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I feel like this is not getting enough attention.. https://www.ft.com/content/3a5bd546-372d-45f0-bf0e-c0f45990c66a
“.. Félicien Kabuga appeared in court after being arrested in a dawn raid on an apartment in a Parisian suburb by French police officers dressed in black combat uniforms.”
“Mr. Kabuga... was indicted in 1997 on seven counts of genocide for his alleged involvement in the killing three years earlier of more than 800,000 mainly ethnic Tutsi Rwandans.”
“‘I wonder how he can have been in France for this long without being detected,’ said Kayumba Nyamwasa, a Tutsi former Rwandan spy chief turned opposition leader, who now lives in exile in South Africa.“
“Mr. Nyamwasa also noted that the arrest had come after a period of “rapprochement” between Kigali and Paris. Since 1994, Rwanda has repeatedly questioned France’s own role in the genocide.”
“France was a close ally of the Hutu-led government of president Juvenal Habyarimana prior to 1994. Rwanda has accused UN-backed French troops in the country of allowing soldiers and officers responsible for the genocide to escape...”
“‘There is an ambiguous history between France and the Rwandan genocide and its pursuit of those involved,’ said William Bourdon, a Paris-based lawyer and human rights specialist.”
From 2017: “Rwanda’s government published a report on Wednesday ... alleging that France helped arm and protect the perpetrators of genocide before, during and after the 100-day period from April 1994 in which up to 70 per cent of the Tutsi population was killed.”
“Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s foreign minister, said some French officials had ‘got away with murder, literally’.”
“The “Muse Report”, which Kigali says is the most complete account of French complicity to date, accuses French officials of continuing “to conceal their own role in the genocide and to undermine attempts to prosecute genocide suspects”, many of whom live in France.”
“Although Rwanda was a Belgian colony, France gained significant influence in the central African country from the 1970s and was a backer of the government of Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in a plane crash in April 1994 triggered the genocide.”
“According to the report, the French government of François Mitterrand trained the police and army who took part in the genocide and may have helped create the lists of Tutsi citizens marked out for killing.”
“Will Jones, a Rwanda expert at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Kigali was justified in pursuing French complicity, the evidence of which ‘was extremely well documented and non-controversial’.”
