Citation
A FORESEEABLE GENOCIDE
The Role of the French Government in
Connection with the Genocide Against the
Tutsi in Rwanda
19 April 2021
TABLE OF CONTENTS
STAFF ……………………………………………………………………………………………
i
PREFACE ……………………………………………………………………………….............
ii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ……………………………………………………………………...
v
A.
The Investigation ………………………………………………………………………….
v
B.
Background: Rwandan History and French Policy in Africa Prior to October
1990……………………………………………………………………………………….
vi
Report Summary: The Role of French Officials and the Military in Rwanda from
October 1990 to the Present……………………………………………………………….
viii
1. 1990: The French government responded to the RPF offensive by assisting
Habyarimana’s war effort. The French government continued to extend military
support despite human-rights abuses, anti-Tutsi massacres, and reservations
among French officials……………………………………………………………
viii
2. 1991-1992: The French government continued to apply military and diplomatic
pressure on the RPF, while knowingly supporting the Rwandan government
responsible for the abuse and slaughter of Tutsi………………………………….
xii
3. 1993: Ignoring a devastating human rights report exposing the Rwandan
government, France reached the pinnacle of its intervention in the war against
the RPF…………………………………………………………………………..
xiv
4. After the Genocide Against the Tutsi began, French officials remained captive to
the same inverted thinking that had guided their decisions for the previous three
and a half years: the main problem was the RPF—not the genocide the RPF was
fighting to end…………………………………………………………………….
xvii
5. When it eventually redeployed troops to Rwanda through Operation Turquoise,
the French government used this humanitarian action to stop the RPF from
controlling all of Rwanda…………………………………………………………
xix
Analysis: The French Government Bears Significant Responsibility for Enabling a
Foreseeable Genocide……………………………………………………………………..
xxii
C.
D.
CHAPTER I ……………………….……………………………………………………………..
A.
B.
C.
1
In October 1990, When War Broke Out on His Country’s Northeastern Border,
Rwanda’s President Called on France, a Longtime Ally, to Help His Army Fend Off “the
Invaders.” France Obliged.…………………………………………………………….….
1
France Sought to Retain Its Influence in Africa after World War II, with Mitterrand
Playing a Key Role in the Effort.………………………………………………………….
4
The French Government Forged Relations with Post-Colonial Rwanda in the 1960s,
Expanding the Sphere of French Influence into East Africa.……………………………..
6
D.
France Established Relations with the Kayibanda Regime amid a Period of Intensifying
Ethnic Strife in Rwanda …………………………………………………………………..
8
France Deepened Its Diplomatic and Military Ties to Rwanda after the 1973 Coup, as
Habyarimana and a Small Group of Primarily Northern Loyalists Steadily Consolidated
Control over the Country and Perpetuated Kayibanda-Era Anti-Tutsi Policies .…...........
10
Mitterrand Overruled Efforts to “Moralize” France’s Africa Policy, Opting Instead to
Placate Autocratic Rulers in Rwanda and Elsewhere …………………………………….
15
Stateless and Persecuted in the Countries Where They Sought Refuge, Rwandan
Refugees Were Told They Could Not Return Home Because There Was No Room. War
Ensued.……………………………………………………………….................................
22
Notes to Chapter I …………………………………………………………………………
25
CHAPTER II ……………………………………………………………………………………...
43
E.
F.
G.
A.
The RPF Launched Its Military Offensive into Rwanda on 1 October 1990. French
Soldiers Arrived Days Later……………………………………………………………….
43
French Geopolitical Interests in Africa Motivated Mitterrand’s Military Support of the
Habyarimana Government. To Justify Pursuing Those Interests, French Officials Sought
to Delegitimize the RPF by Casting It As a Foreign Aggressor…………………………..
45
In Support of Its Desire to Intervene, the French Government Also Mischaracterized the
RPF As a Tutsi Movement Intent on Dominating the Hutu Majority, Though the RPF
Was a Pluralistic Group with Broad Political Aims.………………………………………
48
French Cooperants Had Been Training the Rwandan Army Units That Stopped the
RPF’s Military Progress at the Start of the War and the French Government Sent More
Troops Immediately Thereafter …………………………………………………………...
52
In the Early Months of the Conflict, the Élysée Extended Military Support to the
Habyarimana Regime Despite Human Rights Abuses, Anti-Tutsi Massacres, and
Reservations among French Officials.…………………………………………………….
54
As Belgium Withdrew, the French Government Increased Its Support…………………..
57
Notes to Chapter II ………………………………………………………………………..
61
CHAPTER III …………………………………………………………………………..………..
73
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
A.
B.
C.
D.
Noroît Troops Remained to Deter the RPF Military, Despite Mitterrand’s Claims That
French Troops Were in Rwanda Solely to Evacuate French Citizens ………..…………..
73
Early Warnings by a Senior French Official That Rwandan Leaders Had Genocidal Aims
Did Not Alter French Policy and May Have Caused the Élysée to Marginalize the French
Official.…………………………………………………………………………………….
75
After the Habyarimana Regime Retaliated against an RPF Military Attack by Massacring
Tutsi Civilians, French Officials Increased French Military Support for the Regime ........
78
Mitterrand Escalated French Military Support by Sending Military Trainers to Ruhengeri
and, against Counsel from His Military Advisors, by Keeping the Last Noroît Company
in Kigali …………………………………………………………………………………..
82
Notes to Chapter III……………………………………………………………………….
86
CHAPTER IV ………………………………………………………………………………..…...
95
A.
The French Government Claimed Neutrality at the Negotiating Table As It Worked to
Keep Habyarimana in Power and Attempted to Intimidate RPF Representatives into
Surrendering Their Demands.……………………………………………………………..
95
Habyarimana’s Feigned Embrace of Democratic Reforms Succeeded in Placating His
Benefactors in the French Government, Who Worked behind the Scenes to Keep
Habyarimana in Power.…………………………………………………………………….
98
Notes to Chapter IV……………………………………………………………………….
108
CHAPTER V ……………………………………………………………………………..……….
114
B.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
French Officials Watched As Akazu-Backed Militias Perpetuated Rwanda’s Ethnic
Divisions …………………………………………………………………..........................
114
French Officials Reacted to Rwandan State-Led Terrorism against Tutsi Civilians and
Political Opponents in Bugesera by Refusing to Protect Victims and Increasing Support
to the Perpetrators …………………………………………………………………………
117
Despite Ferdinand Nahimana’s Pivotal Role in the Bugesera Massacres, French Officials
Welcomed Him and Pledged Additional Aid to the Government-Run Media That Had
Incited the Violence.……………………………………………………………………….
125
The French Government Overlooked the Habyarimana Administration’s Complicity in
Massacres and Contended That Incremental Steps Toward Multi-Party Democracy Had
Justified France’s Continued Support for the Regime.……………………………………
127
The French Government Responded to a June 1992 RPF Military Offensive in Byumba
with a Swift Increase in Military Assistance to the Rwandan Government ………………
130
F.
Despite Press Criticism Aimed at French Military Engagement in Rwanda, Following the
Byumba Offensive, French Leaders Provided New Weaponry and Training to the FAR
and, by Several Accounts, Engaged Directly in the Fight………………………………… 132
G.
Following a July 1992 Ceasefire Agreement, French Authorities Supplied More
Weapons to the FAR and Took Measures to Ensure the DAMI “Panda” Advisors Would
Not Be Forced to Leave Rwanda.…………………………………………………………
137
French Officers Worked Alongside Rwandan Gendarmes at the Kigali-Based Criminal
Investigations Center, Despite Allegations That Gendarmes Abused Prisoners There…..
139
Recurring Allegations Have Been Made That French Soldiers Oversaw the Training of
Rwandan Militias in 1992 and 1993.………………………………………………………
143
The Rwandan Government Recognized the Value of French Support in 1992 and Made
Every Effort to Ensure It Continued……………………………………………………….
145
While Halting Progress toward Peace Produced Violent Extremist Reactions, French
Officials Discounted the Backlash and Continued to Shore Up a Government Beholden
to Extremists……………………………………………………………………………….
146
In Late 1992, General Quesnot’s Attempt to Fortify FAR Defensive Positions Resulted
in French Troops Running Afoul of the Cease-Fire……………………………………….
149
H.
I.
J.
K.
L.
M.
By the End of 1992, Negotiators in Arusha Had Reached a Framework for Peace That
Left a Sidelined and Furious Col. Bagosora—Widely Considered the Architect of the
Genocide— Announcing That He Would Begin Planning the “Apocalypse.”…………....
151
Notes to Chapter V………………………………………………………………………...
158
CHAPTER VI …………………………………………………………………..………………...
186
A.
French Officials Foretold That Habyarimana’s Dissatisfaction with a Peace Agreement
Signed in Early January 1993 Would Translate into More Unrest by Anti-Tutsi
Extremists.…………………………………………………………………………………. 186
B.
Massacres Began Anew on the Same Day an International Commission Investigating
Previous Massacres Left the Country. That Commission Would Deliver Its Preliminary
Findings Directly to French Officials, Specifically That Officials at the Highest Levels of
the Rwandan Government Were Responsible for Massacres and Targeted Killings….…..
188
When the RPF Launched Its 8 February 1993 Counter-Offensive in Response to the
January 1993 Ethnic Killings, the French Government Increased Military Support of the
FAR with Another 120 French Troops and More Weaponry.……….................................
193
Even a Mission to Evacuate Foreign Nationals from Ruhengeri Served the Unstated
French Goal of Deterring the RPF.……………………………………………………….
197
Disregarding His Defense Minister’s Objections, Mitterrand Ordered the French Army to
Reinforce Noroît.………………………………………………………………………….
198
C.
D.
E.
F.
French Soldiers Manned Checkpoints Alongside Rwandan Gendarmes, Despite a History
of Abuses.……………………............................................................................................. 201
G.
French Special Forces Embarked on a Secret Mission to Direct the War Effort for the
Rwandan Government………………………………………………………………….….
206
As the FAR Flailed, Mitterrand Hatched a Plan to Disengage from Rwanda while, in the
Short Term, Keeping Pressure on the RPF..........................................................................
210
1. As Prospects of a FAR Victory Dimmed, the French Government Sought a UN
Lifeline ……………………………………………………………………….…..
211
2. Mitterrand’s Decision to Pursue a Handoff to the United Nations Disrupted
French Special Forces’ Preparations for a Major Counter-Offensive against the
RPF ……………………………………………………………………………….
216
3. Relenting under Pressure, the French Government Withdrew Two Noroît
Companies ……......................................................................................................
220
Notes to Chapter VI………………………………………………………………………..
225
CHAPTER VII ……………………………………………………………………………………
248
H.
A.
B.
The French Government’s Support for Habyarimana Continued at the Dawn of a New
Era of “Cohabitation” Government in Paris, with French Diplomats Working behind the
Scenes to Neutralize the RPF.……………………………………………………………..
248
France’s New Prime Minister Resolved to Bolster French Assistance to the FAR. An
Expansion of DAMI Panda Soon Followed.………………………………………….……
252
C.
The French Ministry of Defense Disregarded an Internal Recommendation to Reassess
French Policy in Rwanda…………………………………………………………………..
255
In May 1993, French Officials Sidelined General Varret, a Leading Critic of France’s
Rwanda Policy………………………………………………………………………..……
256
At France’s Urging, the UN Security Council Voted to Send Observers to the Ugandan
Border in a Bid to Cut Off RPF Supply Routes.…………………………………….……..
257
Anti-Tutsi Extremists Launched RTLM in July 1993, Inciting Rwandans with Messages
of Hate……………………………………………………………………………………..
259
G.
With Peace, at Last, Seemingly at Hand, France Inched Closer to the Exit……………….
262
H.
Western Reluctance, Including on the Part of France, to Adequately Fund and Equip UN
Peacekeeping Forces Set Up the United Nations for Failure……………………………...
268
Following the August 1993 Truce, France Refused to Contribute Soldiers to the UN
Peacekeeping Force, but Remained in Rwanda and Continued to Advise and Train the
FAR………………………………………………………………………………………...
271
As a New, Larger UN Force Was Created, UNOMUR—the Previously Authorized UN
Border Force, Championed by France—Proved to Be Little More than Symbolic………..
274
As Violence Spiked, the French Government Pulled the Last Remaining Noroît
Companies, Leaving Military Advisers Behind……………………………………………
275
The Remaining French Military Cooperants Continued to Advise and Assist FAR
Leaders in Early 1994, Even As Evidence Emerged That the FAR Was Arming and
Training the Interahamwe, the Militia Suspected of Planning to Exterminate Tutsi………
279
The FAR Received a Delivery of Munitions from France in January 1994, Despite the
Deteriorating Situation on the Ground……………………………………………………..
286
Frustrated, but Not Yet Willing to End the Mission, the UN Security Council Voted on 5
April 1994—One Day before the Start of the Genocide—to Extend UNAMIR’s
Mandate…………………………………………………………………………………….
287
Notes to Chapter VII……………………………………………………………………….
291
CHAPTER VIII …………………………………………………………………………...……...
319
D.
E.
F.
I.
J.
K.
L.
M.
N.
A.
B.
C.
D.
French Cooperants Accompanied a FAR Officer, Major Aloys Ntabakuze, to Inspect the
Wreckage of President Habyarimana’s Plane, Not Long before Troops under
Ntabakuze’s Command Slaughtered Tutsi.…………………………………………..…….
319
Executing a Clear Plan during the First Day of the Genocide, the French-Trained
Presidential Guard Assassinated Moderate Politicians, Murdered Belgian Peacekeepers,
Attacked the RPF Residing in the CND Building, and Erected Roadblocks throughout
Kigali Where Many Tutsi Were Butchered…………………………………………….…
320
French Officials at the Highest Levels Quickly Became Aware That the French-Trained
Presidential Guard Was Murdering Tutsi Civilians and Moderate Politicians…………….
327
Without Evidence, and Contradicted by French Intelligence, Mitterrand’s Advisors in the
Élysée Reflexively Blamed the RPF for Habyarimana’s Assassination……….………….
328
E.
F.
G.
French Officials Evacuated Their Citizens and Extremist Allies from Rwanda,
Reportedly Delivering Ammunition for Those Allies Who Were Presiding over a
Genocide…………………………………………………………………………………...
330
French Officials Were Willing to Exceed the Mission of Operation Amaryllis to
Evacuate Some Rwandans, Including Some Later Charged with Genocide, but When
Asked about Their Failure to Aid the Victims, Their Answer Was: That Was Not Our
Job………………………………………………………………………………….……...
333
As Operation Amaryllis Came to an End, Advisors in the Élysée and Soldiers on the
Ground Mourned What They Saw as the Abandonment of Their Allies and Even Began a
Short- Lived Secret Operation Meant to Oppose the RPF…………………………..……
337
Notes to Chapter VIII……………………………………………………………………...
343
CHAPTER IX …………………………………………………………………………..………...
356
A.
As Genocidal Massacres Continued in April and May of 1994, French Officials Blamed
the RPF—the Only Force in the World Trying to Stop the Genocide—and Insisted That
the RPF Lay Down Its Arms and Negotiate with the Génocidaires……………………….
356
France Must Clarify How Senior French Officials Responded to the IRG’s Regular
Requests for Arms and Other Support during the Genocide…………………………..…..
358
Due to International Condemnation of the Genocide, the French Government’s
Assistance to the Génocidaires May Have Been Covert………………………….……….
359
As Massacres Took Hundreds of Thousands of Lives in Full View of the International
Community, the French Government Helped Shape a Portrayal of the Crisis as a Sudden
Outbreak of Mindless Violence, as Opposed to a Genocide Orchestrated by Members of
the Interim Rwandan Government…………………………………………………….….
360
French Officials Welcomed IRG Representatives to Paris, Bestowing Legitimacy on a
Genocidal Government as They Discussed How the French Government Might Support
the IRG……………………………………………………………………………....…….
363
During the Genocide, French Mercenaries Paul Barril and Bob Denard Allegedly
Provided Training and Ammunition to the FAR, with the Knowledge of the French
Government………………………………………………………………………………..
368
At the United Nations, French Officials Continued to Obstruct Attempts to Hold the
Génocidaires Responsible for the Slaughter in Rwanda…………………….….…………
371
Despite Intensified Public Criticism of French Inaction in Late May and Early June, the
French Government Continued to Insist It Had No Obligations in Rwanda ….………….
374
I.
