Can we publicly qualify an alleged Rwandan genocidaire as “African Nazi” ? Maria Malagardis, journalist at Releaseappeared on Thursday, January 19, before the 17e Chamber of the Paris Criminal Court for “public insult”. Great reporter, the author of On the Trail of Rwandan Killers (Flammarion, 2012) is accused by Aloys Ntiwiragabo, former intelligence chief of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) during the genocide of the Tutsi in the spring of 1994, of having insulted him on Twitter on July 24, 2020.
Aloys Ntiwiragabo had just been located in the suburbs of Orléans through Mediapartfollowing an investigation by journalist Théo Englebert. “An African Nazi in France? Anyone going to react? »tweeted Maria Malagardis, calling on Emmanuel Macron and the Ministry of Justice.
“I reacted after reading the articleexplained at the bar Maria Malagardis. It is a spontaneous reaction, at the height of this exceptional discovery [que représente la localisation d’Aloys Ntiwiragabo]. He has not been tried and is therefore presumed innocent, but the position he held in 1994 raises questions. »
Sweeps
When the genocide began, on April 6, 1994, Aloys Ntiwiragabo was at the head of the “G2”, a service corresponding to military intelligence within the FAR. His role involves him at the heart of the genocidal matrix, theAkazu (the “little house” in Kinyarwanda), a hard core of Hutu extremists. In 1998, his name appeared in an indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), created in November 1994 in Tanzania to try the high dignitaries of the genocidal regime. Alongside eleven senior officers, he is cited as co-responsible for this tragedy which claimed a million lives in three months.
A refugee in Zaire, the former Democratic Republic of Congo, Aloys Ntiwiragabo then took part in the creation of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), of which he became major general during the Second Congo War in 1998. This armed group, known for its multiple abuses in the east of the country, is still active and was designated in 2012 for sanctions by the UN.
The analogy between the Holocaust and the genocide of the Tutsi is not new
According to Mediapart, Aloys Ntiwiragabo would have arrived in France in 2006, escaping the various crackdowns of the ICTR. He asked for French nationality, but it was refused, “because, within the interim government in office at the time of the genocide, he was involved in the massacres perpetrated at that time”wrote the Nantes Court of Appeal in 2015. In an irregular situation but without a deportation warrant – France does not extradite to Rwanda under a law of non-retroactivity – the man, aged today 74-year-old man, lived in an HLM in the suburbs of Orléans.
After the revelations of Mediaparta preliminary investigation was opened against him by the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office for “crimes against humanity”. The Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) filed a complaint against him and an Interpol red card was also issued.
“Tropical Nazism”
“I tend to think that you can say anything, write anything, provided there is an explanationsaid M.e Benjamin Chouai, his lawyer, who claims 10,000 euros in compensation. HASWith this tweet, there is nothing, no element of contextualization… Calling someone a Nazi is outrageous and offensive. »
The analogy between the Shoah and the genocide of the Tutsi is not new. She appeared in the international press in the early 1960s to report on the first mass killings committed against the Tutsi. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, in The world in February 1964, saw there “the most systematic massacre of men that has ever been witnessed since the extermination of the Jews in Europe”. In a column, published by Release in April 1994, historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien compared the “crime of crimes” perpetrated in Rwanda at a “tropical Nazism”. A month later, the Brussels daily The eveningwhile thousands of Tutsi were already killed with machetes, evoked “killers as effective as Nazis”.
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“My client does not have Gilles de la Tourette syndrome.pleaded Charles-Emmanuel Soussen, lawyer for the journalist. Her goal was to challenge the President of the Republic and the Minister of Justice and tell them: “Look, a genocidaire who has been wanted for almost thirty years is living happy days in France…” And it is not she who has coined the phrase “African Nazi”. » The deliberation is expected Wednesday, March 15.