On Friday, the Supreme Administrative Court of France ruled that researchers can access the archives of former President Francois Mitterrand on the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The researchers complained that only a small portion of the French documents classified as secret has yet appeared in public, and they say that no final account has yet been extracted for the role Paris played in that genocide.
The Council of State - the highest French judicial body for final dismissal by the law of administrative procedures - considered that the researcher, François Granier, had a "legitimate interest to see these archives to enhance historical research and thus enrich the debate on a matter of general importance."
The State Council said that "the protection of state secrets must be balanced with the interest of" informing public opinion "about these historical events."
Accordingly, the justice canceled two previous judicial decisions and was directed to the Ministry of Culture to allow the researcher to see the documents in question within three months, after the ministry had previously rejected his request.
For his part, the researcher's lawyer, Patrice Spinose, considered the decision "a victory for the law and also for history." "From now on, researchers like François Granier can view President Mitterrand's presidential archives to shed light on France's role in Rwanda during 1994 and 1995," he added.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame accuses France of complicity in the bloodshed when Hutu militias have killed about 800,000 moderate Tutsis and Hutus.
President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to improve ties with Kigali and last year appointed researchers to conduct a two-year investigation into the French army's role during the genocide.
Mitterrand was president from 1981 to 1995, and died in 1996. While Paris acknowledged mistakes in its dealings with Rwanda, it repeatedly rejected accusations that it had trained militias to take part in the massacre.
Nevertheless, during a visit to Rwanda in 2010, former President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted that France had committed a "fatal mistake, as if a mist covered its eyes, we did not expect the dimensions of the genocide ...".