It is the end of an investigation which will have poisoned Franco-Rwandan relations for more than twenty years.

This Tuesday, the Court of Cassation definitively closed the case of the attack which triggered the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The highest court of the French judicial order has rejected the appeals filed by the families of victims of the attack against the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana.

These intended to challenge, on points of law, the abandonment of the proceedings against several members of the entourage of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, confirmed in 2020 by the Paris Court of Appeal.

Recall of facts

On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying then-Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down while landing in Kigali by at least one missile.

The attack is considered the starting point of the genocide which killed more than 800,000 people according to the UN, mainly among the Tutsi minority.

French investigators, seized in 1998 after the complaint of the families of the crew, of French nationality, have long favored the responsibility of the Tutsi rebels led by Paul Kagame.

Then they oriented themselves for a time – without further success – towards the involvement of Hutu extremists, anxious to get rid of a president who was too moderate in their eyes.

Murders and disappearances of witnesses

On December 21, 2018, the investigating judges finally decided to drop the charges against nine members or former members of Paul Kagame's entourage, who had caused strong tensions in relations between Paris and Kigali.

“In the absence of indisputable material elements”, the accusation rested on “largely contradictory or unverifiable” testimonies, they had estimated.

The magistrates had also underlined the “deleterious climate” of the investigation, interspersed with assassinations, disappearances of witnesses and manipulations, and ordered a dismissal.

In its decision on Tuesday, the Court of Cassation considered that the Paris Court of Appeal, which had confirmed the judges' decision in July 2020, had "explained, by reasons free from insufficiency or contradiction, that the information was complete and that there were no sufficient charges against anyone to have committed the crimes charged, or any other offence”.

For the researcher François Graner, member of the association Survie, committed against Françafrique, "it is the end of a botched instruction, of an investigation against".

"For relations between the two countries, a new page is opening, it frees the diplomatic horizon which had already cleared up" since the report of the Duclert commission of historians, he observed, adding that this attack was "one of the major unsolved cases".

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