France’s African Allies Pressured the French Government to Act in Rwanda……………
378
J.
Under Considerable Pressure, and for a Range of Reasons, Mitterrand and Other HighRanking French Officials Decided to Send French Troops Back to Rwanda …………….
379
As French Officials Devised Turquoise, Planning Was Rushed, Specifics Were Scarce,
and Several Officials Advocated Operations to Prevent an RPF Takeover of Kigali and
to Allow the Establishment of a “Hutu Country” in Western Rwanda …………………..
381
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
K.
L.
As Plans for Turquoise Took Shape, French Officials Encountered Enthusiastic Support
from the IRG, Staunch Opposition from the RPF, and Unusually Direct Skepticism from
the International Community………………………………………………………………
385
Notes to Chapter IX………………………………………………………………………..
391
CHAPTER X ……………………………………………………….…………………………….
412
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
K.
L.
M.
While Operation Turquoise Carried a Humanitarian Mandate, French Forces Deployed
with a Massive Display of Firepower and Some Officers Who Had Previously Supported
the FAR in its War against the RPF………………………………………………………..
412
The Turquoise Forces’ First Foray into Rwandan Territory Was Calculated to Allay
Suspicions That the French Government Was Still Backing the FAR………………..…..
419
Turquoise Officers Met with FAR Leaders, Despite Their Knowledge of the FAR’s
Complicity in the Genocide………………………………………………………………..
422
Following Their First Operation in Cyangugu, French Troops Proceeded to the IRG
Stronghold of Gisenyi and Continued to Fan Out Eastward in the Direction of Kigali
Everywhere, Their Patrols Revealed “an Empty Countryside,” with Few Tutsi Left to
Save……………………………………………………………………………….……….
425
Alarmed by Recent RPF Military Successes and Suspicious of RPF Infiltration in the
Interim Government-Controlled Zone, French Officials Debated Ways of Stopping the
RPF Advance…………………………………………………………………………..…..
428
Confronted with Evidence of Massacres in Bisesero, French Troops Failed to Intervene
for Three Days, Leaving Hundreds of Refugees to Be Slaughtered……………………….
433
With the RPF on the Verge of Victory, President Mitterrand Sought to Excuse France’s
Role in the Lead-Up to the Genocide While Working behind the Scenes to Persuade the
RPF to Stop Its Advance………………………………………………………………….
442
The French Government Established a Safe Humanitarian Zone in Southwestern Rwanda
in Part to Limit RPF Control of Rwanda…………………………………………….……
444
Leveraging the Establishment of the SHZ, French Officials Redoubled Their Efforts to
Catalyze a Cease-fire and Salvage the IRG ………………………………………..…….
450
The Safe Humanitarian Zone Offered Refuge to the Interim Government’s Army and
Other Perpetrators of Massacres, as French Officials Did Not Order Their Troops to
Arrest or Systematically Disarm Génocidaires ……………………..…………………...
454
While Slowing the RPF Forces’ Progress, the French Government Struggled to
Adequately Care for Refugees in the SHZ and Allowed Génocidaires’ Safe Passage to
Zaire ……………………………………………………………………………………...
461
As the War Ended, French Officers Crossed the Border to Meet with Ex-FAR Leaders in
Exile and Express Their Support …………………………………………………………
466
When French Officials Withdrew French Forces from Rwanda, They Proclaimed
Operation Turquoise a Success Despite the Humanitarian Crisis Enveloping the Region ..
471
Notes to Chapter X………………………………………………………………………...
482
EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………………………………….
A.
530
After Operation Turquoise Ended, President Mitterrand Refused to Accept Any
Responsibility for the Genocide, Instead Issuing False Statements Blaming the RPF and
Distorting the History of the Genocide ……………………………………………..…….
530
A 1998 Parliamentary Inquiry Whitewashed the French Government’s Role in the
Genocide……………………………………………………………………………….….
534
A French Judicial Investigation Smeared Rwandan Political Leaders and Gave Credence
to the Claims of Genocide Deniers …………………………………………….…..……..
538
Génocidaires Have Enjoyed Decades of Sanctuary and Freedom in France, Despite
Concerted Efforts by Private Citizens and the Rwandan Government to Bring Them to
Justice ……………………………………………………………………..…….………..
540
The French Government Continues to Withhold Critical Documents Relating to its Role
in the Genocide ……………………………………………………………………….…...
546
For Rwandans, the Toll of the Genocide Continues ………………………………………
549
Notes to Epilogue …………………………………………………………………………
553
CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS ……………………………………………………………...
567
DRAMATIS PERSONAE ………………………………………………………………………..
581
GLOSSARY & ABBREVIATIONS …………………………………………………………….
588
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
APPENDICES
A.
Map of Rwanda
B.
Government of Rwanda’s First Request of Documents to the Government of France
C.
Government of Rwanda’s Second Request of Documents to the Government of France
D.
Government of Rwanda’s Third Request of Documents to the Government of France
E.
Yael Danieli Report
STAFF
The following individuals worked on the investigation:
Joshua Levy
Yannick Morgan
Barbara Mulvaney
Remy Munyaneza
Robert Muse
Serge D. Ndikum
Moise Nkundabarashi
Daniel O’Sullivan
Emily Pan
Brianna Reed
Benjamin Schneider
Patrick Sharangabo
Andrew Sharp
Emily Somberg
Saurea Stancioff
Clarisse Umuhire
Fabiola Uwera
Esther Uwicyeza
Pamela Uwineza
Margaret Whitney
Kathryn Wozny
Monique Abrishami
Julie Baleynaud
Scott Brooks
Randy Campana
Rachel Clattenburg
Matt Corboy
William Corboy
Sara Criscitelli
Elise Cuny
Joseph Filvarof
Daren Firestone
Boris Fishman
Valeska Heldt
Seana Holland
Florida Kabasinga
Dorcas Karekezi
Adeline Kayitesi
Harrison Kidd
Logan Kirkpatrick
Christophe Knox
Katherine Krudys
Gentiane Lamoure
i
PREFACE
This Report is about the role of the French government in connection with the 1994
Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, one of the most monstrous atrocities of the 20th century.
How the Genocide happened and who is responsible have been the subjects of hundreds of books,
judicial proceedings, investigations, and journalistic efforts. And still, questions remain
unanswered. Those who seek to evade responsibility have succeeded in hiding, obscuring or
distorting the truth.
When a million human beings are slaughtered over a period of one hundred days, and
generations continue to suffer more than a quarter century later, there is an imperative to finding
the truth. In particular, Rwanda and its people insist on understanding the role of the French
government. For too long, they have watched the French government avoid the truth and fail to
acknowledge its role and responsibility.
The Rwandan government believes that bringing in an outside law firm, based neither in
France nor Rwanda, best helps advance the public’s understanding of the facts. In 2017, the
government commissioned this Washington, DC law firm to conduct a detailed inquiry to
determine the French government’s role. In furtherance of this mandate, our aim has been to locate
and ascertain the facts and circumstances related to the French government’s role, reach
conclusions as to its responsibility, and report to the Government of Rwanda. We do so with this
Report. The submission of this Report to the government marks the end of the investigation and
speaks for itself. We will not be speaking with the media.
The Report is drawn from a range of both primary and secondary documentary sources,
including transcripts; reports and studies by governments, non-government organizations and
academics; diplomatic cables; documentaries and other videos; contemporaneous news articles;
and other such resources. We have met with hundreds of individuals and interviewed more than
250 witnesses in English, French and Kinyarwanda. The Rwandan government has placed no
restrictions on our efforts.
The Report is generally structured in chronological order. It begins with an examination of
the French government’s early experiences in Rwanda and then focuses on the critical four years
when the French government was most involved in Rwandan affairs, starting in October 1990 with
the invasion of the RPF, through the Genocide in 1994, and Operation Turquoise later that summer.
Importantly, the Report looks beyond the time of the actual Genocide. It examines the French
government’s role for the past quarter century and establishes that the Government of France has
continuously obstructed justice, concealed documents, and perpetuated false narratives about the
Genocide. The coverup continues even to the present.
There are some hopeful signs that this may be changing. In 2019, President Emmanuel
Macron ordered the creation of the Research Commission on the French Archives Related to
Rwanda and the Genocide Against the Tutsi (“the Duclert Commission”). Several weeks ago, the
Commission issued its report and conclusions. In many respects, these findings comport with our
own. We commend the effort of the Commission, as it has unearthed new information and
Preface
presented the role of the French government in a more candid and honest manner. This new
approach represents a departure from previous efforts to obscure the facts. However, our Report
parts ways with the Commission in several respects, including:
Responsibility
It appears that neither the Duclert Commission nor the French government has yet come to
a conclusion on the issue of responsibility. The Commission, while speaking of
“overwhelming responsibility” and examining such with abstract considerations, including
“political,” “institutional,” “intellectual,” “ethical,” “cognitive” and “moral” responsibility,
fails to adjudge the actual responsibility of the French government. It fails to state what the
French government was responsible for having done. Specifically, it fails to pronounce that
the Government of France bears significant responsibility for having enabled a foreseeable
genocide. We do so here.
Blindness
The Commission’s conclusion suggests that the French government was “blind” to the
coming Genocide. Not so. Our Report concludes that the Genocide was foreseeable. From
its knowledge of massacres of civilians conducted by the government and its allies, to the
daily dehumanization of the Tutsi, to the cables and other data arriving from Rwanda, the
French government could see that a genocide was coming. The French government was
neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide.
The Coverup
The Commission’s conclusion, in the main, does not address the quarter century after the
Genocide. Our Report, by contrast, details and examines the cover-up, obstruction and
false narratives promulgated by the French government since 1994. The Commission
acknowledges the “limits” of its inquiry, in part born of the fact that the Government of
France continues to withhold critical documents. This approach by the French government
is regrettably consistent with a pattern of 27 years of obstruction.
Our Report was largely completed before the Commission’s work was made public.
Nonetheless, we have at points in this Report incorporated facts unearthed by the Commission that
aid historical understanding. But we have not attempted to incorporate or answer all of its data or
analysis. Neither this Preface nor the Report is an effort to examine and respond to the Duclert
Commission. It is enough to say we have regard for the Commission’s effort but suggest each
report stands on its own.
Throughout this Report, there is a series of boxes set into the text, which feature the voices
of victims who survived the Genocide. They are interspersed in each chapter to remind the reader
that no study of the French government’s role can be complete without a continuing awareness of
what the Genocide actually was. For those who have not lived it, to simply say the word “genocide”
is almost anodyne and cannot convey even the small piece of the horror contained in the
testimonies we have gathered. A scientific examination of the duties and failures of governments
is important to show how their practices can be improved. But it is inadequate to the task of
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Preface
determining and judging responsibility. The role of the French government must be examined in
the context of both the events they enabled and the generations irreparably harmed. It can be
disquieting and uncomfortable to confront what actually happened to the Tutsi, but it must be done.
However awkward and unsettling it may be to consider, France’s role can only be examined and
determined with a full awareness of what did occur.
This Report is the culmination of the superb work of the extraordinary professionals and
staff who conducted the investigation. Every page of the Report reflects their considerable skill,
dedication, judgment, decency and intellectual honesty. It has been an honor to share the mission
with such wonderful colleagues—all now dear friends.
Finally, we wish to acknowledge the considerable assistance we received from witnesses
in Rwanda, who themselves are survivors of the Genocide. Discussing what occurred is fraught
with enormous emotions, and this would often be evidenced in our meetings with witnesses who
spoke with deep and painful feelings about events that remain searing.
April 2021
Washington, D.C.
Robert F. Muse
Levy Firestone Muse LLP
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda stands as one of the darkest and most
horrific chapters of the 20th century. In the span of one hundred days, more than one million human
beings were killed because of ethnic hatred. Still more suffered grievous injuries and losses, the
pain of which lingers to this day.
A. The Investigation
Despite all that has been written about actions taken by the French government in Rwanda
before, during, and after the Genocide, critical aspects of the truth remain unknown or
unacknowledged. Unsatisfied with such an incomplete record on a central element of Rwanda’s
history, the Government of Rwanda engaged this law firm to investigate the role of the French
government in connection with the Genocide.
This investigation has included outreach to hundreds of witnesses and document custodians
on three continents; interviews with over 250 witnesses in English, French, and Kinyarwanda;
collection and analysis of millions of pages of documents, transcripts, and contemporaneous news
articles, primarily in the same three languages; and the examination of reports and studies by
governments, non-governmental organizations, and academics, as well as books and memoirs by
key participants.
The French government, though aware of this investigation, has not been cooperative,
perpetuating what by now can only be characterized as an ongoing cover-up of omission,
deflection, and distortion. France’s cover-up is also a failure to accept responsibility and a
miscarriage of justice. The Government of Rwanda has sent the Government of France multiple
requests for documents to establish the facts. The French government acknowledged receipt of the
Government of Rwanda’s requests for documents on 20 December 2019, 10 July 2020, and 27
January 2021, and has produced zero documents in response.
Until France opens all of its archives and authorizes all of its government and military
officials from the 1990s (and not only those who approve of French actions in Rwanda) to speak
publicly and without fear of reprisal about what transpired, the public will not know the full story.
Only negative inferences can be drawn from the French government’s recalcitrance.
Nonetheless, much of the story can be known now. The Report that we summarize here
details France’s role through an examination of policies, decisions, and events. These details
support our conclusion that the French government bears significant responsibility for enabling a
foreseeable genocide.
Executive Summary
B. Background: Rwandan History and French Policy in Africa Prior to October 1990.
Rwanda is uncommon among the countries of Africa’s Great Lakes region (a term that
generally refers to the areas surrounding Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi and often
encompasses Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Tanzania, Kenya,
Rwanda, and Burundi). Small and without coastline, it was spared outside interference until the
late 19th century when Germany first made colonial inroads into the region. Rwanda remained a
part of German East Africa until 1916, when, during World War I, the Allies placed it under
Belgium’s authority. The Belgians ruled “Ruanda-Urundi” (Rwanda and Burundi) for the next 44
years.
Belgium enforced strict hierarchical divides among otherwise fluid and overlapping quasiethnic groups—Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa—as a way of maintaining control in Rwanda. At first,
colonial administrators reinforced existing Tutsi elite power structures, working through the Tutsi
monarchy, lending military support to Tutsi leaders, and preserving access to economic
opportunity for the Tutsi ruling elite. But during the late 1950s, the Tutsi monarchy followed
numerous countries in Asia and Africa in pushing for independence from colonial rule. The
Belgian response was to champion long-simmering resentment among the Hutu majority and
reverse the discrimination, now elevating Hutu over Tutsi and creating a new oppressive state
based on the exclusion of Tutsi. This had calamitous results, opening the door to a wave of
pogroms that began in 1959 and continued during the 1960s and early 1970s, resulting in the deaths
of many thousands of Tutsi and driving more than 300,000 primarily Tutsi Rwandans into exile,
mostly to refugee camps in its bordering countries—Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire
(today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Meanwhile, as former French colonies declared their independence, the French
government sought to preserve its influence on the continent. To that end, France cultivated
economic relationships with leaders across Africa, who facilitated the supply of petroleum and
other natural resources to France, and who returned a percentage of revenue to France in return for
military and economic support. France viewed other wealthy countries, particularly the United
Kingdom and the United States, as potential rivals to this influence, significantly in resource-rich
eastern Zaire, on the western border of Uganda and Rwanda. As old colonialism was dying, the
importance of maintaining influence in Africa was not lost on François Mitterrand, who, as
France’s minister of justice, wrote in 1957 that “[w]ithout Africa, there will be no history of France
in the twenty-first century.”
When Rwanda gained independence from Belgium in 1962, France saw an opportunity.
Unlike some of France’s own former colonies in Africa, such as Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville,
Rwanda did not have oil or other precious natural resources. What made Rwanda alluring, from
France’s perspective, was something else: its distinction as one of only a handful of Frenchspeaking countries on the frontier of English-speaking East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania). In
1963, one French Foreign Ministry official, Bertrand Dufourcq, who would serve as secretary
general of the Ministry from 1993 to 1998, asserted that Rwanda, because of “its geographical
location,” could “contribute effectively to the development of French influence” in the region. He
alluded to a hope that Rwandan emigrants would bring their language and culture with them to the
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rest of the region, with the result that, for France, Rwanda would serve as “a significant instrument
of cultural penetration in the English speaking neighboring countries.”
