{A new Rwandan witness \u00c9mile Gafirita who was expected to appear before a French judges conducting an investigation into the plane crash of April 06 1994 which killed two presidents, has been declared missing since November 13. But as a French magazine Jeune Afrique reported last week, there are grave contradictions between his testimony and those of others who preceded him with what were billed as damning revelations.
\n}<\/p>\n
The mysterious disappearance of Emile Gafirita in Nairobi, Kenya, a month before his audition, by French magistrates Nathalie Poux and Marc Tr\u00e9vidic, sparked the some of the most disturbing suspicions. The magistrates are probing the plane crash that killed former Rwandan president Juv\u00e9nal Habyarimana and Burundian counterpart.<\/p>\n
The first problem \u2013 neither French judges nor Gafirita\u2019s supposed lawyer knew where he stayed before his disappearance. The name of \u00c9mile Gafirita and details about his alleged testimony were passed on to the French judges by controversial French intelligence agent Pierre P\u00e9an. Publicly, he presents himself as a journalist.<\/p>\n
According to Jeune Afrique, no part of Gafirita\u2019s written submission to the magistrates gives any new information about the plane shooting incident. The submission also contradicts similar testimony given previously by RPF defectors.<\/p>\n
Gafirita writes: \u201cwe packed the missiles, as we used to do for other types of arms\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThe vehicle which transported the missiles from Mulindi [the headquarters of RPF, at that time, in North of country] to Kigali, was a Mercedes Benz truck, driven by Sergeant Eug\u00e8ne Safari, alias Karakonje. I was in the vehicle, as well as Sergeant Emmanuel. We were escorted by two vehicles of \u201cMinuar\u201d, one in front, and another one behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n
This seems like an explosive testimony, until you review what previous so called witnesses have narrated. Several questions also emerge.<\/p>\n
Did he see the surface-to-air missiles? Which type of weapons were they exactly? How did he know that the same cargo had been used later in plane crash? The former sergeant did not give any clues in his submission.<\/p>\n
According to Gafirita, the two missiles were clandestinely transferred to custody of a 600-troop battalion of RPF which was then quartered in Kigali \u201cabout two weeks before the plane crash\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, another RPF witness Aloys Ruyenzi gives different dates. When he was heard by controversial judge Jean Louis Brugui\u00e8re on May 25 2004, he claimed to have \u201cpersonally supervised the packing of these two missiles in a truck that contained firewood \u201c, and but then dated the same convoy on \u201cFebruary 1994\u2033.<\/p>\n
Abdul Ruzibiza, considered a main witness in the dossier of Brugui\u00e8re, also gave a timeline completely different from that of the latest witness Gafirita. \u201cThe missiles arrived in Kigali at the end January 1994,\u201d wrote Ruzibiza in his much-publicized book \u2013 \u201cRwanda: The Secret History\u201d. That was not the end of the contradictions. Ruzibiza, while appearing before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2006, affirmed: \u201cthe missiles were brought to Kigali in February \u2013 If I recall well\u201d.<\/p>\n
The contradicting timelines are only a fraction of the distortions among various witness accounts.<\/p>\n
Back in 2000, judge Brugui\u00e8re heard another witness Christophe Hakizabera, who spoke about a cargo of \u201csix missiles\u201d. Brugui\u00e8re witiness, Jean-Pierre Mugabe, told the controversial investigating judge of how \u201cfour SAM-16 missiles arrived in separated spare parts, hidden in truck carrying food\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gafirita, Ruyenzi and Ruzibiza, for them counted a cargo with \u201ctwo missiles\u201d. If they were agreeing on the fact that the \u201cSAM-16\u201d were hidden in food \u2013 for one \u2013 or firewood \u2013 for others \u2013 in a Mercedes truck, nothing converges , in their stories.<\/p>\n
Concerning names of soldiers who would have participated in loading the surface-to-air missiles convoy, Abdul Ruzibiza \u2013 the most prolific in details \u2013 provided six names. But he did neither mention Aloys Ruyenzi nor Eug\u00e8ne Gafirita, and yet they are supposed to have been present.<\/p>\n
Ruyenzi who claimed, have participated in the operation, mentions two names totally different from those given by Ruzibiza. And both of them deliver a scenario that is incompatible with testimonies of Mugabe and Hakizabera.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, no one, among these witnesses makes any reference to Gafirita, who could have been, according to his own testimony \u2013 one of three members of the convoy. Finally, the names given by the missing Nairobi witness, are also contradicting to all the other testimonies.<\/p>\n
{{News Of Rwanda}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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