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Rwanda: National Independent Commission in Charge of Gathering Evidence to Show the Involvement of the French Government in the Genocide Perpetrated in Rwanda in 1994
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The New Times (Kigali)
DOCUMENT
6 August 2008
Posted to the web 7 August 2008
Kigali
France's Involvment During The Genocide
During their stay at the French embassy in Kigali, they contributed in forming the ministerial cabinet of the so-called interim government which organized and supervised the execution of the genocide.
A number of these personalities who took refuge in the French embassy would become part of the interim government as can be seen in this table.
Colonel Bagosora was in charge of the formation of the interim government, with the collaboration of the leaders of the "power" parties or the power factions of the opposition parties.
A cousin to President Habyarimana's wife, Bagosora received his training at the War College in Paris, where he obtained a certificate of higher military studies.
He was successively deputy commander of the Kigali Higher Military Academy and commander of the important Kanombe military camp, from 1988 to 1992, in which the French officers and instructors were operating, before his appointment to the post of Director of Cabinet in the Ministry of Defense in 1992.
He was retired from the army on the 23 September 1993, but nevertheless he continued to exercise his functions of Director of cabinet until his departure from Rwanda in July 1994.
He is one of the main organizers civil self-defence program during which distribution of arms were carried out to civilian Hutus who had undergone military training, sometimes provided by French soldiers.
According to Filip Reyntjens, it is Bagosora who, in the night of 6 to 7 April 1994, between 2h and 7h in the morning, from the Ministry of Defence, gave the orders of massacres to the Presidential Guard, the reconnaissance battalion and the paratrooper battalion with which he had direct and private radio connection. Today he is on trial at the ICTR as the organizer of the genocide.
The French ambassador, Jean-Philippe Marlaud, got personally involved, at Bagosora's side, in the formation of the interim government, to the extent of suggesting some people called upon to be part of it.
According to Ambassador Marlaud's declarations at the MIP, since 7 April, in the company of Colonel Jean-Jacques Maurin, he had "approached Colonel Bagosora, the Director of Cabinet in the Ministry of Defence, while the latter was on a trip to Cameroon.
He had told him that it was necessary to resume control of the situation and that the Rwandan armed forces needed to cooperate with the UNAMIR, but that warning did not prove useful and the situation continued to deteriorate."
Colonel Bagosora's radically anti-Tutsi tendencies and moderate opposition political parties were common knowledge.
Thus, in June 1992, when the new coalition government led by the former opposition removed from office the former chiefs of staff of the army and the gendarmerie because of their extremist political positions, President Habyarimana tried to have Bagosora appointed to the post of chief of staff of the FAR.
The parties of the former opposition refused by virtue of his extremist political orientations. It was the very same Bagosora who, after participating in part of the negotiations of the Arusha Agreement had, on 8 January 1993 "openly expressed his opposition to the concessions made by the government representative, Boniface Ngulinzira, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the extent of leaving the negotiations.
Colonel Bagosora left Arusha and declared that he was returning to Rwanda to prepare the Apocalypse". This declaration, widely relayed in the Rwandan press, had been strongly shocking at the time.
The adjustment that constituted Ambassador Marlaud and Colonel Maurin's approach to ask Bagosora to take "control of the situation" is well expressed by the former Prime Minister of the interim government, Jean Kambanda, during his interrogation on 26 September 1997 by two ICTR investigators.
To the question of knowing if Colonel Bagosora had encountered any opposition from the highest military officers about his intention of taking control of the military crisis committee that was constituted during the meeting of 7 April at the army headquarters, Kambanda replied: "- Jean Kambanda: Yes to his project of taking over power [ ] And he was rather advised to ask for the opinion of the French ambassador.
The support given by Ambassador Marlaud to the person who is today considered as the main organizer of the genocide, and the protection given to the most radically extremist members of the Hutu power who took refuge in the embassy, differs strongly from the way the French diplomat treated the case of the Prime Minister in office, Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
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She represented the legitimate political authority as the head of government. She was, at the legal level, the person authorized to secure the vacant seat of power. But she had perhaps the disadvantage, in the eyes of the French ambassador, of being opposed to the Hutu power.
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