acknowledgment of their crimes.’ There were objections elsewhere, and Toby
Cadman, the co-founder of a human rights organization in London, Guernica 37
International Justice Chambers, thought that early release of anyone convicted
of genocide served only to undermine the process of international law.73
One of the three
prisoners under consideration was journalist Hassan Ngeze,
the editor of Kangura, convicted in the media trial
at the ICTR of genocide and public incitement to commit genocide. Like
Ferdinand Nahimana in the same trial, the Appeals Chamber had reduced Ngeze’s life sentence to thirty years. One of the media
trial lawyers, the prosecutor Simone Monasebian, on
hearing of the possibility of Ngeze’s release, wrote
to Meron. She explained that Kangura and radio RTLM
had fuelled the genocide, and both had been more
potent and dangerous than bullets or machetes. The génocidaires
were unrepentant violent extremists, she told him.
The survivors’
organization Ibuka announced that Meron was the ‘epitome of all things wrong
following the aftermath of the 1994 genocide’. The organization had repeatedly
called for an investigation of every controversial decision taken by Meron,
either reduction in sentence or early release. Any decision that served to
benefit genocide perpetrators also helped their campaign of denial. Every
decision that diminished the status of the crime of genocide needed
investigation.74
There were several
cases worth consideration. Meron was the presiding judge of five justices on
the appeal that reduced the life sentences of Colonel Théoneste
Bagosora and Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, both
originally sentenced to life in prison genocide, crimes against humanity, and
war crimes. The penalty of Lieutenant Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, the northern
commander, former head of army intelligence, reduced to fifteen years, saw him
freed with time served taken into account. In November 2009, Meron was the
presiding judge in the appeals chamber decision to acquit Protais Zigiranyirazo; he was the notorious brother of Agathe Kanziga, President's wife Habyarimana, and convicted of
genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity. Judge Meron said that
the original trial erred in its handling of evidence. In 2013, Meron presided
over the appeal that acquitted and released Justin Mugenzi
and Prosper Mugiraneza, initially sentenced to thirty
years for genocide, both ministers in the Interim Government.
Meron also granted
the early release of the Roman Catholic priest, Father Emmanuel Rukundo, who
served fifteen years of a twenty-three-year sentence, convicted in February for
genocide, murder, and extermination as crimes against humanity. Meron was already
familiar with the Rukundo case when he granted him early release. When a member
of the Appeals Chamber, he was one of five appeal judges who, in October 2010,
had reduced Rukundo’s sentence from twenty-five to twenty-three years. The
appeal reversed his genocide conviction and blamed the original trial for not
having proved genocidal intent in the mental harm he had inflicted with his
sexual assault on a twenty-one-year-old woman.
Some tried to find
reasons for Meron’s leniency towards the génocidaires.
A few months after the release of Nahimana, in January 2018, Gregory Gordon
gave a paper, ‘On the Early Release of the “Rwandan Goebbels”: American Free
Speech Exceptionalism and the Ghost of the Nuremberg-Tokyo Commutations.’ In
the article, Gordon questioned whether the decision-making of Meron was an
example of exactly how American power influences the operations of
international criminal justice. Gordon thought similarities existed with other
occasions when US political interests affected the treatment of war criminals.
In the early 1950s, US High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy pardoned or
commuted the sentences of numerous high-level Nazi defendants convicted at
Nuremberg. That same year, General Douglas MacArthur began releasing high-level
Japanese war criminals sentenced by Nuremberg’s sister Tokyo Tribunal. The
shifting Cold War policies favored rapprochement with the Germans and Japanese.
Others considered the
possibility of US influence. They recalled the controversy that surrounded
Meron’s decisions in ICTY cases. In 2013, in a leaked confidential letter, a
judge at the ICTY, Frederik Harhoff, had complained that Meron had exerted
‘persistent and intense’ pressure on his fellow judges to allow Serb and Croat
commanders, prisoners convicted at the Yugoslavia war crimes court, to go free.
Meron had wanted increased proof of ‘specific direction’ by an accused military
or senior political leader, a higher burden of evidence for those in command.
On that occasion,
there had been complaints from international lawyers and human rights groups.