To further its interests in the country and the region, the French government supported the
militant Hutu nationalist regime led by Grégoire Kayibanda, which took power in Rwanda in 1962
and oversaw the massacres of Tutsi over the following years. The year Kayibanda became
president, France signed a “Friendship and Cooperation” agreement with Rwanda. In 1975, two
years after Juvénal Habyarimana deposed President Kayibanda in a military coup d’état, the two
countries signed a “military cooperation” agreement. This agreement authorized French military
personnel (referred to as “cooperants”) to train the Rwandan Gendarmerie (its national police
force) but stated that “[u]nder no circumstances” could the French cooperants “be associated with
the preparation and execution of war operations.” In 1983, the agreement was amended to remove
the ban on French cooperants assisting in war operations. In August 1992, the agreement was
further amended to authorize French assistance not only to the Gendarmerie, but to the “Rwandan
Armed Forces” (Forces armées rwandaises, or FAR).
Such bilateral military cooperation agreements were a fixture of French relations with its
former colonies and other francophone countries. Through these compacts and civil cooperation
agreements, France leveraged its relative wealth, as well as its technical and military know-how,
to strengthen its alliances in Africa and reap the benefits of those ties. These arrangements were
part of a broader French policy established in the early 1960s under French President Charles de
Gaulle and known as françafrique. Run primarily through the Élysée (the office of the French
president), françafrique relied on parallel power networks between French politicians and loyal
African heads of state. The French government provided these African leaders with financial and
military aid in exchange for support of French positions at the United Nations, permission for
France to station troops in their countries, preferential trading agreements, and, in some cases,
exclusive access for French companies to lucrative African mineral sites.
François Mitterrand came to power in 1981 on a Socialist Party platform pledging an end
to France’s military support of corrupt and undemocratic African regimes. “French imperialism in
Africa, which doesn’t think twice about resorting to military means (Gabon, Zaire, Sahara, Chad,
Central Africa) has run its course,” the platform proclaimed. Such statements buoyed exiled
Rwandans. As the Rwandan, mostly Tutsi, refugee population grew, so did their determination to
return to their homeland. Some Rwandan refugee activists in Europe petitioned the new French
President to support their repatriation efforts, which Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana
assiduously resisted. “Rwanda is small,” Habyarimana would say in rejecting proposals for refugee
resettlement. “It is like a glass full of water. If one added more, it would spill.” Mitterrand was
sympathetic to this view, telling Habyarimana during a 1984 speech in Kigali, “Your constant
willingness to maintain good neighborly relations cannot prevent a refugee problem, in your
country or on your doorstep . . . . With an already very large population, you now find yourself
taking on burdens that should not normally be yours.”
Habyarimana had come to power during a 1973 military coup, capitalizing on the
dissatisfaction of northern Rwandans with Kayibanda’s regional sectarianism that favored
Rwandans who hailed from Kayibanda’s power base in southern and central Rwanda.
Habyarimana and his clique of northern powerbrokers—at the core of which was his wife, Agathe
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Kanziga Habyarimana, and her family—responded not only by reportedly murdering Kayibanda
and numerous politicians associated with him, but also by consolidating near total power over
political and economic life in Rwanda. As a former head of Rwandan state-run media wrote in
1992, “[a]ny decision taken by the party organs goes directly or indirectly through” what became
known as the Akazu, meaning “small house,” referring to Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana’s close
family circle. “[T]here are very few,” the former Habyarimana confidant continued, “who, these
last few years, could have been promoted to and/or kept in an important position without being in
thrall to a prominent member of [the Akazu]. An even rarer occurrence was the expression of
opinions to which [the Akazu] had not first given its blessing.”
Determined to end this corrupt system and to escape the oppression of refugeeship endured
in surrounding countries, Rwandan refugees began organizing in the late 1970s to agitate the
Rwandan government for change. But after President Habyarimana’s political party, the
Mouvement révolutionaire national pour le développement, or MRND (the only political party in
Rwanda), issued a 1986 statement rejecting the refugees’ call for collective repatriation, Rwandan
refugees began planning for the possibility of what they called “the Z Option”—war. In December
1987, they formed a new political action group called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which
was uniquely positioned to plan a military option in parallel to its continuing diplomatic efforts.
Many RPF members had escaped the limitations of a life in a refugee camp by spending years
fighting a successful guerilla war in Uganda in Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army
(NRA). Well-trained and battle-hardened, the Rwandan NRA soldiers had helped Museveni end
Ugandan President Milton Obote’s bloody rule in 1986, and many remained in the NRA, with
several reaching its highest levels. Organizing and training in secret, the RPF began to build its
own army. “Going home to Rwanda was not possible without military struggle,” recalled Richard
Sezibera, who would join the RPF’s army as one of its first medical officers and decades later
serve as Rwanda’s foreign minister. “We all listened to the radio. The government told us that
Rwanda was not for us—it was full.”
After decades of waiting, planning, and advocating, on Monday, 1 October 1990, several
thousand RPF troops crossed the northeast border into Rwanda.
C. Report Summary: The Role of French Officials and the Military in Rwanda from October
1990 to the Present.
1. 1990: The French government responded to the RPF offensive by assisting
Habyarimana’s war effort. The French government continued to extend military
support despite human rights abuses, anti-Tutsi massacres, and reservations
among French officials.
On 2 October 1990, President Habyarimana phoned the Élysée in Paris, to plead for France
to help his government repel the RPF’s military offensive. The French official who took his call
was not President Mitterrand, but rather the president’s son, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the head
of the Élysée’s “Africa Cell,” which largely controlled French policy in Africa. The younger
Mitterrand, responding to Habyarimana’s request for help, gave “a bland and reassuring answer”
before turning to historian Gérard Prunier, who happened to be in the room at the time, and saying,
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“We are going to send him a few boys, old man Habyarimana. We are going to bail him out.” “In
any case,” he added, “the whole thing will be over in two or three months.”
As Jean-Christophe Mitterrand may have known, when the war broke out, there were
already French military cooperants on the ground in Rwanda, including several who had been
working to train key units of the Rwandan Armed Forces—the reconnaissance battalion, the paracommando battalion, and the aviation squadron—that were among the first dispatched to repel the
RPF troops.
By 4 October 1990, three days after the war began, these French military cooperants would
be joined in Rwanda by 150 French troops to help secure Kigali and its airport. This deployment,
followed soon afterward by the arrival of another 150 French soldiers, marked the beginning of
Operation Noroît. President Mitterrand tried to assure the French people that the purpose of this
operation was to “permit[] the evacuation of the French and of a number of foreigners who placed
themselves under our protection.” The Noroît troops, he said, “had no other mission but that one,
and once this mission is completed, of course, they will return to France.” This was a lie. Internal
communications and recent statements from Mitterrand’s advisors confirm that the mission also
had an unofficial purpose: deterring the RPF advance.
To that end, the French intervention was successful. In the skies, Rwandan pilots aboard
French-made Gazelle helicopters unleashed rocket attacks that played a decisive role in halting the
RPF army’s advance. French instructor-pilots often sat alongside their Rwandan pupils during the
early stages of the war. Colonel Laurent Serubuga, the FAR’s deputy chief of staff and a core
member of the Akazu, would later tell a visiting French official that the FAR’s French-trained elite
units, “backed by France,” deserved the credit for the Rwandan government forces’ “October
victory” over the RPF military.
Serubuga welcomed the RPF attack, according to France’s ambassador to Rwanda from
1989 to 1993, Georges Martres. For Serubuga, the attack offered the pretext that government antiTutsi hardliners like himself needed to massacre Tutsi. Although Ambassador Martres knew this,
the French government nonetheless secretly appointed a special advisor to Serubuga to improve
the FAR’s fighting capabilities and to participate in high-level discussions about battlefield tactics.
Massacres of Tutsi civilians were, in fact, already under way on 11 October, the day the
French government appointed the advisor to Serubuga. Days after the RPF military began its 1
October 1990 offensive, Rwandan government soldiers and militias began massacring Tutsi
civilians in the northeast of the country near the site where the RPF entered Rwanda. These
massacres were widely publicized in the Western media. On 10 October 1990, for example,
Reuters reported that approximately 400 Rwandan civilians fled to Uganda after Rwandan
government troops and Hutu militias attacked peasants accused of supporting the RPF: “Soldiers
shot peasants and burned down huts while Hutus hacked women and children with machetes . . .
in attacks on at least nine settlements inhabited mainly by the minority Tutsi tribe in northeast
Rwanda, the villagers said.” One witness recounted the kind of scene that would become all too
familiar four years later, during the Genocide: “One woman died after Hutus hacked off her arms
and forced them into her mouth . . . . Her two small children, aged one and five were then
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slaughtered.” Another witness said, “The whole place was littered with bodies, it seems more
people died than escaped.”
This was not an isolated incident. Government soldiers and militias massacred Tutsi on the
other side of Rwanda, too. More than 250 kilometers southwest of where the RPF troops had
crossed into Rwanda, in the town of Kibilira, they killed more than 300 mostly Tutsi civilians and
burned more than 400 mostly Tutsi homes. The French government knew about these attacks. A
13 October 1990 cable to Paris, signed by Colonel René Galinié, the head of Noroît (who also
served as defense attaché to the French embassy and the head of France’s military assistance
mission in Rwanda) and transmitted by French Ambassador Martres, reported:
Organized by the MRND, Hutu farmers have intensified their search for suspicious
Tutsis in the foothills; massacres are reported in the region of Kibilira, 20
kilometers northwest of Gitarama. As previously indicated, the risk that this conflict
will spread seems to be becoming a reality.
Two days later, on 15 October 1990, Ambassador Martres acknowledged that the Tutsi population
in Rwanda feared a genocide. “[The Tutsi population] is still counting on a military victory,”
Martres wrote in a memo titled “Analysis of the Situation by the Tutsi Population.” “A military
victory,” he continued, “even a partial one, would allow them to escape genocide.”
Despite such warnings, on 18 October, an advisor reported to President Mitterrand, “We .
. . responded positively to the requests made by the Rwandan authorities for the supply of
ammunition and that we have in particular sent rockets for ‘Gazelle’ helicopters. A plane carrying
new rockets left this morning for Kigali.”
On 24 October, Col. Galinié issued a more emphatic warning. Rwandans, he wrote would
never accept the reestablishment in northeast Rwanda of what he called “the despised regime of
the first Tutsi kingdom.” His prediction—chilling, in light of what was to come—was that “this
overt or covert reestablishment would lead[,] in all likelihood, to the physical elimination of the
Tutsi within the country, 500,000 to 700,000 people, by the Hutu, 7,000,000 individuals.”
Looking back at this period during his 1998 testimony before a French parliamentary
mission of inquiry into France’s actions in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 (Mission d’information
parlementaire, or MIP), Ambassador Martres admitted: “The Genocide was foreseeable as early
as then [October 1990], even if we couldn’t imagine its magnitude and atrociousness.”
Speaking in 2014 at a conference exploring mistakes made before and during the Genocide,
Mitterrand’s closest advisor, Hubert Védrine, acknowledged hearing Mitterrand “say very early,
in 1990-1991, that the situation in Rwanda was very dangerous and could only lead to a civil war
and massacres.” Védrine added, “I am not saying that he anticipated a genocide in the form that it
eventually took, nobody imagined that. But from the very beginning, he had the idea that this was
a dangerous situation which could only lead to massacres.”
The day after the 10 October 1990 reports of government-sponsored massacres appeared
in the European press, Admiral Jacques Lanxade—then Mitterrand’s top military advisor—
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proposed to Mitterrand a partial withdrawal of Noroît forces so that the French government would
not “appear too implicated in supporting Rwandan forces should serious acts of violence against
the population be brought to light in current operations.” Mitterrand turned him down, and Noroît
soldiers would remain in Rwanda even after the Belgian government withdrew its troops over
Habyarimana’s human rights abuses (known also to the French government). Mitterrand
emphasized in a cabinet meeting on 17 October 1990 that the conflict in Rwanda was an
opportunity to fill a vacuum left by Belgium: “We maintain friendly relations with the Government
of Rwanda, which has come closer to France after noticing Belgium’s relative indifference towards
its former colony.”
By early January 1991, some French officials believed the RPF’s military threat had
dwindled sufficiently for France to reduce its military footprint. Mitterrand again rejected
Lanxade’s advice to reduce the number of French troops in Rwanda. Emboldened by continued
French military support, the Rwandan government resisted diplomatic and political engagement
with the RPF. Without political recourse, the RPF resolved to take its case back to the only forum
that demanded the Habyarimana regime’s attention: the battlefield.
In late January 1991, the RPF army, having regrouped under the leadership of Paul
Kagame, staged an unexpected attack on Ruhengeri, a Habyarimana stronghold in northwestern
Rwanda. The evening of the attack, at the Élysée, Mitterrand authorized Noroît to evacuate French
and other foreign nationals from the Ruhengeri area. When Admiral Lanxade recommended that
France limit itself to retrieving its nationals and leave it to the Rwandans to “try to get the rebels
to leave,” Mitterrand balked: “We cannot limit our presence. We are at the edge of the Englishspeaking front. Uganda cannot allow itself to do just anything and everything. We must tell
President Museveni: it’s not normal that the Tutsi minority wants to impose its rule over the [Hutu]
majority.” His reply was clarifying. It showed not only that Mitterrand saw a more expansive role
for French troops in Rwanda, but that his understanding of Rwandans went no deeper than their
ethnic identification. To Mitterrand, Rwanda was a Hutu country, and the RPF, which he
oversimplified as a Tutsi movement, could not lead a Hutu country.
The RPF hoped to persuade its Rwandan and French counterparts that “politics is not in
the blood; it is in the ideas,” in the words of the RPF’s then-Secretary General Tito Rutaremara.
Months before Mitterrand’s late January 1991 remarks, for example, RPF representatives had
explained to French embassy staff in Uganda that the “objective of the RPF [was] to liberate the
country from the dictatorship of Habyarimana.” The French ambassador to Uganda relayed this
information to Paris, along with the RPF’s position that refugee repatriation was “certainly
essential, but it cannot conceal all the domestic problems in Rwanda (widespread corruption,
embezzlement of international aid, political assassinations, etc. ).”
French interests in Rwanda and Africa, however, compelled French officials to disregard
this information. Defending Habyarimana was a given: to refuse to help him would have risked
losing a reliable ally and alarmed other African despots, who would be left to question France’s
commitment to protecting them from threats to their rule. That reaction could threaten the
foundations of French influence on the continent.
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How, exactly, to justify intervention to the French people was a more complicated issue.
Having proclaimed, only recently, that France would offer military support to African allies only
in response to a “foreign menace” (as opposed to “domestic conflicts”), Mitterrand was at risk of
criticism for choosing to help Habyarimana repel an army of Rwandan refugees. He preferred,
instead, to insinuate that what was happening in Rwanda was not a civil war—that, rather, the RPF
was a mere proxy for Uganda and therefore best viewed as a foreign aggressor. Thus, on 24
October 1990, Ambassador Martres advised President Habyarimana to “highlight in the media”
the RPF’s military attack as an external aggression by explaining that “France will be in a better
position to help Rwanda if it’s clearly demonstrated to the international community that this is not
a civil war.”
2. 1991-1992: The French government continued to apply military and diplomatic
pressure on the RPF, while knowingly supporting the Rwandan government
responsible for the abuse and slaughter of Tutsi.
Days after the RPF’s 23 January 1991 Ruhengeri offensive, local authorities in the region
retaliated with organized attacks against the Bagogwe, massacring between 500 and 1,000
members of this pastoral Tutsi subgroup that made its home just above Ruhengeri. But even after
word of these attacks by government actors against civilians reached France, they did not register
inside the Élysée. Instead, a second RPF attack on Ruhengeri on 2 February 1991 persuaded
Admiral Lanxade that the French government should send a supplemental military instruction and
training detachment (Détachement d’assistance militaire d’instruction, or DAMI) “to reinforce
[French] cooperation and to ‘toughen’ the Rwandan [military] apparatus.” Mitterrand agreed. The
DAMI’s subsequent deployment, in March 1991, was meant to be secretive and limited. Originally
to end within four months, it would last over two and a half years.
