Rwanda to charge senior French officials in court
Following the public release of the bombshell ‘Mucyo Commission’ report detailing the complicity and active participation of France in the 94 Genocide, Rwanda is preparing to initiate criminal charges against senior French civilian and military officials who served in the administration of former president François Mitterrand.
Following the public release of the bombshell ‘Mucyo Commission’ report detailing the complicity and active participation of France in the 94 Genocide, Rwanda is preparing to initiate criminal charges against senior French civilian and military officials who served in the administration of former president François Mitterrand.
A Rwanda administration official we cannot name because he spoke strictly off the record gave Focus this news tip.
“I can tell you that the process to file charges against senior members of the Mitterrand administration, both civilian and military, has already begun,” said the official.
Much of the basis of Rwanda’s case against France can be found in the report compiled by a commission, headed by former justice minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo, to investigate France’s role in the Genocide.
The report was made public for the first time last Tuesday. Presenting it, Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama was careful to mention that the document isn’t a criminal charge against anyone but the result of a careful, detailed inquiry that “does not seek to prove the guilt or innocence of anybody”, but rather “to establish the truth of what happened in this country shortly before, during and shortly after the Genocide.”
That, according to our source, doesn’t mean Rwanda cannot use information in the report to initiate legal proceedings against people complicit in the massacre of a million Rwandans.
The report names a total of 33 citizens of France who had major roles in their country’s enabling of the Genocide. It is a 500-page document that meticulously records the complicity of French officials and the French government in the planning, preparation and execution of the Genocide by the regime of Juvenal Habyarimana.
The government of François Mitterrand was so in cahoots with Mr. Habyarimana’s regime for instance that, according to the report, when he died it fell upon France’s envoy to Kigali, Jean Michel Marlaud, together with a senior member of the French military, Colonel Jean Jacques Maurin, to appoint a successor—one Theoneste Bagosora, alias Colonel Apocalypse.
Messrs. Marlaud and Maurin are two of the officials the Mucyo report names as complicit in enabling the Genocide and who could end up before a criminal court if Rwanda’s wishes are realized.
The most notable individuals the Mucyo Report implicates are François Mitterrand himself, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin who during Mitterrand’s administration was a senior adviser at the foreign ministry, former defense minister François Leotard, former prime minister Edouard Balladur, Jean Christophe Mitterrand, a former adviser in the presidency and also the son of François Mitterrand, former foreign affairs minister Alain Juppé and others.
“Mark my word, it doesn’t matter who these people are or what they think they are, we are going to slap criminal charges against them and request that they stand before a court of justice,” said our source.
Mitterrand’s people react to the Mucyo report
When the contents of the Mucyo report became public, French officials began sputtering and bellowing with rage. The foreign affairs ministry said it does not “recognize the legitimacy or the competence of the Rwandan commission.”
A French parliamentarian, Jacques Myard said, “It is unacceptable for Rwanda to accuse France and French officials of crimes of genocide.” Alain Juppé said, “Rwanda has for years been insidiously attempting to re-write history with the aim to turn France into an accomplice of genocide.”
It is not difficult to hear in these bellowing voices the astonishment, confusion and even hurt, petulant indignation of those who have always assumed they are human beings of a higher order suddenly waking up to accusations leveled at them by dark-skinned beings who are supposed to always be servile, to only speak up when spoken to and to always be grateful simply for living on the same earth with the great European seigneurs.
To listen to Bernard Kouchner’s foreign affairs ministry thunder that it doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the Rwandan commission is to hear a lord of Colonialism who must be the arbiter of everything, including what is or isn’t legitimate—and that goes for everything darkies come up with or have to present.
When Alain Juppé complains that Rwanda is attempting to re-write history, it is very obvious who in his mind should always write it. Rwanda has managed what few African nations have: to badly rattle a former colonial master and throw their mental world topsy turvy and mess up their minds. Really big time.
Suddenly, when Jean Christophe Mitterrand, Dominique de Villepin, Alain Juppé, all the accused were least expecting it, Rwanda wants to turn them into a European version of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir (for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant).