Some judges said in private that the rulings had abruptly rewritten legal
standards and would now serve to protect military commanders. However, the
changes Meron made were to quell fears from the US government, in particular,
that it could face legal action against senior leaders for war crimes. Still,
others speculated that this was a question of economics. The US, retreating
into isolationism, did not want to continue sending money to the UN to pay its
share for international prisoners' upkeep.75
The harshest
criticism came from the UN Security Council in an address by the Rwandan
ambassador, Valentine Rugwabiza. On 6 June 2018, she
spoke of the Mechanism's failing credibility, condemning its secret procedures
and lack of accountability. The Council was due to discuss an application by
Judge Meron to renew his two-year contract as president.
Ambassador Rugwabiza told the Council that since its establishment in
2012 under the personal direction of Meron as president, the Mechanism had
released more than ten masterminds of the genocide before the end of their
sentences.76 Their release was unconditional. There was no way to ensure they
would not re-engage in criminal activities. This would be the legacy of the
Mechanism and its current president. In a grave admonishment, the ambassador
told the Council that allowing a secret and unaccountable process to develop to
provide these early releases had strengthened the génocidaires
in their desire to minimize and diminish the crime. She warned that some of the
released génocidaires had regrouped and once again
were propagating their genocide ideology. These were dangerous and unrepentant
individuals who dismissed the factual basis of their criminal conspiracy
entirely. Allowing them their freedom, the Mechanism had enabled an ongoing
campaign of denial.77
Rugwabiza was not against the principle of early release but
believed the purpose of incarceration was to rehabilitate individuals. She
said, ‘There was no country on earth that had commuted more sentences, given
early release to more convicts of genocide, than Rwanda.’ In Rwanda, the trials
of more than a million perpetrators over nearly a decade had taken place in
Gacaca courts. In Rwanda, early releases came only after confession and
contrition. In these local courts, the remorse is shown required proof through
action, and the accused sometimes revealed the location of buried bodies. These
same rules must apply to high-profile international prisoners, she said. To be
eligible for early release, a prisoner should provide a public acknowledgment
of guilt, public support for peace projects, and public apology to victims or
victim restitution. A lack of consideration of the gravity of the crime and a
failure to consider the absence of remorse was to blame for these early
releases. While the Mechanism released génocidaires,
it had failed in its other main task. It had not apprehended or prosecuted a
single genocide fugitive, which was also part of its mandate from the Council.
That afternoon the Council
held a secret and informal meeting to discuss the matter.78 The Council
membership was divided over the issue, and a compromise decision allowed the
eighty-seven-year-old judge six further months in office. In the course of
those six months, Meron approved the early release of one more unrepentant génocidaire, a former military officer, Aloys Simba,
thereby ignoring the strongest objections from the government of Rwanda. Simba
had been convicted at the ICTR for genocide and extermination, arrested while
hiding out in Senegal in November 2001. Four years later, he was sentenced to
twenty-five years in prison. He walked free on 19 January 2019, having served
eighteen years in international custody.
And so, when
international visitors go to Murambi, one of six
national genocide memorial sites, they may not realize how their governments
connived in the early release of a man who on 21 April 1994 handed out weapons
to militia surrounding the technical college there, how having recruited and
trained Interahamwe he directed the massacre of thousands of Tutsi families who
had sought shelter. His orders were to get rid of ‘this filth.’ At Murambi, there were an estimated 50,000 people murdered.
After the genocide
was over in November 1994, the Council, following its duty to punish the crime
under the 1948 Genocide Convention, had carried the legal and financial burden
of proving the perpetrators' guilt. The Council had provided the means needed
to defend the accused and had established a tribunal that found them guilty for
their part in a campaign of extermination. It had developed as a historical
fact the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi.
Now, this same
international judicial system, established to take the high-level perpetrators
out of circulation, had created a legal process that seemed explicitly designed
to set these perpetrators free at the first opportunity, ignoring the
commitment under the Genocide Convention to punish the perpetrators of the
crime properly.
The prisoners
released were individuals who had relentlessly challenged the historical facts
that formed the basis for their convictions and, with some success, had duped
unwary journalists who seemed incapable of recognizing their lies, fooled by
their disinformation and fake news. In setting them free, the Mechanism had
enabled their ongoing campaign.79
The harm to survivors
was incalculable. For them, genocide is a crime with no end.
