The Court of Cassation definitively validated on Tuesday the dismissal pronounced in 2018 by Parisian investigating judges in the investigation into the attack that triggered the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, putting an end to this file which poisoned relations Franco-Rwandan women for more than twenty years. The highest court of the French judicial order has rejected the appeals filed by the families of victims of the attack on the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, after the confirmation of the abandonment by the Paris Court of Appeal in 2020 proceedings against several members of the entourage of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Who is the shooter?
On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying then-Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down while landing in Kigali by at least one missile. This attack is considered to be the starting point of the genocide which killed more than 800,000 people according to the UN, mainly among the Tutsi minority. Who was the author of the fatal shooting on the presidential Falcon 50? French investigators, seized in 1998 after the complaint of the families of the crew, of French nationality, have long favored the responsibility of the Tutsi rebels led by Paul Kagame. Then they oriented themselves for a time – without further success – towards the involvement of Hutu extremists, anxious to get rid of a president who was too moderate in their eyes.
On December 21, 2018, the investigating judges finally decided to drop the charges against nine members or former members of Paul Kagame’s entourage, who had caused strong tensions in relations between Paris and Kigali. “In the absence of indisputable material elements”, the accusation rested on “largely contradictory or unverifiable” testimonies, they had estimated. The magistrates had also underlined the “deleterious climate” of the investigation, interspersed with assassinations, disappearances of witnesses and manipulations, and ordered a dismissal.
A decision confirmed in 2020
This decision was confirmed in July 2020 by the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal. In its decision on Tuesday, consulted by AFP, the Court of Cassation validated the judgment of the investigating chamber, considering that it had “explained, by reasons free from insufficiency or contradiction, that the information was complete and that there were no sufficient charges against anyone to have committed the crimes charged, or any other offence”.