When they were least expecting it, these lords of La Francophonie suddenly can visualize the possibility (no matter how remote) that they might face the same quandary Radovan Karadzic—the former Bosnian Serb leader now in the Hague to answer charges of genocide and crimes against humanity—now finds himself in.
Jacques Myard growls that it is unacceptable for Rwanda to accuse France of crimes of genocide and (Rwandan) Foreign Affairs Minister Rosemary Museminari asks, “What is unacceptable? The contents of the report? The research that went into it? I don’t know what they find unacceptable. I think all they’re doing is buying time.”
Buying time, possibly to organize their thoughts.
French government officials have tried to spin the Mucyo report simply as retaliation by Kigali for the indictment and issuing of international arrest warrants against President Kagame and senior officials of the Rwanda Defense Forces by a French judge, Jean Louis Bruguière in November 2006.
The Mucyo Commission was set up well before that, in April 2006. “If anything it was Bruguière who was retaliating against the Mucyo Commission!” said Minister Museminari.
A damning document
The Mucyo Commission report is a damning document. It extensively quotes French and individuals of other nationalities who were familiar, to varying degrees, with the situation in Rwanda in the early nineties during the Genocide and not long after it.
It extensively uses photographs of French forces in Rwanda in operations such as the notorious Zone Turquoise to provide a safe heaven for defeated Interahamwe militias and ex-FAR to continue their atrocities against defenseless Tutsi civilians.
Photographs show French soldiers stopping people at roadblocks that they man side by side with Interahamwe militias. It quotes correspondence between French government officials and high-ranking members of the Habyarimana regime discussing military logistics.
It quotes people like the UNAMIR commander Romeo Dallaire who says, “French soldiers were completely informed there was a plan of something which could lead to great massacres.
It quotes François Mitterrand uttering the same genocide ideology that informed the activities of Mr. Habyarimana’s regime, and Mr. Kayibanda’s before that.
Said President Mitterrand before the French parliament on June 22, 1994: “Rwanda, like Burundi is primarily populated by Hutus.
The majority of the population thus naturally supports the government of President Habyarimana. If this country were to pass under the dominance of a very minority Tutsi group having its base in Uganda, where some are favorable for the creation of a ‘Tutsiland,’ it is certain the process of democratization would be interrupted.”
The President of France could get away with saying such dangerous things because, one can imagine, all he was talking about were dark skinned people somewhere in the jungle.
The report quotes these and other things and names, incidents and dates and there is a bibliography at the end of it of its sources.
FRENCH OFFICIALS IMPLICATED IN THE MUCYO COMMISSION REPORT AND THE POSTS THEY HELD
- Francois Mitterrand: president of the Republic of France
- Alain Juppe: foreign affairs minister
- Francois Leotard: defense minister
- Marcel Debarge: minister of cooperation
- Hubert Vedrine: principal private secretary of the president
- Edouard Balladur: prime minister
- Bruno Delaye: adviser in the president’s office
- Jean Christophe Mitterrand: adviser in the president’s office
- Paul Dijoud: head of the Africa and Madagascar desk in the foreign affairs ministry
- Dominique de Villepin: assistant head of the Africa and Madagascar desk
- George Martres: ambassador of France to Rwanda (1989-93)
- Jean Michel Marlaud: ambassador of France to Rwanda (1993-94)
- Jean Bernard Merimee: French ambassador to the UN (1991-95)
Military officials
- Admiral Jacques Lanxade
- Gen Christian Quesnot
- Gen Jean Pierre Huchon
- Gen Raymond Germanos
- Col Didier Tauzin
- Col Gille Chollet
- Col Bernard Cussac
- Lt Col Jean Jacques Maurin
- Col Gilbert Canovas
- Col Renee Galinie
- Col Jacques Rosier
- Cpt Gregoire de Saint Quentin
- Maj Michel Robardey
- Maj Denis Roux
- Capt Etienne Joubert
- Col Patrice Sartre
- Cpt Marin Gillier
- Lt Col Eric de Stabenrath
- Col Jacques Hogard
- Gen Jean Claude Lafourcade
Posted by The Rwanda Focus
on Aug 9 2008. Filed under National.
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