At the time of
completing this investigation an article was published confirming our own
conclusion that strong evidence implicates
Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame in the downing of Hutu President Juvénal
Habyarimana’s airplane.
1. Stephen W. Smith,
‘Révélations sur l’attentat qui a déclenché le génocide rwandais’, Le Monde, 10
March 2004.
2. Abdul Joshua
Ruzibiza, Rwanda: L’histoire secrète, Editions du Panama, 2005.
3.
francegenocidetutsi.org/OrdonnanceBruguiere.pdf. There is an English
translation of this report from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:
francegenocidetutsi.org/OrdonnanceBruguiereEng.pdf.
4. Jacques Morel and
George Kapler, ‘Analyse de l’ordonnance de soit-communiqué du juge Bruguière
mettant en cause Paul Kagame pour l’attentat du 6 avril 1994 à Kigali’, 12
January 2007.
5. Wikileaks,
Classified Cable 1349 Rwanda: ‘French Judge ends questioning of Rose’, from
Paris to Sec State, 11 October 2009.
6. Wikileaks cable,
Secret, 07 Paris 322, ‘Judge on France, Rwanda, Pakistan, and his political
future’, from Embassy Paris to Secretary of State Washington, signed Stapleton,
7 January 2007.
7. Morel and Kapler,
‘Analyse de l’ordonnance’.
8.
francegenocidetutsi.org/MemoHourigan.pdf.
9. Commission of a
Citizens’ Inquiry into the Role of France during the Genocide of the Tutsi in
1994, Report, ‘L’horreur qui nous prend au visage’, Testimony Colette Braeckman, 349.
10. Déclaration de
Témoin, Abdul Ruzibiza, Investigators Hamidou Maiga and Mohamed Ali Lejmi,
Redacted, 14, 17, 19 May 2002.
11. Letter to Le Chef d’État-Major de la Gendarmerie, from
F.-X. Nsanzuwera.
12. UNAMIR CIVPOL
from CPIO, H. J. Kranzl, Inspector to SRSG,
‘Shooting of Minister of Public Works and Energy’, 23 March 1994.
13. Interviews,
Sources prefer to remain anonymous.
14. François-Xavier
Nsanzuwera, ‘Rapport d’expertise rédigé à la demande du
tribunal tribunal pénal international sur le Rwanda: Procès contre
Rutaqanda Georges, La criminalité des Interahamwe entre 1992 et avril 1994’,
Brussels, 21 June 1997.
15. Colette Braeckman,
‘Le Rwanda le dos au mur’, Le Soir, 23 February 1994.
16. Nsanzuwera, ‘Rapport d’expertise’.
17. Assemblée Nationale,
Mission d’Information Commune, Enquête sur la tragédie rwandaise (1990–1994),
15 December 1998, Paris.
18. Ibid., Letter
from Filip Reyntjens to Bernard Cazeneuve,
10 December 1998, Annexe 6, p. 251.
19. Morel and Kapler.
20. Alain Gabet and
Sébastien Jahan, ‘Quand la boussole perd le nord: ‘Analyse de l’ordonnance’
«Que sais-je ?» sur le génocide des Tutsi du Rwanda’, Cahiers d’Histoire. Revue d’Histoire Critique,
139, 2018, 171–193.
21. The president of
Burundi was Cyprien Ntaryamira.
22. Defense Academy
of the UK, Cranfield University, Investigation into the Crash of Dassault
Falcon 50. Contract Report by Mike C. Warden, Department of Applied
Science, Defence Academy, Shrivenham, and
W. Alan McClue, Fellow of Cranfield Forensic Institute, Annexes.
23. Republic of
Rwanda, Committee of Experts Investigation of the 6 April 1994 Crash of
President Habyarimana’s Dassault Falcon 50 Aircraft, January 2010.
24. Report of Judge Marc
Trévidic, Cour d’Appel de Paris, Paris, Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris,
Rapport d’expertise, Destruction en Vol du Falon 50, Kigali (Rwanda), 5 January
2012. The Commission of Experts comprised
Claudine Oosterlinck, Daniel van Schendel, Jean
Huon, Jean Sompayrac and Olivier Chavanis. The report is 314 pages long with twenty-four
pages of conclusions numbered C1 to C24 and four annexes.