France paired its military support for Habyarimana with diplomatic pressure on the RPF
disguised as neutral mediation. Paul Dijoud, a French diplomat who oversaw 1991 negotiations
between the RPF and the Rwandan government declared that “the French approach is unbiased
and aims only to help bring peace to the Rwandan-Ugandan border.” Yet, throughout negotiations,
there was no question where French interests lay. According to an August 1991 memorandum
from Rwandan Foreign Minister Casimir Bizimungu to President Habyarimana, “Mr. Dijoud
wanted to meet me after the departure of the Ugandan delegation to reiterate France’s
unconditional support of Rwanda,” adding that the diplomatic talks in Paris had “greatly
enlightened us as to France’s determination, which sees itself as a friend and an ally.” Paul
Kagame, at the time chairman of High Command of the RPF military, has recounted that, during
a September meeting in Paris, Dijoud told him, “We hear you are good fighters, I hear you think
you will march to Kigali but even if you are to reach there, you will not find your people. . . . All
these relatives of yours, you won’t find them.” Dijoud purported to couple such pressure on the
RPF with commensurate pressure on the Habyarimana regime to institute democratic reforms.
Habyarimana ended the single-party system in Rwanda but continued to clamp down on dissent
and rig the system to keep his party, the MRND, in power. This farce was good enough for the
French government, which did not, as Dijoud would later acknowledge, expect Habyarimana to
immediately “transform Rwanda into an advanced democracy.”
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The depths of Dijoud’s and the Mitterrand government’s commitment to their Rwandan
allies would become even more apparent when French officials brushed off the Rwandan
government’s participation in a brazen public massacre of Tutsi that would later be referred to as
a “dress rehearsal” for the Genocide. The March 1992 massacres in Bugesera, a region just south
of Kigali with a large Tutsi community, were sparked by propaganda aired on state-run radio
falsely claiming to expose a plot by the RPF and its political allies to murder 22 members of
predominately Hutu political parties. The false report achieved its intended effect. From 4 March,
the day after broadcast, until 11 March 1992, government-sponsored militias began to resolve what
the MRND viewed as the “ethnic problem” and crush the political opposition.
As the killings began, “[t]hey came in a great crowd, shouting like crazy people,” one
survivor said, “They killed four of my children and my wife.” Agence France Press and Reuters
highlighted the barbarity of the slayings in contemporaneous reports—how the killers had set
homes ablaze and burned people alive. In a week, assailants killed nearly 300 and displaced as
many as 13,000.
Ambassador Martres knew within days what the state-run radio station had done. “The
Rwandan broadcast ignited the fire,” he wrote in a 9 March 1992 cable to Paris. Nonetheless,
weeks later, in Paris, French Ministry of Cooperation officials welcomed Ferdinand Nahimana,
who, as head of the state broadcasting agency, had authorized the false radio report. Ministry
officials made commitments to Nahimana to increase funding for a Rwandan state television
station. Two years later, Nahimana would lead RTLM (Radio télévision libre des mille collines),
the hate radio station that exhorted militias to hunt down and kill Tutsi during the Genocide.
France’s military assistance also continued unabated. As the Bugesera massacres unfolded,
Paul Dijoud, the purportedly neutral mediator of peace talks, circulated a note calling for “[a]
reinforcement of French support to the Rwandan army” to help it counter the RPF’s growing
“intransigence.” France would, indeed, commit to sending more military equipment to Rwanda
during the latter half of 1992. In all, the French government provided almost $2.7 million worth
of military equipment to the Rwandan government in 1992, in addition to approving more than
$1.5 million in arms sales to Rwanda.
By mid-1992, French journalists began calling out the French government for its
continuing support of the murderous regime in Kigali. Jean-François Dupaquier, for example,
published a scathing article in June in the French weekly magazine L’Événement du Jeudi titled,
“France at the Bedside of African Fascism,” in which he drew parallels between the Rwandan
government and the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge. He took the French government to task for using
its military advisors to “supervis[e]” a war on behalf of the Rwandan government against the RPF
that was “less and less military, and increasingly uncivil.”
On 5 June 1992, the RPF military launched a major offensive in Byumba for the purpose
of strengthening the RPF’s bargaining position with Habyarimana. The French government swiftly
came to Habyarimana’s aid by deploying an additional 150 Noroît troops and sending new
powerful artillery to the FAR. In August 1992, another massacre of Tutsi, this time in the western
city of Kibuye, did nothing to deter the continuing French military support.
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By October 1992, peace talks, which had proceeded in fits and starts during the war and
produced a cease-fire in July 1992, appeared promising for achieving a comprehensive solution to
the conflict. But extremists came out strongly against the progress. The newly formed anti-Tutsi
extremist party, the Coalition pour la défense de la république (Coalition for the Defense of the
Republic, or CDR) organized an 18 October 1992 march protesting the Arusha negotiations and
supporting “the presence of French troops and François Miterrand [sic].” Within days of the march,
CDR members assassinated two moderate politicians. After negotiators in Arusha, with French
and other international observers present, reached a preliminary power-sharing agreement in
Arusha on 31 October, Habyarimana took a cue from the CDR and immediately began
undermining the peace process, criticizing his own negotiators in two radio addresses in early
November 1992 and then, in mid-November, declaring that a cease-fire reached in July was merely
a piece of paper. “Peace is not confused with papers,” he declared.
One of the government’s negotiators in Arusha, the notorious anti-Tutsi extremist Colonel
Théoneste Bagosora, left the negotiations in Arusha before they were complete and, within
months, initiated a Rwandan military program to arm civilian members of the CDR and
Habyarimana’s MRND party. Years later, Bagosora would come to be known as the architect of
the Genocide.
3. 1993: Ignoring a devastating human rights report exposing the Rwandan
government, France reached the pinnacle of its intervention in the war against the
RPF.
At the beginning of 1993, a consortium of human rights groups brought governmentsponsored ethnic violence in Rwanda into greater focus for the French government and the world
at large. The “FIDH Commission” conducted a fact-finding mission in Rwanda between 7 January
and 21 January 1993. After interviewing hundreds of Rwandans and excavating mass graves, the
investigators concluded that the Rwandan government had “killed or caused to be killed” 2000
Rwandans and that “they [had] been killed and otherwise abused for the sole reason that they
[were] Tutsi.” They briefed French officials in Kigali and Paris on their findings. In a 19 January
1993 cable summarizing his briefing, Ambassador Martres noted the “impressive amount of
information about the massacres” gathered by the FIDH and suggested the mission’s conclusions
would force Habyarimana to answer serious accusations about his role in those massacres. “As for
facts,” Martres observed, “the report that the mission will deliver . . . will only add horror to the
horror we already know.” The warnings could not have been more dire or more clear. Still, the
French government continued and even accelerated its support of the Habyarimana government.
On 21 January 1993, the very day the FIDH mission left Rwanda, the violence that the
government had placed on hold for the benefit of FIDH investigators resumed with a vengeance
in the north of the country, leaving hundreds more Tutsi dead. In response to the killings, the RPF
army resumed hostilities on 8 February 1993, which had been temporarily halted for peace talks.
As Paul Kagame explained to the Christian Science Monitor:
This is not the first time they have done this, they killed people in [Bugesera], and
Kibilira near Gisenyi and also killed the Bagogwe people in the Gisenyi area. We
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thought these killings would die out as we pursued the peace process but they did
not. So we could not be indifferent; just stand by and watch.
France’s response came from the spokesperson of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “We are
aware of the reasons invoked by the RPF to explain the attack. France does not consider the given
reasons [to be] a justification for the resumption of fighting, even if France condemns, in Rwanda
as elsewhere, all violations of human rights.”
Mitterrand and his advisors did not let the FIDH findings interfere with their continuing
determination to pursue the policy that had prevailed for the previous two and a half years: stopping
the RPF remained their priority. With the new RPF advance threatening key Rwandan army
positions, on 8 February 1993, General Christian Quesnot, successor to Admiral Lanxade as
Mitterrand’s chief military advisor, and Bruno Delaye, successor to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand as
the head of the Élysée’s Africa Cell, advised Mitterrand to respond with “delivery of ammunition
and equipment” to the Rwandan army and “technical assistance, especially with artillery,” noting
also that a French company had been put on alert to supplement the French soldiers already in
Rwanda. They made no mention of the ethnic slaughter, let alone any consequence for France’s
continuing support for the government that had carried it out. Mitterrand recorded his response to
his advisors’ suggestions by hand: “Agreed. Urgent[.]”
The same day, the French government dispatched to Rwanda 121 soldiers, raising the
number of Noroît troops to 291 (a number that would grow to 688 by 16 March 1993, in addition
to the 142 French troops deployed as trainers and advisors to the Rwandan military). Along with
the troops, the French government sent more arms. On 12 February 1993, it delivered fifty 12.7
mm machine guns and 100,000 cartridges for the FAR. Five days later, there was another delivery
of 105 mm shells and 68 mm rockets. These shipments were among $1.5 million worth of weapons
and military equipment the French government provided free-of-charge to the Rwandan military
in 1993, much of it arriving in the weeks following the 8 February 1993 RPF attack in response to
the massacres.
When RPF troops moved within 30 kilometers of Kigali, Mitterrand received two military
options from his advisors: withdraw French troops or reinforce them. On 19 February 1993, the
president’s deputy advisor on African affairs warned that withdrawal “will be interpreted as the
failure of our policy in Rwanda. All this will not be without consequences for our relations with
other African countries.” With Mitterrand ignoring competing advice from Defense Minister
Pierre Joxe, who insisted that “we must strictly limit ourselves to the protection of our nationals,”
French special forces flew to Rwanda with a secret mission to assist the Rwandan government
forces in its fight against the RPF. Colonel Didier Tauzin, who led the mission, known as Operation
Chimère, later wrote in a memoire that, while in Rwanda, he “effectively direct[ed] all Rwandan
operations on the entire front.” Tauzin and his men worked closely with Augustin Bizimungu, the
FAR Chief of Staff whom the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) would convict
for genocide and about whom Tauzin, subsequent to Bizimungu’s conviction, would write, “I have
always considered it an honor to have known him and to have fought alongside him.”
Tauzin drew up a counteroffensive against the RPF army, which he would later praise for
the “hard time” it gave the rebels, leaving 800 RPF soldiers dead and as many as 2,500 wounded
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in eight days, in Tauzin’s telling. But, much to Tauzin’s regret, Paris pressured him to call off
plans to launch a massive effort to push back the RPF army. Later lamenting his decision not to
press forward despite his superiors’ disapproval, Tauzin would write, “when the so-called
‘genocide of the Tutsis’ began, I deeply regretted being so disciplined!” His logic, that defeating
the RPF would have prevented the Genocide, would be repeated by several high-level French
officials. During the Genocide itself, this perspective would drive French decision-makers who
viewed stopping the RPF as the key to ending the Genocide.
Tauzin blamed changes in politics in Paris for undermining his mission. And, indeed,
changes were afoot. Not only did the French press continue to look skeptically at the French
involvement in Rwanda—a 17 February 1993 article in Le Canard Enchaîné, for example, was
titled, “Mitterrand is hiding an African war from us”—but even French politicians began to join
in the criticism, with Gérard Fuchs, the French Socialist Party national secretary, releasing a
statement on 28 February 1993 “question[ing] the decision to send new French troops to Rwanda,
when human rights violations by the Habyarimana regime continue[d] to multiply.” With elections
approaching, and Mitterrand’s Socialist Party suffering in the polls—and soon to suffer a
resounding defeat, ushering in a conservative “cohabitation” (i.e., divided between two parties)
government—the French President announced on 3 March 1993 to his closest advisors and cabinet
members, “We must be replaced [in Rwanda] by international forces from the UN as soon as
possible.” Even so, between March and August, France nearly doubled the number of DAMI
advisors in Rwanda, a decision even the 1998 French parliamentary inquiry into France’s actions
in Rwanda later criticized.
In August 1993, an historic peace accord, signed in Arusha, Tanzania, would facilitate the
departure of most, but not all, French troops from Rwanda. Three years of war came to an end (on
paper, at least) on 4 August 1993, when President Habyarimana and RPF Chairman Alexis
Kanyarengwe signed a peace agreement establishing a broad-based transitional government
predicated on power-sharing and an integration of the Rwandan and RPF armies. But it was a
fragile truce dependent on the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force (UNAMIR) that France
and the other Security Council members agreed to establish, albeit at a strength inadequate to meet
the challenges to come. Those challenges came principally from extremists uninterested in peace
with the RPF, who sought to undermine the Arusha Accords and destabilize the country with antiTutsi violence. The hate radio station RTLM, founded in mid-1993, would prove particularly
effective at pushing the extremist agenda.
While the French government withdrew the remaining Noroît troops as of 13 December
1993, Col. Bernard Cussac, France’s military attaché in Rwanda since July 1991, dispensed with
the pretext that Noroît’s sole mission had been to protect French and other foreign nationals and
commended the troops for “present[ing] both a credible deterrent and an effective and decisive
know-how that helped stop the fighting.” And France was “not leaving Rwanda,” as Cussac
explained. A detachment of roughly two dozen French trainers and advisors would remain beyond
UNAMIR’s arrival “to help our Rwandan comrades in the main areas of their military activity.”
They included advisors to high-ranking FAR officers, including Chief of Staff Déogratias
Nsabimana and the commanders of the reconnaissance and para-commando battalions. This work
continued even as evidence emerged, early in 1994, that the FAR was arming and training the
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Interahamwe youth militia in preparation for resumed hostilities against the RPF and a possible
slaughter of Tutsi.
Signals of the coming slaughter amplified in mid-January when an informant identifying
himself as the Interahamwe’s chief trainer disclosed to UNAMIR that the FAR had transferred
weapons and ammunition to the militia with Nsabimana’s consent, and the Interahamwe had
conducted trainings for 1,700 militia members at Rwandan army bases. His superiors, the
informant said, had issued orders to compile lists of Tutsi who, presumably, would be targeted for
extermination. General Roméo Dallaire, the UNAMIR commander, noted this information in an
11 January 1994 cable to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York, and in
briefings to French, Belgian, and US diplomats in Kigali. In one of the international community’s
most flagrant failures in Rwanda, the UN Secretariat declined Dallaire’s request to raid the
suspected weapons caches.
Ten days later, a plane landed in Kigali bearing 1,000 mortar rounds (manufactured by a
French company and exported with the French government’s authorization) for delivery from
Châteauroux, France to the FAR. Knowing this ammunition had arrived in a nation on the brink,
Gen. Dallaire ordered it impounded. “We were all supposed to be moving toward peace, not
preparing for war,” Dallaire later wrote.
During the first three months of 1994, the extremists continued to thwart the
implementation of the Arusha Accords with violent protests and targeted assassinations intended
to obstruct the seating of the broad-based transitional government. Having failed to intercede when
it mattered, the UN was left “praying for a miracle,” in the words of an RPF official. Although on
5 April 1994, the Security Council decided to renew UNAMIR’s mandate for an additional four
months, as the next two days would reveal, Rwanda’s extremists had other, far more horrific plans
for their country.
4. After the Genocide Against the Tutsi began, French officials remained captive to
the same inverted thinking that had guided their decisions for the previous three
and a half years: the main problem was the RPF—not the genocide the RPF was
fighting to end.
On Wednesday, 6 April 1994, President Habyarimana, along with Burundian President
Cyprien Ntaryamira and others, boarded Habyarimana’s private jet, which the French government
had gifted him. The passengers had been in Dar es Salaam to complete aspects of the Arusha
Agreement that would facilitate the implementation of the broad-based transitional government.
At around 8:30 PM, as the plane was set to land in Kigali, there was a powerful explosion over the
Kigali airport. The plane had been shot down, killing both presidents and all others on board. “It
is going to be terrible,” President Mitterrand exclaimed to Hubert Védrine after learning of the
plane crash.
Without evidence, President Mitterrand and his key Élysée advisors immediately blamed
the attack on the RPF. French officials would continue to promote this claim for decades, even
though cables that have been leaked to the public suggest that France’s own intelligence service,
the DGSE, ascribed responsibility to prominent Akazu member Col. Laurent Serubuga, who had
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worked with French advisors from 1990 on, and to Col. Théoneste Bagosora, widely reputed to be
the architect of the Genocide Against the Tutsi.
The night of the crash, French military cooperants who had remained in Rwanda to train
the FAR surveyed the wreckage at the crash site with Major Aloys Ntabakuze, the head of the
para-commando unit. Days later, Ntabakuze would oversee para-commandos who massacred Tutsi
men, women, and children who had taken shelter at the ETO (École technique officielle) in Kigali
(some estimates have the number killed as high as 4,000).
