France ‘was complicit’ in Rwanda

Rwanda has called for the prosecution of senior French politicians including former PM Dominique de Villepin, who it claims assisted the Hutus in the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in 1994. Also blamed was former president Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996.

The accusations, made in a Rwandan government report, are arguably a retaliation for the actions of France's most senior anti-terrorism judge who claimed that Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, ordered the assassination of former president Juvenal Habyarimana. A rocket attack on Habyarimana's plane was the trigger for the genocide. Unable to indict Kagame because he is a serving head of state, Jean-Louis Bruguiere instead called for the arrest of some of his key aides.

The Rwandan report says France was deeply complicit in the genocide: "The French support was of a political, military, diplomatic and logistic nature. French forces directly assassinated Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis." Earlier this year, France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner denied French complicity, but admitted political mistakes had been made.