25. The interviews of
Esther Mujawayo and
Jean-François Dupaquier, ‘Rapport Trévidic –
Les Rwandais de France s’expriment’, YouTube, 11 January 2012.
26. Esther Mujawayo, Souâd Belhaddad and Simone Veil, Survivantes:
Rwanda, dix ans après le génocide,
Aube: La Tour d’Aigues, 2004.
27. Stephen W. Smith,
‘Rwanda in six scenes’, London Review Review of
Books, 17 March 2011.
28. Colette Braeckman,
‘Ruzibiza était un temoin clé de l’attentat’, Le Soir, 24 September 2010.
29. Letter from
Emmanuel Ruzigana to Judge Bruguière, Oslo,
30 October 2006. See Morel and Kapler,
‘Analyse de Cordennance’, 6, note 23.
30. Jean-Philippe Ceppi,
‘Les services secrets rwandais avaient leur central à Berne’, Le Quotidien, 9
June 1994.
31. Commission Rogatoire
Internationale siégeant au TPIR, Interrogatoire de M. Théoneste Bagosora,
interrogé par le juge Jean-Louis Bruguière, le 18 mai 2000. Annexe 53 André
Guichaoua: accessed on rwandadelaguerreaugenocide.univ-paris1.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Annexe_53.pdf.
32. Luc de Temmerman, 26
June 1994. Devant la Cour de Cassation, 2éme Chambre. Audience du 26 juin 1994.
Attached Ex Far equipment summary as of 6 April 1994.
33. ICTR-98-41
Testimony, Théoneste Bagosora,
2 November 2005.
34. Kanombe camp, July 2012.
35. Grégoire de Saint
Quentin has given the following statements: 26 May 1998 to the French Assembly
Mission d’Information; on 8 June 2000 to the
inquiry of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière and on 7 December 2011 he sent a ten-page
email to the Trévidic/Poux inquiry.
36. Bruguière report,
43.
37. Human Rights
Watch Africa, Rwanda: A New Catastrophe?, London, December 1994.
38. UN Restricted,
Daily Information Digest, Special Report Rwanda, DPKO-Situation Centre, CNR
530, 1 September 1994 (author’s archive).
39. CIA, Rwanda:
Security Conditions at Kigali Airport: Capabilities and Intentions, 13 July
1994, cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000584721.pdf.
40. Gabet and Jahan,
‘Quand la boussole perd le nord’, 10.
41.
René Lemarchand, ‘Reconsidering France’s role in the Rwandan genocide’,
Africasacountry.com, 13 June 2018.
42. Filip Reyntjens, Le
Génocide des Tutsi au Rwanda, Paris: Que sais-je?, 2017.
43. Helen C. Epstein,
Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror, Columbia Global
Reports, 2017; Helen C. Epstein, ‘America’s hidden role in the Rwandan
genocide’, Guardian, 12 September 2017.
44. Criminal
Tribunals (MICT) was unable to provide an exact date.
45. ICTR-99-52,
Prosecutor C. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza
and Hassan Ngeze, Judgement and Sentence, 3 December
2003.
46. MICT-13-37-ES.1. - the decision for the early release of
Ferdinand Nahimana, 0045/1.
47. They are:
Jean-Paul Akayesu, Théoneste
Bagosora, Sylvestre Gacumbitsi,
Jean Kambanda, Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, Mikaeli Muhimana, Yussuf Munyakazi, Alfred Musema,
Hassan Ngeze, Eliézer Niyitegeka,
Tharcisse Renzaho and
Laurent Semanza.
48. This is specified
in the agreement between the UN and the government of Mali dated 12 February
1999, which reads: ‘Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners
approved by ECOSOC resolutions 663 C (XXIV) of 31 July 1957 and 2067 (LXII) of
13 May 1977, the Body of Principles for the Protection of all Persons under any
Form of Detention or Imprisonment adopted by General Assembly resolution 43/173
of 9 December 1988, and the Basic Principles Principles
for the Treatment of Prisoners adopted by General Assembly resolution 45/111 of
14 December 1990’.
49. Judge Meron, Public
redacted version of the 22 September 2016 decision of the president of the
early release of Ferdinand Nahimana, MICT-13-37-ES.1.
50. The three lawyers
are: Jean-Marie Biju-Duval, Diana Ellis QC and Joanna Evans.
