Laurent Curt, a lawyer for the family of a French pilot killed in 1994 plane crash together with the then Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, reacted on Tuesday (21 November) to a top French judge's decision to call for Rwandan President Paul Kagame to be brought before a U.N. court. "International warrants will be issued. I don't want to block the justice which finally reaches its goal. Let me remind you that we are talking about international warrants, that is to say that all Interpol country members are concerned. It means that two hundreds and eighty five countries are involved and I think that it will give the authors of the attack (of the Rwandese plane in 1994) an important blow, they will be rooted to the spot in Kigali", he told Reuters Television. The killing of Juvenal Habyarimana sparked a genocide. Leading anti-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere is also seeking international arrest warrants against nine Kagame associates, including the military's chief of staff James Kabarebe, according to an official document. Asked if there was new elements that could confirm that the nine people were physically on the site of the attack, Laurent Curt said : "Physically present during the attack of the plane, no, because, first of all there was not nine people who carried on this attack. But they were, at the time, physically enough close to the President Paul Kagame to make the attack. So, there's not ambiguity anymore." Rwanda's foreign minister dismissed the arrest warrants as an attempt to cover up what Rwanda says was France's role in training soldiers who carried out the genocide. In a 65-page document filed with the Paris prosecutor's office on Tuesday, Bruguiere said there was evidence that Paul Kagame and members of his military staff devised the operation to destroy Jevenal Habyarimana's plane. Under French law, a warrant cannot be issued for Kagame because he has immunity. But Bruguiere has written to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan asking for Kagame to be brought before the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), said a judicial source.. Bruguiere believes Kagame was responsible for the plane crash that killed Rwanda's Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana and triggered a genocide of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, the judicial source said. Paris public prosecutor Jean-Claude Morin has approved the warrants, which could be issued soon, the source added. Bruguiere has been investigating the Habyarimana crash since 1998, when a complaint was filed by the families of the French crew flying the plane and Habyarimana's widow Agathe. At the time of the crash, Kagame was the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front that defeated the Habyarimana government's Hutu militias to end the genocide triggered by the president's death. Kagame, a Tutsi, blames France for training soldiers they knew would later commit genocide, a charge Paris has denied. Nevertheless, in November 2005, an official judicial investigation was launched into complaints by six Rwandan survivors of the massacre who accused France of complicity in crimes against humanity. France sent troops to Rwanda at the height of the genocide under a U.N.-authorised operation, saying it was safeguarding the provision of food and emergency medical services of humanitarian organisations. France has said tens of thousands of Tutsis were saved in the area where they were sent and a French parliamentary probe in 1998 cleared France of responsibility for the genocide but said "strategic errors" had been made. Genocide survivors tell a different story. In the hilltop village of Bisesero, for example, they say French soldiers told Tutsis they would protect them, only to herd them in one place where they were later hacked to death by Hutus. A Rwandan government-appointed commission last month launched a probe into the actions of French troops.
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Added: Apr 18, 2008 |
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