A genocide fugitive in France who sued a journalist there over being labelled as an 'African Nazi' due to his role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has lost his court case.
On January 19, Maria Malagardis, Africa manager at the newspaper Liberation, appeared in a French court over a complaint by one of the suspected masterminds of the 1994 Genocide, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, 74, who she previously referred to as an African Nazi.
On March 15, the court threw the Rwandan genocidal government's former spy chief's case out.
"And it is such a relief!" Malagardis told The New Times.
"I am very relied that the French justice recognized the importance of qualifying, with the right words, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, because at the end of the day, that was also the challenge of this trial."
On January 17, the largest journalists' trade union in France, syndicat national des journalistes (SNJ), was apprised of the situation, and it backed Malagardis. According to SNJ, Malagardis has written about the 1994 genocide for years, and her "expertise and seriousness are recognized" by her peers.
According to the journalists' trade union in France, using the word "Nazi" to refer to the massacres perpetrated in Rwanda is not new: several historians have made this choice since the 1990s.
The case dates back to the summer of 2020, when an investigative French media house, Mediapart, published an investigation titled "Aloys Ntiwiragabo, pilier présumé du génocide des Tutsis, se terre en France" [Aloys Ntiwiragabo, suspected pillar of the Genocide against the Tutsi, is hiding in France].
In 2020, after months of careful investigation, Mediapart reporter, Théo Englebert, found out that Ntiwiragabo was hiding in Orléans, a city in north-central France. The journalist went on to exposed the link between the fugitive and a well-entrenched network of Rwandan extremists in Orléans who share the same genocide ideology.
In 1993, Ntiwiragabo was head of military intelligence (G2) and deputy chief of staff of the genocidal army. He allegedly took part in daily Genocide planning meetings of the staff of the then armed forces, and also availed a police station in Kigali to Interahamwe militia to torture, rape and execute the Tutsi. He arranged meetings that planned the massacres of thousands of innocent Tutsi during the Genocide.
Earlier, asked whether the 'African Nazi' label fits Ntiwiragabo, Genocide researcher Tom Ndahiro noted: "Unless if he wanted to be called a Rwandan, or African, genocidaire, rather than an African Nazi. He has a conflict with words. He knows he is part of a genocide against the Tutsi machinery."
Ndahiro showed The New Times a document published by the ex-FAR, in 1995, in which the defeated genocidal regime's army alleged that Ntiwiragabo was told by RPA officers that they told him that the RPA would kill former president Juvénal Habyarimana in March 1994.
He said: "This shows that the issue of killing Habyarimana was something that military intelligence, which Ntiwiragabo headed, had planned all along. Later, he became one of the commanders of the former Rwandan regime's army, ex-FAR, in Zaire.
Lawsuits issued to intimidate journalists
As noted, shortly after the publication of the Médiapart investigation, Ntiwiragabo, "who spent a large part of his life escaping justice," then chose to file a complaint against Englebert and Malagardis - in two separate proceedings.
Accusations before the courts were such that Englebert, the author of the Mediapart investigation, had commented in 2021: "These are people who live peacefully in France, and whose [criminal] past has never caught up with them. So inevitably, the work of journalists disturbs them."
"These lawsuits are issued to intimidate journalists, and to hinder the work of those investigating the Rwandan genocide," the journalists' trade union in France stressed as it reaffirmed its support for Malagardis, Englebert "and the journalists who carry out their mission of information."
France-based Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR) which has worked - for more than two decades - to see Genocide suspects in France brought to book, hoped the lawsuit Ntiwiragabo filed against the journalists "can expedite the legal proceedings against him."
The CPCR filed a genocide complaint in February 2022.
Ndahiro believes the likes of Ntiwiragabo, in France, are at ease and emboldened to intimidate journalists, simply because the European country is a well-known safe haven for such mass murderers.
"Their being emboldened comes from France's soft position to Rwandan genocidaires. The genocidaires know they have strong support within France's influential politicians and military," Ndahiro said.
Kabuga, one of the key architects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, was arrested in May 2020.
France is still home to hundreds of other Rwandan Genocide fugitives.
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"France remains a centre where genocidaires' books are published. There is a publishing house run by a genocide ideologue, Dr Eugene Nshimamungu, called Sources du Nil, which has made it a mission to publish books of dead and living genocidaires."
In July 1994, when the genocidaires fled to Zaire (now DR Congo), Ntiwiragabo, then a Colonel, was one of them.
Ntiwiragabo was involved in the foundation of the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALiR), one of the initial militia formed by the ex-Far and Interahamwe militia that perpetrated the 1994 genocide, which later transformed into FDLR.
Ndahiro said: "That was before he found his most trusted safe haven in France. Initially, he was suspected to be living in Sudan but people didn't know he was already in France, his most trusted safe haven."
In his book, Friends of Evil, Ndahiro sheds light on Ntiwiragabo and other fugitives including Jean Marie Vianney Ndagijimana who he calls "evil for their role in keeping the flag of the genocidaires."
While on an official assignment at the UN, in New York, in October 1994, Ndagijimana disappeared with $187,000 which was money meant to pay bills of the country's embassies. He later turned up in Paris, where he is involved in churning out negative propaganda against the government of Rwanda.
