In a milestone court case in Paris, unprecedented testimony could reveal the Elysée's links to the 1994 génocidaires
By Linda Melvern
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 February 2014
The trial this week of a Rwandan genocide suspect
in a Paris courtroom is a well-earned victory for the French human
rights groups who lobbied so hard and so long for justice. The milestone
trial signals the end of France as a safe haven for génocidaries. But more than this, the trial is likely to see intense public scrutiny of one of the great scandals of the past century – the role of France in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda, which for 20 years journalists and activists have tried so hard to expose.
Pascal Simbikangwa, the defendant in Paris, is said to have been a member of an inner circle of power in Rwanda that
devised genocide as a planned political campaign. Developed by
Hutu ideologues, it was intended to prevent a power-sharing system of
government that was to include the minority Tutsi. The genocide claimed
up to a million lives.
A captain in the Rwandan gendarmerie until
1986, when he was paralysed in a car accident, Simbikangwa – a fanatic
who hoped to create what was known as "a pure Hutu state" – worked for
the security services in the capital Kigali. He was eventually found
hiding out in the French department of Mayotte,
an island group in the Indian Ocean, with 3,000 forged identity papers –
more than enough for the hundreds of Rwandan fugitives still at large.
He denies all the charges, and his lawyer says he is a scapegoat.
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