By the morning after the crash, it was clear that preparations for the Genocide were in
place. As Jean-Michel Marlaud, the French Ambassador to Rwanda since 1993, was told by Prime
Minister-Designate Faustin Twagiramungu, “men of the Presidential Guard were rounding up,
kidnapping or assassinating ministers appointed to form the future Government.” Ambassador
Marlaud would later recall, “[o]ther murders were committed” as well, “affect[ing] both members
of the opposition parties and Tutsis. They were both political and ethnic killings.”
Following the assassination of many of Rwanda’s most prominent moderate politicians—
including the gruesome murder of the prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana—extremists formed
an interim government on 8 April 1994. In the Élysée, General Christian Quesnot expressed
satisfaction with the interim government, noting that “the various Rwandan political parties” were
represented “in accordance with the proportions provided for in the Arusha agreements.” He
neglected to mention, however, that representatives came from the Hutu-power wings of each
party. Quesnot’s attention was elsewhere: “Only the RPF refused to participate,” he wrote, singling
out France’s antagonist. “[The RPF] broke the cease-fire and began an offensive towards Kigali.”
Beginning in the early morning hours of 9 April 1994, the French government sent troops
to evacuate French and other foreign nationals. Known as Operation Amaryllis, the mission
increased the number of French eyewitnesses to the scenes of unspeakable horror unfolding across
Kigali. A military chaplain embedded with Amaryllis would later describe one such scene:
The driver of one of the commandos charged with the evacuation [from the French
school in Kigali] . . . took a road that bypassed the capital from the west, avoiding
the most lively axis of the city. Suddenly, a Tutsi woman, chased by a group of
Hutu armed with batons and knives, threw herself against the hood of the first
vehicle hoping, in her tragic despair, to find refuge there. The driver braked harshly.
The two occupants did not move, dazed by the event’s complexity. . . . These few
moments of hesitation were enough for the Hutu torturers to understand that the
French soldiers would not defend the woman. On the way back, the vehicle’s
passengers were able to see her corpse, stomach open, lying on the side of the road.
The assassins, with a smile and a friendly wave, kindly acknowledged them.
One of the transport planes that flew this chaplain and his comrades into Kigali reportedly
carried with it mortar ammunition for the FAR. (The French government, however, has denied
this.) The first plane to evacuate French nationals out of Rwanda also carried, on President
Mitterrand’s orders, Habyarimana’s family—including the first lady and Akazu leader, Agathe
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Kanziga Habyarimana, about whom Mitterrand would later reportedly exclaim, “She is possessed
by the devil, if she could, she would continue to call out for massacres from French radios.”
As wholesale targeted slaughter of Tutsi spread throughout Rwanda, the French
government failed to exert meaningful pressure on the FAR or the interim government to stop the
killings or the hate media broadcasts exhorting people to murder their neighbors. Senior French
officials avoided calling the Genocide by its true name for weeks. In this, they were no worse than
the rest of the international community. What did make them worse was, among other things, that
French leaders close to President Mitterrand—Gen. Quesnot, Bruno Delaye, and General JeanPierre Huchon, head of the Military Cooperation Mission, in particular—continued to portray the
RPF, the only force fighting to end the Genocide, as more of a threat to peace and stability in
Rwanda than the génocidaires themselves.
French diplomats at the UN defeated even the mildest of efforts by the international
community to hold accountable the interim government. French officials pursued a return to peace
negotiations and a cease-fire, which would have precluded the RPF from seizing control of the
country and forestalled the defeat of the genocidal interim government. For French policy in
Rwanda, the overriding issue was not a coming genocide; it was preventing the RPF from
establishing what Mitterrand referred to in June 1994 as a “Tutsiland.” That this was Mitterrand’s
perspective between October 1990 and December 1993 was misguided and destructive. That it
remained French policy during the Genocide is unfathomable.
5. When it eventually redeployed troops to Rwanda through Operation Turquoise,
the French government used this humanitarian action to stop the RPF from
controlling all of Rwanda.
In mid-May 1994, even after France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, referred to events in
Rwanda as a “genocide,” Mitterrand insisted that France had no duty to act. “What is this divine
decree that made France the soldier of all just causes in the world,” he wondered aloud during an
18 May 1994 meeting with French ministers. However, as May turned into June, several factors
prevailed on French officials to seek UN authorization for an intervention. The pressure came in
part from French media and the NGO community, which excoriated the French government for its
“political responsibilit[y]” in the “systematic extermination,” and from francophone African
leaders, who argued that France “needed to act if it was going to retain any credibility in the
region.” It did not go unnoticed, either, that the RPF forces were finding success on the battlefield.
This, to French officials, was a concerning development. Through three and a half years and a
genocide, France’s ultimate goal of neutralizing the RPF had not changed: “If we fail to keep our
word,” a Foreign Ministry source told a reporter, “our credibility vis-à-vis other African states
would be seriously damaged and we might see these states turn toward other support.”
In mid-June 1994, French officials resolved to deploy French troops to Rwanda in
Operation Turquoise, a mission with, according to France, no goal other than a humanitarian one
to “save lives and stop the massacres.” The UN Security Council approved the resolution drafted
by France despite skepticism amongst members about its true motives. Indeed, for Mitterrand,
another goal could be achieved. The deployment of French forces would impede the progress of
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the RPF army, thereby aiding the FAR. Even Jean-Bernard Mérimée, France’s UN Ambassador,
conceded that this was “an inevitable outcome.”
As much as any humanitarian goal, impeding the RPF army was central to President
Mitterrand’s motivation: “The Tutsis will establish a military dictatorship to impose themselves
permanently,” Mitterrand told French ministers the day Operation Turquoise began and a day after
his military advisors warned him that the RPF might take Kigali before French forces arrived. “A
dictatorship based on ten percent of the population will govern with new massacres,” he said. Once
again viewing the RPF simplistically as an ethnic, rather than a political, movement, Mitterrand
continued to oppose the RPF and to reject the possibility of its success.
French troops arrived in Rwanda “armed like aircraft carriers,” but without a clear
understanding of the conflict. “Ugandan rebels are invading the country and killing people,” one
French commander reportedly explained to a subordinate. Gen. Dallaire found that some French
officers “refused to accept the reality of the genocide and the fact that the extremist leaders, the
perpetrators and some of their old colleagues were all the same people.” Many troops believed that
Tutsi were butchering Hutu rather than the opposite. The truth, when it became gruesomely clear,
was shocking. “This is not what we were led to believe,” one French soldier said in late June, after
an encounter with Tutsi survivors of a massacre perpetrated by FAR troops and militias.
The ultimate test of France’s intention to save lives arrived at the end of June 1994, in
Bisesero, an area in western Rwanda where villagers, acting under the supervision of militia, FAR
troops, and gendarmes, had been hunting down and killing Tutsi since April. A French officer,
after learning of the danger the Tutsi in Bisesero were facing, promised to return to the region “to
get [the survivors] out of there.” His superiors, though, were distracted by other priorities: an
upcoming visit by François Léotard, the defense minister, and false intelligence that RPF soldiers
were in the area—a deception knowingly dispensed by local authorities taking advantage of the
gullibility caused by some French commanders’ pro-regime bias. Three days passed before
Turquoise troops, under pressure from Western media, returned to Bisesero. They found the
desperate survivors among a sea of corpses. The delay had cost lives.
It was the RPF forces’ advance, rather than genocide, that continued to consume Mitterrand
and senior officials’ attention. Over and over again, officials in Paris blamed the RPF for the
emerging humanitarian crisis by arguing its troops’ progress was causing Hutu to flee their homes
in panic. Delaye and Quesnot argued that, in addition to augmenting its military presence, France
should work through diplomatic channels to persuade the RPF “to stop its westward advance,”
even as they conceded that France, because of its history of backing the FAR, was “not in the best
position” to press for a cease-fire. “We cannot publicly take the initiative to achieve a cease-fire,”
wrote Ambassador Marlaud, who shared the Élysée advisors’ view, “because we would be
suspected of attempting to halt the situation under the guise of humanitarian action.”
Col. Didier Tauzin, who, in 1993, had commanded a secret French military operation in
Rwanda, during which, by his own account, he had effectively directed all FAR operations on the
front against the RPF, was still seething with undisguised hatred for the RPF when he returned to
Rwanda in June 1994 with Turquoise. Tauzin hoped that Paris would give his troops the green
light “to attack the evil at its root: the RPF!” One Turquoise officer has claimed that France did,
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indeed, authorize air strikes against the RPF troops, only to scrap the plan at the last minute. This
account is corroborated by a former senior FAR commander who has said that French officers
pressed him for intelligence on RPF troop positions for air strikes, and by contemporaneous RPF
reports about “intercepted French communications” indicating that French planes planned to bomb
RPF military installations.
When the French government assessed, in early July, that the RPF army, which was on the
verge of taking Kigali, was likely to keep chasing the FAR to Rwanda’s borders with Zaire, the
Mitterrand administration directed Turquoise troops to establish a “Safe Humanitarian Zone”
(SHZ), to, as Ambassador Marlaud put it on 1 July 1994, “deter the RPF from going too far.”
France, however, informed the UN that the purpose of the SHZ was to shelter civilians fleeing the
RPF advance. The French government established the SHZ on 4 July 1994, the same day the RPF
liberated Kigali. The SHZ covered much of the territory controlled by the interim government and
kept one-fifth of the country off limits to the RPF. (The initial French plan would have “cut the
country in two,” effectively preserving half of Rwanda for the génocidaires.) In practice, the SHZ
became a safe haven for génocidaires. There, French military neither systematically confiscated
their weapons nor detained génocidaires despite evidence of their crimes. Many of the Genocide’s
perpetrators, including the interim government’s leaders, used this cover to flee to Zaire. French
officers not only allowed them to do so, but made arrangements for their safe passage.
In Zaire, Turquoise officers met with génocidaires and offered guidance on how they could
regroup and “reconquer the country.” There is also evidence that French officials secretly funneled
weapons to the ex-FAR in Zaire, and, according to a French journalist, a confidential Élysée
document confirms that the French government ordered Turquoise officers to rearm the “Hutu who
were crossing the border [to Zaire—ed.].” Despite specific requests received on 20 December
2019, 10 July 2020, and 27 January 2021 covering this and other topics, the French government
has not released this document or any others that would illuminate these allegations.
The final weeks of Turquoise laid bare its inadequacies as a humanitarian mission. An
operation designed to project military strength proved ill-suited to the very different humanitarian
crisis that emerged in the Genocide’s wake, as disease and starvation ravaged refugee
communities. French Prime Minister Édouard Balladur’s assessment was Orwellian: “Today,” he
declared on 20 July, “we can say that Operation ‘Turquoise’ has succeeded.” A month later, French
troops finally left Rwanda.
When the last French soldiers finally departed Rwanda on 21 August, they left a land and
people destroyed and devastated. As a report written for the OAU later noted:
The consequences of French policy can hardly be overestimated. The escape of
genocidaire leaders into Zaire led, almost inevitably, to a new, more complex stage
in the Rwandan tragedy, expanding it into a conflict that soon engulfed all of central
Africa. That the entire Great Lakes Region would suffer destabilization was both
tragic and, to a significant extent, foreseeable.
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The French military’s brief foray achieved little good. Few lives were saved, relative to those lost
in the Genocide. And the area further deteriorated, as génocidaires and FAR troops were given the
opportunity to fight another day.
D. Analysis: The French Government Bears Significant Responsibility for Enabling a
Foreseeable Genocide.
On 9 September 1994, when a French news reporter asked President Mitterrand to
comment on criticism from intellectuals about France’s role in the Genocide, Mitterrand insisted,
“[O]ur responsibility is nil.” Yet, for close to four years, the French government sent guns, money,
and soldiers to help defend a repressive regime that barbarically and publicly massacred the Tutsi
minority. French troops, officials, and diplomats had witnessed and learned of the commonplace
brutalization and dehumanization of the Tutsi: in the media, at roadblocks, in arbitrary detentions,
in the torture of arrested persons, and in the massacres. And yet Paris did nothing to change its
policy. French leaders sought to maintain influence in East Africa and demonstrate to vital allies
throughout the continent that France could be trusted to defend them against military threats to
their power. But the cost would rise, precipitously. The effect of the French presence in Rwanda
and its conscious indifference to Tutsi suffering was to create a sense of impunity amongst the
perpetrators that would grow and find its fullness in the Genocide.
In 2014, as noted above, Hubert Védrine recounted hearing Mitterrand “say very early, in
1990-1991, that the situation in Rwanda was very dangerous and could only lead to a civil war and
massacres.” Védrine, however, was quick to add that “nobody imagined” a genocide “in the form
that it eventually took.” Likewise, in 1998, Ambassador Martres admitted that the Genocide was
foreseeable as early as October 1990, adding the qualification, “even if we couldn’t imagine its
magnitude and atrociousness.” The Genocide was, in fact, foreseeable, and French leaders foresaw
some horrible ethnic violence, if not in the “magnitude,” “atrociousness,” and “form” that it
eventually took. Since their knowledge of these atrocities did not dissuade French officials from
continuing their support for the Rwandan government, one can conclude that Mitterrand and his
advisors contemplated and accepted some smaller scale, more palatable, ethnic cleansing.
During a 2018 interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade, who, between 1990 and 1994,
served first as Mitterrand’s chief military advisor and then as chief of defense staff, the French
journalist Laurent Larcher referred to abuses beginning in 1959. “Yes, but,” Lanxade cut in before
Larcher could formulate a question, “that’s Africa. All of Africa was like that, at that time. And
that’s still largely true today.” During the Genocide, Mitterrand was reportedly more direct,
opining, “In such countries [as Rwanda], genocide is not too important.” It seems, for him, violence
in Rwanda was a pre-determined and unavoidable state of existence. Jacques Attali, Mitterrand’s
close advisor between 1981 and 1991, wrote in 1993 that Mitterrand, while “furiously antiHitlerian,” viewed the Holocaust as “only an act of war, not a human monstrosity.” Even in the
twilight of his life, just months after the Genocide Against the Tutsi had ended, Mitterrand would
not take responsibility for the French government’s role in it, just as he would not apologize for
Vichy France’s role in the Holocaust.
In an interview with author François Soudan, President Paul Kagame was asked: “what is
your assessment of the role of France in Rwanda from 1990-1993? . . . It appears that France did
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not play a strictly negative role.” Kagame’s answer is critical to how the French government must
acknowledge and account for its actions in terms of the Genocide Against the Tutsi:
It may not have been a purely negative role, but the real question is, should this
actually have been Mitterrand’s responsibility? Was it the role of anybody outside
Rwanda, let alone Mitterrand, to influence how things should change in Rwanda?
Why should Mitterrand have been in charge of what happened, or furthermore,
what was the justification for promoting change according to Mitterrand’s, or
France’s conception of this change?
The arrogance of Mitterrand’s neocolonial engagement in Rwanda was to pursue French
geopolitical interests with indifference to the consequences for Tutsi in Rwanda.
It is impossible to conclude with certainty what course history would have taken had France
pursued a different policy in Rwanda before, during, and after the Genocide. At the very least,
French support lengthened the civil war prior to the Genocide by propping up the Habyarimana
regime and presenting a credible deterrent to the RPF army. The effect of the French government’s
intervention in Rwanda afforded Col. Bagosora and his collaborators additional time in 1993 and
early 1994 to plan, and later execute, the Genocide.
While ultimate responsibility for the Genocide, of course, lies with génocidaires like Col.
Bagosora, the French government helped build and fortify Rwandan institutions, which, in the
hands of those genocidal leaders, became instruments of the Genocide. First and foremost, this
included the FAR’s elite corps, amongst them the Presidential Guard, the para-commando unit,
and the reconnaissance battalion, which French cooperants had been training for years before they
were activated for slaughter during the Genocide. On the first day of the Genocide, members of
the Presidential Guard and reconnaissance battalion participated in the assassination of Agathe
Uwilingiyimana, the Rwandan prime minister. Later that day, reconnaissance battalion soldiers
took part in the murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers who had been guarding the prime minister.
On 11 April 1994, para-commandos marched over 1,000 (and as many as 4,000) Tutsi men,
women, and children from where they had taken shelter at the ETO to a killing field in Nyanza
Hill, where the para-commandos led the massacre.