51. Jessica M.
Kelder, Barbora Holá and Joris van Wijk, ‘Rehabilitation and Early Release of
Perpetrators of International Crimes: A Case Study of the ICTY and ICTR’,
International Criminal Law Review, 14, 2014, 1177–1203.
52. ‘Men Behind Rwandan Genocide Languish in Mali Prison’,
Capital News FM, 6 April 2014, Bamako.
53. Ferdinand Nahimana,
Rwanda: Les virages ratés, Éditions Source du Nil, 2007; Ferdinand Nahimava, Le
Combat pour la vérité, Éditions Source du Nil, 2011.
54. Ferdinand Nahimana,
‘Réponse de Ferdinand Nahimana à Jean-Baptiste Nkuliyingoma’,
France-Rwanda Tribune, 11 March 2012.
55. Robin Philpot,
Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial
Fiction, Montreal: Baraka Books, 2013.
56. For a detailed
legal argument see Gregory S. Gordon, Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation,
Fragmentation, Fruition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 235.
57. ICTR-99-52-A,
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza,
Hassan Ngeze.
58. Gregory S.
Gordon, Atrocity Speech Law Foundation, Fragmentation,
Fruition.
59. Bill Berkeley, ‘Judgement Day’, Washington Post, 11 October 1998.
60. ICTR, The
Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-I,
Judgment, 2 September 1998, in particular paras 692 (re: crimes of humanity of
rape and other inhuman acts), 731 (re: genocide) and 687 (re: torture).
61. Pamela Shipman
and Lauren Rumble, ‘Neglected Challenges: The Humanitarian Responsibility to
Protect’, in OCHA, The Shame of War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in
Conflict, Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), 2007, 115.
62. Medina Haeri and
Nadine Puechguirbal, ‘From Helplessness to Agency:
Examining the Plurality of Women’s Experiences in Armed Conflict’,
International Review of the Red Cross, 92: 877, March 2010.
63. UN Security Council
resolution 1966, 22 December 2010.
64. The speed with
which the Security Council wanted to close the tribunals influenced the
creation of the Mechanism. There were numerous delays in the completion
deadlines set by the Security Council and so, in resolution 1966 – to put
further pressure on the ICTR and the ICTY to finalise
their work – it was decided the Mechanism would start its operations before the
tribunals closed. As a result, the Arusha branch commenced functioning on 1
July 2012 and The Hague branch began its operations on 1 July 2013.
65. Roisin Mulgrew,
‘Releasing International Prisoners’, in Martine Herzog-Evans (ed.), Offender
Release and Supervision: The Role of Courts and the Use of Discretion,
Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2014, 21–51.
66. UN Security Council
resolution 955, 8 November 1994.
68. See Mulgrew, ‘Releasing International Prisoners’, note 36, Rule 150 MICT
RPE; para 7, MICT PDER.
69. Dr Roisin
Mulgrew, assistant professor in law, Faculty of Social Sciences, Nottingham
University.
70. Bisengimana, President’s Decision, Public Redacted
version, MICT-12-07, 11.12.12.
71. New Zealand from
New York to Wellington, ‘Security Council: The establishment of a criminal
tribunal for Rwanda’, 26 October 1994, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Official
Diplomatic Reporting, Volume 5, documents presented to Rwandan government,
April 2019.
72. Chris McGreal, ‘Rwanda appalled at chance of early release for genocide
criminal’, Guardian, 6 June 2018.
73. Jina Moore, ‘Betraying justice for Rwanda’s genocide survivors’, Nation,
9 July 2018.‘Judge who freed 10 genocide convicts seeks new UN contract’,
KT Press, 29 January 2018.
75. UN Finance
Committee figures.
76. The ten released
were: Ferdinand Nahimana, Emmanuel Rukundo, Alphonse Nteziryayo,
Gerard Ntakirutimana, Innocent Sagahutu,
Paul Bisengimana, Omar Serushago,
Tharcisse Muvunyi, Juvénal Rugambarara, Michel
77. UN Security Council, 8278 meeting, 6 June 2018, S/PV./8278.
78. The non-permanent
Security Council members were Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, Domincan Republic, Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial
Guinea, Kuwait, Peru and Poland.
79. UN Security
Council, 8278 meeting, 6 June 2018, S/PV./8278.
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