Former French officer Guillaume Ancel was sentenced on Monday for defamation for a series of publications implicating the former secretary general of the Elysée Hubert Védrine and his role in the policy of France during the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. In question: around fifteen tweets and several articles from his blog, published between March and July 2021. He was sentenced to a suspended fine of 2,000 euros but was released on the other hand from the facts of public insult.
Hubert Védrine "happy with this judgment"
The 17th chamber of the Paris court, specializing in press offences, ruled that the defendant had "exceeded the permissible limits of freedom of expression" and could not benefit from "the exonerating excuse of good faith".
He will have to pay one euro in damages to the complainant and withdraw the texts deemed defamatory.
“I am completely happy with this judgment,” Hubert Védrine told AFP, specifying that it was not part of “a personal approach”.
Monday's judgment is a "strong decision" which is "an opportunity to reaffirm that France is neither an accomplice nor responsible for the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda", he added in a press release.
“Védrine will have a date with history at one time or another”
During the hearing on February 18, the former secretary general of the Elysée had long defended the policy carried out in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 by the socialist president François Mitterrand and his entourage, implicated in a scathing report by historians in March 2021.
For his part, Guillaume Ancel, a former soldier deployed in Rwanda during Turquoise, a controversial French military-humanitarian operation that took place from June to August 1994, explained during the hearing that he wanted through his publications to ask "explanations" from those responsible French policy in Rwanda.
Reacting to his conviction, he felt that it “says nothing about the role of Hubert Védrine in this French disaster that was Rwanda”.
“Anyway, Hubert Védrine will have a date with history at one time or another,” he added to AFP.
The Duclert report, a turning point in relations between Paris and Kigali
The role of France in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994, the subject of heated debates, found a historic answer with the publication of the Duclert report in March 2021. This report of more than 1,000 pages, based on the analysis of French archives, concluded with the “heavy and overwhelming” responsibilities of France and questioned the then president François Mitterrand and his entourage, “ideologically blinded”.
The Duclert report, which had however ruled out any "complicity" of genocide by France, allowed a spectacular warming of relations between Paris and Kigali.
The genocide in Rwanda, orchestrated by the extremist Hutu regime, killed more than 800,000 people, mainly Tutsi, massacred between April and July 1994.
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