French officials could not have been surprised at the central role of the Presidential Guard
in the killing. In 1992, France planned to “cease [] activities in aid of the Presidential Guard” in
response to accusations of its involvement “in destabilizing the opposition” and amid rumors that
some of its members belonged to the Interahamwe. But a French instructor working with
Presidential Guard in 1992 later recalled that he was simply asked to “step back a little.” Another
French instructor subsequently acknowledged his regret for having trained the Presidential Guard,
writing, “Of course it’s a shock to think that we trained killers of this sort, and that they used for
genocide what we taught them as part of a simple military training!”
As the Presidential Guard, along with other elements of the FAR, the interim government,
and the militias, slaughtered Tutsi across Rwanda in April, May, and early June, French officials
did nothing to stop them. Instead, they held fast to the perceptions that had guided them for years.
To them, the RPF was not the force fighting to end the Genocide, but a destabilizing power whose
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belligerence inspired retribution in the form of ethnic massacres. If the RPF would only stop
fighting, they believed, the génocidaires would end the carnage. French diplomats at the United
Nations watered down resolutions meant to pressure the interim government and pushed for a
cessation of hostilities on all sides, as if the concept of sides applied to a genocide. But French
officials did not, until mid-May, acknowledge that the horror unfolding in Rwanda was a genocide.
To them, it was still a civil war. They would continue the policy they had pursued during the civil
war: stop the RPF and pressure the parties to the negotiating table.
When the French government took some responsibility to mount a humanitarian response
in the form of Operation Turquoise, it came too late to save many Tutsi. “Too little, too late,” does
not begin to capture the extent of this flawed military effort. The most critical of all of Turquoise’s
defects is that France—the Habyarimana regime’s most loyal ally and the FAR’s most generous
benefactor—was the one to spearhead it. The same officials who conceived of and executed French
efforts to stymie RPF designs on regime change between 1990 and the start of the Genocide were
still calling the shots in Paris and still viewed the RPF, contemptuously, as Anglophone invaders,
Ugandan puppets, a Tutsi minority force incapable of holding power. What followed, in the
opening weeks of Operation Turquoise, was a French-led rescue mission that, by design, doubled
as a concerted effort to prevent the RPF from overthrowing Rwanda’s interim government. While
the French operation, ultimately, did not keep the RPF from achieving its military and political
aims, it also did not stop the génocidaires from finding refuge in the French-controlled “safe
humanitarian zone,” where they were not arrested, not detained, and not systematically disarmed.
This passivity on the part of the French government allowed the génocidaires to abscond to Zaire,
where they began plotting to avenge their defeat. In the end, the 60-day mission accomplished
little in terms of saving lives and left the area more destabilized than previously.
Yet, France’s role and impact in Rwanda did not end with the disengagement of French
troops at the conclusion of Operation Turquoise in August 1994. Quickly, Mitterrand began to
frame recent history to demonize the RPF and mischaracterize France’s role as a foiled
peacemaker. At the November 1994 Franco-African summit in the French seaside resort town of
Biarritz (to which the new Rwandan government was not invited), President Mitterrand, still
reluctant to assign blame to the perpetrators, used the term “genocides,” as if the RPF had also
carried out a genocide. It did not. The misleading use of the plural would foreshadow the blameshifting to come and reflected a revisionist history to be repeated and emphasized by many of the
génocidaires themselves. French officials would continue to promote a false narrative about
France’s conduct both in the Genocide and in the years preceding it.
This revisionist approach continued with France’s 1998 parliamentary information mission
on French actions in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994, as leaders of Mitterrand’s Socialist Party pushed
back against mounting criticism of France’s role in the Rwandan tragedy. The French government
defanged the MIP as a “fact-finding” mission from the start by denying it the power to compel
testimony. During the course of the mission’s work, many of its members were content to leave
burning questions unanswered, believing, as one MIP rapporteur has said, “that national greatness
thrives best in the shadow of secret-défense.” The mission’s December 1998 report, while far from
wholly exculpatory, rationalized the Mitterrand administration’s most controversial, and even
reprehensible, decisions, and euphemized its moral failings as mere “errors of judgment.”
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“France is exonerated,” exclaimed Paul Quilès, one of Mitterrand’s former defense
ministers, who had spearheaded the MIP. This conclusion, though, was wholly unmoored from the
facts—facts that, in many cases, could be found in the MIP’s own report. The French government,
the report itself acknowledged, had spent years arming, training, and even, at one point, effectively
commanding the Rwandan military in an effort to protect President Habyarimana and his
government, in spite of indications that his government committed and facilitated rampant human
rights abuses. Its unwavering support for Habyarimana’s murderous regime disincentivized
extremists from accepting a negotiated truce with the RPF and bought them more time to hatch
their plans. The message to the extremists was, in short, “that they could get away with just about
anything.” But Quilès tried to exculpate French conduct on radio and television to control the
message. “It was intentional,” one French reporter remarked, that “everything had been done to
ensure that the press did not have time to read the report.”
The years since the Rwandan tragedy have presented myriad opportunities for France to
reexamine its links to the extremists who served in Habyarimana’s government, facilitated the
massacres, and later established and served in the interim government that presided over the
Genocide. The French government, for example, could have refused to permit génocidaires’ entry
into French territory after the Genocide. Failing that, it could have deported those (such as the
extremist and former first lady Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana) who, in applying for asylum, had
made their presence known to French authorities. The French government has not taken those
steps, and its refusal to do so has enabled numerous génocidaires to take refuge on French soil. To
date, French authorities have brought criminal charges against no more than a handful of the
génocidaires living in France.
Cases against accused génocidaires living in France languished for years, neglected and
starved of resources, as the accused have gone about their lives without having to face justice.
After living in France for years with impunity, Félicien Kabuga, the accused financier of the
Genocide, was not arrested until May 2020 near Paris, despite a 1997 ICTR indictment. While
French officials had long demonstrated a lack of interest in justice for the victims of the 1994
Genocide Against the Tutsi, Kabuga’s recent arrest, as well as recent activity by French authorities
investigating other cases, may signal a reversal of the French government’s historic pattern of noncooperation as to those who participated in the Genocide.
Recent efforts to promote transparency through the Duclert Commission are also
encouraging. Nonetheless, even with a mandate from the French president, the Commission was
denied access to some archives, which, in the Commission’s telling, “undermined the
comprehensiveness of the Commission’s work.” The Bureau of the National Assembly, for
example, “refused to allow [the Commission] to consult the archives of the 1998 Parliamentary
Information Mission (MIP).” So too, it appears that the Commission was prevented from viewing
documents from the French prime minister’s military cabinet, when archivists responded slowly
and in piecemeal fashion to Commission requests. Still other archives were missing or never
collected to begin with. President Mitterrand’s military advisors in the État-major particulier
(“EMP”)—Lanxade, Quesnot, and Huchon, among them—left few traces of their work. This is
unsurprising, because amongst the few EMP directives the Commission found in the archives of
the recipients are some that were required to be “destroyed after reading.” No doubt, other relevant
and material documentation continues to be withheld by elements within the French government.
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The Rwandan government should be rightly skeptical about suggestions of transparency.
In the past, French officials have failed to fulfill such promises, refusing public release of
documents that would help put to rest lingering questions about the Mitterrand government’s
policy and actions in Rwanda. In 2017, as part of an effort announced by French President
Hollande, the French government declassified only 83 documents, two of which it made public.
In this investigation, the Government of Rwanda has submitted three detailed requests for
documents from the Government of France. Nothing has been produced. The documents concealed
by the French government, by and large, do not seem to implicate national security. Rather,
concealing them appears to be part of an effort by the French government to protect the reputations
of some officials, despite their role in the Genocide Against the Tutsi.
France was not the only country whose government made harmful decisions regarding
Rwanda. During its colonial rule, Belgium turned Rwanda’s ethnic distinctions into ethnic
divisions. And, between 1990 and 1994, it offered civilian aid and military advisors to
Habyarimana. And many countries, notably the United States, delayed recognizing the Genocide
for what it was, for fear that doing so would commit them to intervene under international law.
However, Belgium and the United States have both apologized for their conduct and acts of
omission. France has not. More importantly, France had a special, preeminent status in Rwanda,
because of its broad and enduring military commitment in the country.
Despite its unique status and singular role, the French government—rather than accept
responsibility—has spent much of the last quarter of a century since the Genocide covering up its
failings in Rwanda, refusing to disclose its full complement of government documents, providing
safe harbor to numerous Genocide suspects, and too often failing to prosecute or cooperate with
others trying to prosecute them. This course of conduct places even the more positive advances,
such as the Duclert Commission’s report, in doubt, particularly as the French government
continues to withhold documents from the public.
The Genocide remains a visceral, daily reality for most Rwandans. Their ordeals defy
language and demonstrate that a genocide has no half-life. It will impair its survivors, and the
descendants of those survivors, for generations. That is the ultimate cost of what happened in
Rwanda, an awareness of which must condition any assessment of the role of the French.
Throughout this Report, we present the voices of the victims and survivors. These firstperson historical accounts are reminders that the role of the French government must be evaluated
in the context of the continuing consequences of its actions, and not only with respect to the events
that occurred when French officials were present in Rwanda for the four years leading up to the
Genocide and during Operation Turquoise. Only in the horrific and grotesque reality of the
Genocide can France’s responsibility and culpability be measured. The true history of French
conduct in Rwanda matters not least because, as one survivor recounted years after the Genocide,
“Even today that sadness does not end. The thought that someone came, raped you, destroyed you
and killed your child. . . . It is an extreme strain on my heart that will never end. . . . I only half
survived. I am still carrying death in me.” She was one of millions of individuals whose lives were
destroyed and devastated as a consequence of a genocide enabled by French officials—officials
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serving a country that had been one of the original signatories to the 1949 Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Ultimately, this Report cannot be the final word on the French government’s role in
Rwanda. That word will arrive after the French government makes public all of its documents and
allows all of its officials to speak freely. Releasing this information will set the French government
on the road toward a reckoning with history—its own and Rwanda’s. As then-Rwandan Foreign
Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said in 2017, “What happened in the early ‘90s and even before, in
the lead-up to the genocide, is something France will have to come to terms with. Rwanda is not
going away. We’re not going anywhere.” For the victims and the survivors, the French government
should come to terms with history and accept responsibility for enabling the Genocide Against the
Tutsi.
xxvii
CHAPTER I
1959 – September 1990
A. In October 1990, When War Broke Out on His Country’s Northeastern Border, Rwanda’s
President Called on France, a Longtime Ally, to Help His Army Fend Off “the Invaders.”
France Obliged.
We are going to send him a few boys, old man Habyarimana. We are
going to bail him out.1
– Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, Son of President Mitterrand and
Chief Adviser for African Affairs at the Élysée (1986 – 1992)
The fighting that erupted in northeastern Rwanda on 1 October 1990 had been raging for
just one day when the country’s long-serving president, Juvénal Habyarimana, placed an urgent
call to the Élysée Palace in Paris.2
Habyarimana, then 53 years old and in the seventeenth year of his reign, had spent the week
attending meetings and conferences in New York, having been advised by his foreign minister to
maintain a public profile so as to “not go unnoticed” by the international media.3 His itinerary to
that point had included a 28 September 1990 speech before the General Assembly of the United
Nations,4 where French President François Mitterrand, arguably Habyarimana’s most important
Western ally, had spoken just a few days earlier.5 Both presidents, in their respective speeches,
celebrated the recent triumphs of popular movements in various corners of the world, symbolized
by the toppling of the Berlin wall the previous year.6 “In many countries, on all continents,
democracy has won out,” Mitterrand crowed in his address. “Borders can no longer contain its
radiating strength.”7
It was, in Habyarimana’s case, a crisis on his own country’s border that was now
demanding his attention. His trip to the United States had been disrupted on the morning of 1
October 1990, when soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political-military movement
developed in neighboring countries and abroad,8 marched over the Kagitumba border crossing
from southwestern Uganda into northeastern Rwanda, launching a war against the Habyarimana
regime.9 RPF leaders were first- and second-generation refugees, amongst hundreds of thousands
driven from Rwanda, seeking the right of return to a homeland that, for decades, had refused to
permit their reentry.10 Most, but not all, were Tutsi,11 a minority ethnic group whose members
were murdered by the thousands in targeted ethnic violence in the years before Habyarimana’s
presidency, and who continued to endure systemic discrimination under his rule.12 Habyarimana
had long insisted that Rwanda was too crowded to accommodate the refugees’ return, analogizing
the country to “a glass full to the brim.”13 The RPF was demanding not only a right of return, but
“rule of law” and an end to the Habyarimana regime’s anti-Tutsi discriminatory policies.14 “The
aim of the movement is to establish democracy and harmony among the peoples of Rwanda,” one
RPF senior military officer told a reporter at the start of the war.15
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The RPF army that crossed the border on 1 October 1990 was led by officers who had cut
their teeth fighting under Yoweri Museveni in the uprisings in Uganda in the 1970s and 1980s,
and who retained high-ranking positions in Uganda’s National Resistance Army (NRA) after
Museveni became Uganda’s president in 1986. President Museveni was, like President
Habyarimana, in New York when the RPF military launched its attack, attending some of the same
functions and staying in the same hotel, one floor apart.16 Museveni would tell interviewers that
he learned of the military assault at 5 a.m. in New York on 1 October, when his Ugandan army
commander phoned his hotel room to notify him that a number of the NRA’s Rwandan officers
had deserted.17 This was true, according to Paul Kagame, who was the then-deputy chief of the
Ugandan military intelligence service and one of the leaders in Rwandan Patriotic Front, and who
today is the President of Rwanda.18 Museveni had received vague information about unspecified
planning amongst Rwandan refugees in the NRA.19 Museveni did his best to “nip it in the bud” by
enrolling Rwandan NRA leaders in military training programs around the globe—including
Kagame, who was sent to the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas (where he was on 1 October 1990).20 When Museveni learned of the 1
October operation, “he was angry,” Kagame recalls.21 Museveni said he immediately called
Habyarimana, waking him up, to advise him of the “possible danger.”22
It was not long before word of the invasion reached officials at France’s embassy in Kigali,
the Rwandan capital. Colonel René Galinié, the French defense attaché in Rwanda, sent an alert
to Paris on 1 October, reporting that, according to his sources, the rebel force consisted of “at least
a hundred men in combat gear equipped with individual weapons, including Kalashnikovs,
possibly mortars and recoilless guns.”23 His cable, which counted the French president’s office
and various ministries among its recipients, said the rebels’ “nationality is not currently known –
however, Tutsi refugees are strongly suspected.”24 Galinié reported that the entire Rwandan Armed
Forces [FAR] was “on alert,” and that it had begun to conduct aerial reconnaissance, but the order
to fire on the enemy had not yet been given, likely on account of President Habyarimana’s
absence.25
Habyarimana did not, at first, seem overly worried. The Rwandan president stayed in New
York for two more days after learning of the attack, opting to proceed with an agenda that included
a morning coffee, hosted by US President George H.W. Bush, for roughly two dozen African
leaders at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.26 Having just learned of the military conflict at the RwandanUgandan border, dignitaries and foreign affairs professionals at the Waldorf Astoria were surprised
to see both Habyarimana and Museveni at the event.27 Afterward, speaking with a US State
Department official, Habyarimana said he had talked to Museveni for an hour, and that Museveni
“kept insisting that he knew nothing about the invasion and was not in a position to do anything
about it.”28 Habyarimana did not believe him.29
Colonel Galinié, meanwhile, began to receive a clearer picture of events at the border –
and more particularly, of how Rwandan military leaders were responding to it. His sources were
particularly well placed. Having long provided military assistance to the Habyarimana
government, France had a number of military officers stationed in Rwanda, working to modernize
its Army and Gendarmerie.30 These officers reported to Galinié that the FAR’s initial response to
the RPF army’s attack had been disorganized, and that Colonel Léonidas Rusatira, a top official in
the Rwandan Ministry of Defense, “appeared very concerned.”31 In a 2 October cable, Galinié
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
informed Paris that Rusatira had announced that morning, during a meeting at the Rwandan
Ministry of Defense, “that it was possible that the President of the Republic would ask for military
assistance from France and Belgium in the form of an armed intervention.”32
This was not surprising. Belgium, Rwanda’s former colonizer, had deep ties to the
Rwandan government and its military, which only France came close to matching. The French
government had been a friend to Habyarimana since the early days of his administration.33 Among
the world’s nations, France was a leading donor of aid to Rwanda,34 having contributed roughly
$4.5 million in 1989.35 President Mitterrand had, in fact, displayed his generosity yet again only a
few months earlier, during Habyarimana’s visit to Paris in April 1990. After welcoming the
Rwandan president to the Élysée, where the two presidents talked and dined, Mitterrand agreed to
provide roughly $25.5 million to help Rwanda start a national television station.36 Mitterrand also
offered Habyarimana a gift: a new presidential plane, worth $10 million, to replace the plane
French President Georges Pompidou had presented to Habyarimana, also as a gift, in 1974.37 “I
believe, without exaggerating, that this gesture testifies to the appreciation and the high esteem
that Mr. Mitterrand has of You,” Rwandan Foreign Minister Casimir Bizimungu wrote in a memo
to Habyarimana shortly after the April 1990 trip to France.38 (The new plane, a Falcon 50, would
take its place in history on 6 April 1994, when it was shot out of the sky, killing Habyarimana and
everyone else on board, in an attack that immediately preceded the Genocide.)
