{{Rwanda government officials have been cleared by an inquiry that has been for the past 16 years investigating the cause of the Falcon 50 plane crash in which former President Habyarimana was killed.}}<\/p>\n
The probe led by French Judge Marc Travidic and Nathalie Poux discredited previous findings by Judge Jean-Louis Brugui\u00e8re, who had accused current Rwanda government officials of shooting down the plane.<\/p>\n
The Plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi leader crashed while about to land at Kigali International Airport on April 6, 1994.<\/p>\n
According to a statement by Lef Forster and Bernard Maingain, lawyers representing government on the case, said, \u201cThis decision is a very important step for the progress of the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judges Travidic and Nathalie Poux will give their final decision in three months, but it is not expected to change much.<\/p>\n
Lawyers representing government noted;\u201cJudge Brugui\u00e8re handled the proceedings and accused the Rwanda Patriotic Front of being behind the attack. The defence for the Rwandan individuals implicated by the judge was able to demonstrate that the facts and evidence on which judge Brugui\u00e8re had relied were erroneous, false and forged\u201d.<\/p>\n
Brugui\u00e8re began his investigation on March 27, 1998, following a complaint submitted on August 31, 1997, by the daughter of the co-pilot of Habyarimana\u2019s plane, Jean-Pierre Minaberry.<\/p>\n
Justice minister Johnston Busingye welcomed the findings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have maintained from the onset that the truth will prevail. One of the greatest manipulations and perversions of French justice is inevitably crashing to its end,\u201d Busingye said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrevedic\u2019s closure decision demonstrates that Bruguiere\u2019s case was a deliberate travesty on both facts and evidence.\u201d <\/p>\n
Forster and Maingan said all of the direct testimonies given to Brugui\u00e8re were false and the indirect testimonies were made by opponents of the Rwandan government and contributed nothing to the progress of the investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn independent examination conducted on site led to the conclusion that the hypothesis of the Masaka shooting zone evoked by the principal accusers was incorrect, and that the shooting zone was rather to be found at camp Kanombe or its immediate vicinity, a shooting zone which was inaccessible to RPF forces at the time, a fact recently confirmed by General Rom\u00e9o Dallaire,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe investigation should have focused on the Hutu extremists\u2019 camp, which the Brugui\u00e8re investigation failed to do.\u201d <\/p>\n
{Additional reporting Newtimes}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Rwanda government officials have been cleared by an inquiry that has been for the past 16 years investigating the cause of the Falcon 50 plane crash in which former President Habyarimana was killed.}} The probe led by French Judge Marc Travidic and Nathalie Poux discredited previous findings by Judge Jean-Louis Brugui\u00e8re, who had accused current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-15344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053042,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15344.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15344.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15344.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15344.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15344.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15344.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15344"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=15344"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=15344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}