Nine Rwandan officials were indicted in 2006 in a politically-motivated investigation that lasted more than 20 years.
“We welcome this decision which brings to an end a brazen attempt over two decades to obstruct justice for the Genocide against the Tutsi, and prevent accountability for both the perpetrators and their wilful accomplices,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Government Spokesperson, Dr. Richard Sezibera, said.
On April 6, 1994, former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s private Falcon 50 jet was shot down near Kigali International Airport, leaving Habyarimana dead.
Cyprien Ntaryamira, the then President of Burundi, with everybody else on board also died in the plane crash.
The plane shooting was followed by the 100-day genocide that left more than a million Tutsis killed.
In 1997, a family member to one French citizen filed a lawsuit to a court in Paris which saw the Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière start an investigation the following year on who shot down the plane that was carrying President Habyarimana.
Judge Bruguière carried out the investigation without stepping on Rwanda’s land referring to testimonies of former Rwanda Patriotic Army members who said they had had a role in the plane shooting.
Bruguière later issued arrest warrants for nine Rwandan officials who were on the front line of the Rwanda Patriotic Army that stopped the 1994 genocide including President Paul Kagame, former Minister of Defense, Gen. James Kabarebe among other officials.
The arrest warrants saw Rwanda and France relations deteriorate to the extent that Rwanda once closed its embassy in Paris.
In 2010, Judges Nathalie Poux and Marc Trevedic came to Rwanda for investigation on Habyarimana’s plane shooting, heard testimonies of witnesses in Rwanda and Burundi.
The investigation came with a resolution that the plane had been shot down by Hutu extremists who opposed to Arusha accords that directed for the sharing of power among political parties in Rwanda including RPF with MRND, Habyarimana’s single political party that operated in Rwanda since 1973 until 1990 when the RPF launched a liberation struggle putting Habyarimana on pressure to open the political space and accept the multiparty political system in Rwanda.
In December 2017, French anti-terror judges announced they had closed an investigation into the missile attack that killed Rwandan former President Habyarimana who ruled Rwanda from 1973 up to 1994, but they did not say what was going to follow.
As he opened the 2016/17 judicial year on October 10, 2016, President Kagame said the Government of Rwanda had done all to facilitate all who wanted to do investigations on the plane crash particularly the French investigators.
Kagame then said: “We wanted to resolve this issue to have good relations. We told them ‘come and get information on what you want’. We give rights to everything people want.”
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