Habyarimana did, in fact, solicit France’s military assistance, just as Colonel Rusatira said
he might. The French official who took Habyarimana’s call on 2 October 1990 was not President
Mitterrand, but rather his son, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the head of the Élysée’s “Africa Cell.”
The “Africa Cell” was an organization inside the Élysée with no equivalent for other world regions,
reflecting the central place African affairs had long occupied in French foreign policy.39 Its roots
traced back to the early years of Charles de Gaulle’s presidency (Jan. 1959 – Apr. 1969), when the
redoubtable Jacques Foccart, de Gaulle’s secretary general for African and Malagasy affairs,
established himself as a key powerbroker in francophone Africa.40 Foccart, whose authority to
speak for de Gaulle was unquestioned,41 set the terms of French foreign policy for decades to
come, under which African affairs, “more than any other aspect of France’s external policy,
remain[ed] the domaine réservé of the President.”42 “[T]raditionally,” one historian wrote in 1989,
“it is in the office of the President that the most important decisions on African policy are made,
and this is a reflection of the fact that African affairs are still considered to affect the heart of
French state power.”43
Jean-Christophe Mitterrand was a former Africa correspondent for Agence France
Presse.44 He had joined the Africa Cell as deputy advisor in 1982, during his father’s first term as
president, but became his father’s top Africa advisor four years later, when the head of the cell
resigned amid accusations that he had embezzled public funds.45 Jean-Christophe was never a
kingmaker, as Foccart had been.46 “He has been manipulated more often than [he has been]
manipulative,” one journalist would later say.47 Many African leaders, though, were more than
happy to liaise with him, no doubt finding it useful to have the ear of the president’s son.48
French historian Gérard Prunier happened to be with the younger Mitterrand when
President Habyarimana phoned in from New York.49 As Prunier would recall, Habyarimana was
seeking affirmations that France would help the Rwandan Armed Forces repel the RPF Army’s
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
advance. The phone call lasted no more than 10 minutes.50 Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, responding
to Habyarimana’s plea for help, gave “a bland and reassuring answer” before turning to Prunier
and saying, “We are going to send him a few boys, old man Habyarimana. We are going to bail
him out.”51 “In any case,” he added, “the whole thing will be over in two or three months.”52
B. France Sought to Retain Its Influence in Africa after World War II, with Mitterrand Playing
a Key Role in the Effort.
Without Africa, there will be no history of France in the twenty-first
century.53
– François Mitterrand, President of France (1981 – 1995)
If French foreign policy hands like Jean-Christophe Mitterrand thought little of sending “a
few boys” to Africa to help an ally in distress, it was because France had done it many times before.
Since the late 1950s, France had repeatedly dispatched troops to suppress uprisings in its former
colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, signaling, in the words of historian John Chipman, “that when a
francophone African leader close to France needed help, France would be willing to use military
force to sustain him in power.”54 The history of interventions in Africa extended into the Mitterrand
era, during which time France sent troops to help Chadian President Hissèn Habré fend off Libyanbacked incursions,55 and also, in 1986, to help Togolese President Gnassingbé Eyadéma quell an
internal rebellion.56 “Indeed,” Chipman wrote, “despite early socialist rhetoric, the government
[under President Mitterrand] did much both to sustain and then to improve France’s capacity to
bring military power to bear on the African continent.”57
The justifications for these interventions varied, of course, but the ambitions behind them
remained a constant. “There is no hiatus in France’s African policy before May 1981 and after,”
François Mitterrand would say early in his first term, referring to the month he became president
of France. “If the method has changed, the objective has remained. It consists in preserving
France’s role and interests in Africa.”58 President Mitterrand presented himself as “the bearer of
more than a tradition,” in this regard.59 France’s history, and his own, compelled France to
maintain its influence—in Africa, broadly, and in Rwanda, specifically.
France had emerged from World War II with its borders intact and a permanent seat on the
UN Security Council, but with its self-image as a global power in tatters.60 The humiliations of the
war years—its 1940 surrender to Nazi Germany and subsequent occupation during the Vichy
regime—had battered the nation’s psyche and diminished France’s stature within the international
sphere.61 “[A] sense of fragility remained,” one French scholar would later write. “The status
which France inherited in 1945 was unexpected; henceforth it would be necessary to justify
itself.”62 Its colonies, long a source of geopolitical clout, were a vital link to the nation’s past
grandeur. At a time when some colonial powers were letting go, France redoubled efforts to keep
its prized overseas possessions.63
Mitterrand, though still young, was a key participant in those efforts. An early highlight of
his rise to power in France’s post-war government was his stint, from 1950 to 1951, as minister of
overseas territories, a position that charged him with responsibility for France’s colonies—recently
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
rebranded as “territories”—in French West and Equatorial Africa.64 In an era of surging
nationalism across the globe, the cost of preserving the old empire had grown exponentially. As
one biographer noted:
By the time Mitterrand became Minister of Overseas Territories, the country was
bogged down in a full-scale war in Indochina and had suppressed with great
brutality uprisings in Algeria in 1945, which left 20,000 dead, and in Madagascar
in 1947, where more than 80,000—2 per cent of the population—had died.65
Mitterrand, as a young minister in the 1950s, came to recognize that “the old colonialism was
dying,”66 but remained committed to a vision of “Eurafrican France,” in which France’s African
colonies would remain associated with France.67 His argument for this arrangement was that it
would not only inure to France’s benefit (“Without Africa,” he once wrote, “there will be no history
of France in the twenty-first century.”),68 but that it would serve Africa’s interests as well. “The
African world will not have a center of gravity if it confines itself to its geographical borders,” he
penned in a 1953 book.69 “Bound to France in a political, economic and spiritual entity, it will
clear four centuries in a single leap and fulfill its modern role . . . . From the Congo to the Rhine,
the third continent will be in balance around France as its center.”70
Mitterrand lamented the loss of France’s protectorates in Morocco and Tunisia in 1956—
the first breakaways from its African empire—and insisted that France must do what was necessary
to keep Algeria, its neighbor across the Mediterranean, under its yoke.71 “Algeria is part of France.
. . . The law applies everywhere [in France], and that law is French law,” he declared, as minister
of the interior, in 1954, after freedom fighters there launched a spate of attacks. “All those who
try, in one way or another, to create disorder and attempt to secede, will be struck down by every
means the law puts at our disposal.”72 Later, as minister of justice (1956-57), he condoned the
arbitrary detention and torture of Algerian rebels.73 “He already had a well-established reputation
for authoritarianism when he took up his post, and he made that felt,” said a French official who
worked with him during that era.74 “This period remains secretive with barely any archives
accessible from the functioning of the Ministry of Justice.”75
Having declined to ally himself with de Gaulle (sworn in as French president in January
1959), Mitterrand was no longer in the cabinet when the French empire in Africa finally crumbled,
with more than a dozen of its African colonies gaining independence between 1958 and 1960.76
The spirit of nationalism sweeping Africa had gained too much momentum to stop, and the cost
of preserving the empire—paid in money and, at times, in blood—had become too high for postwar France to bear.77 France, though, ensured its political and cultural ties to the continent would
survive the rupture. As the American diplomat and author Francis Terry McNamara has written,
France devised “an ingenious system of bilateral agreements” with its former African colonies,
which largely succeeded in preserving France’s interests in the newly independent nations.78 The
bilateral agreements promised “cooperation”—often in the economic, justice, and diplomatic
spheres, but also in matters of defense.79 (In a few cases, the defense agreements were kept secret.80
Other defense agreements were public, but contained “secret clauses for the intervention of French
troops, not only in the event of external aggression but also of internal crisis.”81) For France, the
terms of these cooperation agreements were often decidedly favorable; notably, many of the trade
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1959 – September 1990
agreements it signed with its former African colonies contained “special provisions” granting
France “exclusive access” to certain strategic raw materials, such as oil, natural gas, and lithium.82
Critics derided the system of bilateral agreements as “neocolonialist.”83 As one scholar
observed, the system of cooperation, while nominally “based on reciprocity, . . . was characterized
by relations of inequality. Indeed, there was a supplier and a receiver, the first [i.e., France]
providing assistance, making loans, donations, and bringing its development plans to the
second.”84 African leaders, though, permitted the system to endure for decades, allowing France
to retain its special preferences in trade and investment so long as France continued to provide
their governments with aid and, in some cases, security guarantees.85 “The cost to France is high,”
McNamara wrote in 1989, “but the return has been extraordinary. No other middle-sized power in
the world enjoys similar status and international influence.”86
C. The French Government Forged Relations with Post-Colonial Rwanda in the 1960s,
Expanding the Sphere of French Influence into East Africa.
Rwanda had not been a part of France’s colonial empire. Remote and without coastline,
Rwanda had been spared outside interference until the late 19th century, when European powers
agreed to award control of the territory to Germany.87 Rwanda remained a part of German East
Africa until 1916, when, during World War I, the Allies placed it under Belgium’s authority.88 The
Belgians ruled “Ruanda-Urundi” (today’s Rwanda and Burundi) for the next 44 years.89
The Franco-Rwandan relationship began just as the colonial era was ending, in the early
1960s. Indeed, France was a participant in the United Nations negotiation process—between 1960
and 1962—that led to Rwanda’s independence.90 The French government’s support for
decolonization in those negotiations had not been selfless. France, as one scholar has written, saw
an opportunity to expand its influence into East Africa, a part of the continent colonized by other
European powers, but not France.91
Rwanda, at that time, was a new nation confronting extraordinary challenges. Decades
under Belgian rule had stunted the development of its economy.92 The country had no paved
roads.93 Its people had poor access to quality education and were among the world’s most
malnourished populations.94
It was also a country in the throes of profound societal tumult. The old social order, in
which positions of authority were reserved for a privileged few among the country’s Tutsi
minority, to the exclusion other Tutsi, the Hutu ethnic majority, and the Twa,95 had crumbled in
the final years of colonial rule. In 1959, after Rwanda’s Belgian-backed monarch unexpectedly
announced plans for democratization, the mobilization of newly formed political parties generated
what historian Jean-Paul Kimonyo has described as “a confrontational environment bound to
explode into violence.”96 Among the activists at the center of the maelstrom was Grégoire
Kayibanda, a former teacher and newspaper editor who had built a following among Hutu peasants
by railing against the Tutsi elite.97 Kayibanda called for the restoration of Rwanda “to its real
owners, as this is the country of the Bahutu.”98 His party, the Party of the Movement and of Hutu
Emancipation [Parti du Mouvement et de l’Emancipation Hutu, or “Parmehutu”], declared itself
opposed to the “hegemony of the invading Tutsi race.”99
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Tensions boiled over on 1 November 1959, when members of the youth wing of the
Rwandan National Union (UNAR) party, a pro-independence party founded by conservative Tutsi
that favored a constitutional monarchy, attacked a Parmehutu leader.100 Hutu activists falsely
claimed that the victim, a Hutu sub-chief, had been killed in the attack, inciting deadly reprisals
against Tutsi, which in turn engendered Tutsi counterattacks against Hutu.101 The violence claimed
at least 200 lives102 and provoked a “massive exodus of Tutsi refugees who could no longer return
to their hills.”103 Belgium declared a state of emergency and deployed a Belgian military
commander, Colonel Guy Logiest, to oversee the territory.104 Logiest believed that continuing to
back the Tutsi elites, as Belgium had done for decades, would only enkindle greater frustration
among the Hutu peasantry and hasten the movement toward independence.105 He opted,
accordingly, to break ties with the Tutsi authorities and replace them with Parmehutu
sympathizers, who used their new power to persecute the Tutsi.106
France’s public position in the aftermath of the 1959 rebellion was, as a French diplomat
asserted, that it had “no interest in the issue of Ruanda-Urundi.”107 France did, however, have
reasons to support the decolonization and democratization processes, particularly after Rwandans
voted in September 1961 to abolish the country’s Tutsi-dominated monarchy and establish a
republic, handing control of the Rwandan parliament to Kayibanda’s Parmehutu party.108 French
officials were cheered by Parmehutu’s good fortune and appeared to believe, as others did, that the
Hutu were “more inclined to establish relations with France” than the Tutsi.109 After the 1961
parliamentary elections in Rwanda, France’s delegate to the UN General Assembly declared that
the results could “only be favorable to the extension of our cultural and technical influence in this
populous region of East Africa.”110
France had mixed reasons for seeking a foothold in Rwanda once the latter achieved
independence in 1962. Certainly, the relationship promised some economic benefits for France,
though these were relatively limited.111 Unlike some of France’s own former colonies in Africa,
such as Gabon and the Republic of the Congo, Rwanda did not have oil or other precious natural
resources. What made Rwanda alluring, from France’s perspective, was something else: its
distinction as one of only a handful of French-speaking countries on the frontier of Anglophone
East Africa.112
It has been said that France’s historical resentment of “Anglo-Saxons”—Britain, the United
States, and virtually all other English-speaking nations—has at times bordered on a kind of
mania.113 The French historian Gérard Prunier, a scholar on the Great Lakes Region of Africa, has
described it as a constant of French political thinking through the centuries—the conviction that
English-speaking countries’ political and cultural hegemony poses an existential threat to the
French language and the French “way of life.”114 Prunier called it “Fashoda syndrome,” named for
a storied 1898 standoff in the Upper Nile between French and British forces,115 and diagnosed it
as one of the main reasons President Mitterrand so quickly answered Rwanda’s call for
intervention in October 1990. The hallmark symptom of the Fashoda syndrome, according to
Prunier, was the belief that “the whole world is a cultural, political and economic battlefield
between France and the ‘Anglo-Saxons,’” and that “nothing less than the total victory of one of
the contending parties will bring an end to the conflict.”116
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For France in the early 1960s, Rwanda represented a potential “‘bridgehead’ of Frenchspeaking Africa in English-speaking East Africa.”117 One French Foreign Ministry official at the
time asserted that Rwanda, because of “its geographical location,” could “contribute effectively to
the development of French influence” in the region.118 He alluded to a hope that Rwandan
emigrants would bring their language and culture with them to the rest of the region, such that, for
France, Rwanda would serve as “a significant instrument of cultural penetration in the Englishspeaking neighboring countries: Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika [now a part of Tanzania—
ed.].”119
Cooperation served Rwanda’s purposes as much as France’s. Looking for economic and
technical assistance wherever he could find it, Kayibanda, now the country’s newly elected
president, entered into an October 1962 “agreement of friendship and cooperation” with de
Gaulle’s government in Paris that dangled a promise of French assistance in many sectors of the
Rwandan economy, a promise that France would soon fulfill.120
It took only two months after the signing for French and Rwandan authorities to negotiate,
sign, and ratify three new cooperation agreements: one for economic cooperation, one for “cultural
and technical cooperation,” and one to help Rwanda establish a national broadcasting agency.121
Of the three agreements, it was the latter two that, from the French government’s perspective,
offered the greatest value. “[O]ur commercial and financial interests [in Rwanda] will never be
very important,” the French ambassador to Rwanda wrote in 1964.122 He suggested that cultural
ties, based on their shared (French) language, were, by comparison, the more promising area for
cooperation.123
D. France Established Relations with the Kayibanda Regime amid a Period of Intensifying
Ethnic Strife in Rwanda.
Kayibanda, post-colonial Rwanda’s first president, spoke French well124 and named it,
along with Kinyarwanda, the official language of Rwanda.125 He was among a cohort of Hutu
leaders in the Rwandan independence movement who claimed to embrace “the ideals of the French
Revolution,” finding inspiration in the 18th-century French revolutionaries’ toppling of “an
aristocratic monarchy.”126 Kayibanda visited France three times during his nine-year reign (19621973), meeting with President de Gaulle on at least two of those occasions.127 “I do not need to
reiterate our unequivocal commitment to cooperate with France in the field of technical
cooperation and assistance and in the broader field of international action,” he wrote to the French
foreign minister in 1962.128 The French government reciprocated his interest, steadily expanding
its cooperation with Kayibanda’s government over the course of his presidency.129
From the beginning, though, it was no secret that Kayibanda was an autocrat and the leader
of a party, Parmehutu, with a virulent anti-Tutsi ideology. A UN Trusteeship Council report
described his seizure of power in Rwanda as the institution of a “‘racial’ dictatorship.”130 The
report warned, presciently, that “in the transition from one type of oppressive régime to another .
. . [e]xtremism is rewarded, and there is a danger that the minority may find itself defenceless in
the face of abuses.”131
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The first few years of the Kayibanda presidency—a period in which France, after signing
the 1962 “agreement of friendship and cooperation” with the new Rwandan government, opened
its first diplomatic post in Kigali—were marked by killings and insecurity, with thousands of Tutsi
houses burned down and tens of thousands of Tutsi, as well as a number of Hutu, seeking refuge
in neighboring countries.132 In December 1963, a force of Rwandan Tutsi exiles attempted to
invade from Burundi.133 After the Rwandan national guard turned them back, Kayibanda “took
advantage of the attack in order to unleash anti-Tutsi terror.”134 His government executed
opposition political party leaders and incited Hutu civilians to massacre 10,000 Tutsi with
machetes and spears, triggering a massive new displacement of Tutsi.135 By late 1964, two years
into Kayibanda’s presidency, 300,000 Rwandans had sought refuge in Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania,
and Congo.136
The persecution and slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda was well publicized in Europe, including
in France. On 17 January 1964, the French newspaper Le Monde described killings with clubs and
corpses thrown in the river.137 On 6 February 1964, Le Monde quoted British academic Bertrand
Russell, who said that the violence against the Tutsi was the most horrible and systemic
extermination of a people since the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews.138
Such reports, though, did not dim the maintenance or expansion of French relations with
Kayibanda’s regime. Among the subjects of interest to both governments was one the two
countries had not addressed in the existing cooperation agreements they had signed in the early
1960s—namely, military cooperation. The topic had been a sensitive one, as Rwanda, upon its
independence, had turned to Belgium, its former colonial ruler, for help establishing an army.139
Whatever concerns France may have once had, though, about encroaching on Belgium’s domain
seem to have abated a few years later, as, in the mid- and late 1960s, the French military attaché
in Kinshasa, Zaire, paid numerous visits to Kigali to “study the possibilities of French action in
this field.”140 The French ambassador in Kigali also raised the subject of possible military
cooperation, addressing his inquiries to a young minister, and future president, of Rwanda named
Juvénal Habyarimana.141 Habyarimana, then serving as minister of the national guard, police, and
security, had shown an interest in “the institutions of French military life,” indicating he wanted
to create a French-style gendarmerie out of Rwanda’s senior police officers.142 He was also
interested in buying French military equipment, and did just that. Following his 1966 visit to Paris,
the French government sold Rwanda, “on very advantageous terms,” 12 light armored vehicles
and two helicopters.143 The deal presaged an era of Franco-Rwandan military cooperation, which
would begin in earnest during the Habyarimana presidency.
Habyarimana had a “close personal friendship” with Kayibanda.144 As the author Andrew
Wallis has recounted, the up-and-coming young minister and his wife, Agathe Kanziga
Habyarimana, were frequent visitors to Kayibanda’s redbrick house outside of the central
Rwandan town of Gitarama, regularly “dropping in to play cards or to enjoy a drink.”145 The
Habyarimanas had no quarrel with Kayibanda’s treatment of the Tutsi. On the contrary,
Habyarimana “believed Rwanda was a Hutu country and that Tutsi refugees must never be allowed
to return.”146 The Habyarimanas, though, were northerners, a distinction that was increasingly
coming to be seen as a mark for disfavored treatment under Kayibanda’s rule.147 They watched as
the president, a native of central Rwanda, passed over northern Army officers for highly coveted
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promotions and reserved key government positions for loyalists from the central and southern parts
of the country.148
As northerners’ frustrations with Kayibanda’s rule mounted, the president sought, in
Wallis’ phrasing, “to move the debate away from [his administration’s] own failings and back to
one area of policy Kayibanda was certain would bring him support—ethnicity.”149 When ethnic
violence broke out in neighboring Burundi in mid-1972, Kayibanda exploited the tumult for his
own political gain.150 His government sanctioned discrimination, and even violence, at Rwandan
educational institutions, encouraging Hutu university and secondary-school students to lash out at
their Tutsi peers for supposedly “taking up far more places than their 14 per cent of the population
warranted.”151
Kayibanda’s excesses in the latter phase of his presidency had not passed without notice in
the French Foreign Ministry.152 A 1970 telegram from the French ambassador in Kigali remarked
that “the regime [had] increased its authoritarian character in the person of Kayibanda.”153 The
ambassador knew that domestic [i.e., northern] opposition to Kayibanda was stirring and even
predicted, in 1966, that “if a coup d’état occurred the author would be the current Minister of the
National Guard and the Police,” Juvénal Habyarimana.154 His insight proved accurate. On 5 July
1973, Habyarimana, along with ten other officers calling themselves the “high command,”
overthrew Kayibanda and “proclaimed Rwanda’s ‘second republic,’” with Habyarimana as its
president.155
E. France Deepened Its Diplomatic and Military Ties to Rwanda after the 1973 Coup, as
Habyarimana and a Small Group of Primarily Northern Loyalists Steadily Consolidated
Control over the Country and Perpetuated Kayibanda-Era Anti-Tutsi Policies.
While Habyarimana, in his first foreign trips as president, sought to deliver messages of
goodwill and solidarity to other African leaders, including the dictators in neighboring Zaire and
Uganda, his wife headed farther north: to France.156
Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana was the daughter of the prominent owner of a lucrative
textile import business in northern Rwanda.157 Her family had been far wealthier than the
Habyarimanas, who lived across the river in the neighboring commune.158 Her father had
nevertheless approved her 1963 marriage to Juvénal Habyarimana, whose quick rise up the ranks
of the military had earned him considerable power and respect.159 Members of Agathe’s large and
ambitious extended family saw promise in the young army captain and would later see their faith
repaid, as they reaped the spoils of his reign.160 The family would form the backbone of the close
group of corrupt leaders, commonly referred to as the “Akazu” (a term meaning “small house”),
who controlled nearly every major aspect of Rwandan society during much of President
Habyarimana’s “Second Republic.”161
Agathe’s trip to Paris in October 1973, just three months after the coup, appears to have
produced results. Two months after her visit, President Georges Pompidou made arrangements to
present her husband a Caravelle plane, a gift worth roughly 10 million French francs ($2.3
million).162 As Rwanda lacked personnel to fly or service the plane, the French government took
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the added step of supplying Habyarimana with a pilot, crew, and technicians.163 (France also paid
to build a hangar for the new plane.164)
The scholar Olivier Thimonier, who has written of France’s relations with Rwanda during
this era, has said the Caravelle “was probably a political gift in response to a request for technical
military assistance.”165 According to Thimonier, the two governments were, by December 1973,
preparing to draft a bilateral agreement for “technical military cooperation.”166 A few months later,
when the French secretary of state for foreign affairs visited Kigali, President Habyarimana
“solicited France for military aid.”167
The Akazu, by this time, had already begun to assert control over Rwandan political and
economic life, with many of Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana’s relatives and friends taking positions
in her husband’s administration and using the power of those positions for economic gain.168
Among the first, and most notorious, beneficiaries of the president’s cronyism was Agathe’s older
brother Protais Zigiranyirazo, who, at 35, was handed the title of prefect of Kibuye (in the west of
the country).169 One year later, Habyarimana elevated “Mr. Z,” as Zigiranyirazo was widely
known, to prefect of Ruhengeri, “the most important—and lucrative—of all the prefectures . . .
with its trading routes north into Uganda and Congo, and illicit trade in everything from gorillas
to gold, drugs to diamonds.”170 “Mr. Z” would become one of the most powerful, and most feared,
members of the Akazu in the course of Habyarimana’s presidency.171 As one former Rwandan
government official would allege in the early 1990s, “Mr. Z” (also known as “Mr. Zed”) had
“leveraged” his familial ties to create a “mafia type” network. This network, which the official
dubbed “the Zedist Order,” allegedly controlled and corrupted virtually all commerce in
Rwanda.172
“Mr. Z” was far from alone in profiting from his familial links to the president. When, for
example, Habyarimana named his first cabinet in August 1973, the title of Minister of Youth went
to one of Agathe’s cousins: Commander Pierre-Célestin Rwagafilita, who in time would become
the head of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.173 Rwagafilita would face allegations, in 1980, that he had
pocketed vast sums of money through illegal dealings, with one Rwandan official calling him
“barely a step above animal, . . . whose foremost goal is to overtake his equals, then his superiors,
and ultimately, to exceed even his wildest ambitions.”174
Habyarimana’s inner circle also encompassed a number of northerners who had forged
bonds with Habyarimana early in his career. This cohort included Laurent Serubuga, a native of
Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana’s hometown, Bushiru, who would soon lead the Army as the deputy
chief of staff.175 Rumors of corruption would follow Serubuga throughout his career, with one
Rwandan official, the governor of the national bank, accusing Serubuga of “insatiable greed.”176
In a 1980 open letter to President Habyarimana, the bank governor described Serubuga as “an
enemy of the public good and of individual happiness” who, through corrupt dealings, “brazenly
continues to grow a fortune out of nothing.”177
Alongside Serubuga was Théoneste Bagosora, another Bushiru native, who would take
over command of Camp Kanombe following the assassination of his predecessor (reportedly on
Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana’s orders).178 Bagosora was cold and ruthless by reputation.179
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International prosecutors would later name him as the mastermind of the Genocide Against the
Tutsi.180
It would not take long for the Akazu to show the world how it dealt with enemies. Within
a year of the 1973 coup, Habyarimana’s government had arrested and court martialed dozens of
government officials, including Kayibanda himself.181 Many were purportedly killed in prison,
either by starvation or by being bludgeoned with a hammer,182 at the behest of the Army’s deputy
chief of staff, Laurent Serubuga.183 Several were officially sentenced to death, like Kayibanda,
only to have their sentences later publicly commuted to life in prison by Habyarimana.184
Nonetheless, Kayibanda died while under house arrest on 15 December 1976.185 Officially, his
death was reported as the result of a heart attack, though allegations persist that he was killed at
the direction of Habyarimana.186
Habyarimana’s public pronouncements in the early years of his administration were replete
with calls for “unity,” and, if many Tutsi residents had harbored some hope after the coup that
Habyarimana would be more sympathetic to their circumstances than Kayibanda had been, they
were soon disappointed.187 Under Habyarimana the discrimination continued: businesses were
ordered to continue identifying Tutsi employees and demanding their resignation, and educational
and professional opportunities were denied to Tutsi students in favor of their Hutu counterparts.188
“If there is any strong continuity in the policies of the two regimes,” historian Jean-Paul
Kimonyo has written, referring to the Kayibanda and Habyarimana administrations, “it is probably
in how they handled the refugee issue.”189 Habyarimana, throughout his reign, would show himself
to be unmoved by the refugees’ plight, insisting that Rwanda was overpopulated and did not have
enough arable land or natural resources to create employment to sustain a complete return of
refugees.190 “You understand that from the numbers there is overpopulation and Rwanda is almost
full,” he would later declare, during a 1987 visit to Uganda.191 (He further asserted, during his
visit, that “no one [could] accept” the proposition that the “child and the grand-children of a
refugee” might also be considered refugees.)192
The regime made its views clear almost immediately after the coup. On 31 July 1973, mere
weeks after Habyarimana seized power, his interior minister, Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe,193 met
with newly-installed prefects and prescribed how each should dissuade the return of refugees to
their regions.194 A few months later, Kanyarengwe extended a Kayibanda-era policy, codified in a
1966 presidential decree, giving regional leaders (i.e., prefects) control over the reintegration of
refugees within their territory and legalizing the seizure of land belonging to refugees.195
Kanyarengwe applied the decree to refugees who had fled the 1973 violence, preventing those
returning from reclaiming cattle (in addition to confiscated real estate) and expanding the prefect’s
control over their movement.196
The government of neighboring Uganda—home to an estimated 70,000 registered refugees
at the time (and likely many more who were not registered)—pressed the refugee issue in mid1974, inviting a Rwandan delegation to Kampala to work out a “definitive solution” to the
problem.197 The talks at first seemed headed for success, with the two delegations reaching a
preliminary agreement on a plan for the gradual repatriation of refugees.198 The Rwandan
government, though, never implemented the repatriation plan, and the available evidence suggests
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it never intended to do so.199 As Kimonyo, the historian, would later note, an internal memo from
the delegation to President Habyarimana revealed its members had all along viewed the refugees’
requests to return as illegitimate and untenable.200 The memo referred to the refugees’ return as “a
hopeless venture,” stating: “The [Rwandan] people condemned and banished forever the monarchy
and all its supporting institutions. It would go against the will of the people to impose on them
again the burden of those whom they rejected from their hearts.”201
Kigali subsequently intensified its national initiative to restrict the return of Rwandan
refugees. Interior Minister Kanyarengwe demanded that by July 1975 all property formerly owned
by refugees not yet taken had to be sold or given away.202 In an August 1976 directive,
Habyarimana instructed his ministers to “embark on a psychological campaign to persuade
Rwandan nationals to remain in their host country.”203 He barred the readmission of “vagrants,”
which by that time encompassed nearly all Rwandan refugees, who had been systematically
stripped of their property.204
Habyarimana ruled as a strongman, abolishing all political parties except for his own, the
newly created National Revolutionary Movement for Development (Mouvement Révolutionnaire
National pour le Développement, or MRND).205 As president, he modeled himself on Zairean
President Mobutu Sese Seko, promoted an image of himself as the “father of the nation,” and, after
1975, required all Rwandans to wear a small pin displaying a picture of his smiling face.206 His
military credentials remained a source of strength; in addition to reserving for himself the title of
Minister of National Defense, he continued to showcase his Kayibanda-era military rank, major
general, alongside his name in official government documents.207 As Habyarimana consolidated
control over the country, the quality of its small but growing military could be seen as a
representation of his own power. He set out, accordingly, to expand Rwanda’s military
capabilities—in particular, by continuing to pursue efforts to establish a French-style national
gendarmerie, a branch of the military that, in accordance with the French model, would serve as a
national police force, bearing responsibility for maintaining law and order.208 In this endeavor, he
found France to be a willing and able ally.209
Habyarimana’s first state visit to Paris, in April 1974, did not go as planned. He had been
scheduled to meet President Pompidou at the Élysée on the afternoon of 2 April, but the French
president’s staff abruptly canceled the meeting, with rumors circulating that Pompidou had been
too ill to attend to his duties.210 Pompidou died that night.211 In Kigali, the Rwandan government
paid its respects, lowering flags to half-mast for three days of mourning.212
Nevertheless, over the next year, the two governments proceeded in finalizing a military
technical assistance agreement, laying the foundation for French military cooperation with
Habyarimana’s government.213 As adopted in July 1975, the agreement authorized French training
of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.214 The writer Linda Melvern has said that, after adopting the
agreement, France supplied the Rwandan Gendarmerie’s equipment, including both vehicles and
weaponry, and offered training courses in France for its recruits.215
The 1975 agreement did not authorize France to train the Rwandan Army, and, notably, it
precluded French military cooperants from assisting in war operations.216 Subsequent amendments
in the 1980s and early 1990s would eliminate those restrictions.217
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The first French technical assistants—four officers and two non-commissioned officers—
arrived in Rwanda in late 1975 and early 1976 to begin training Rwandan Gendarmes.218
Provisions of French military equipment soon followed. Olivier Thimonier, in his examination of
Franco-Rwandan relations during the first two decades of Rwandan independence, detailed those
contributions as follows:
In 1976, France provided roughly 1.3 million French francs’ ($290,000) worth of
equipment to the Rwandan Gendarmerie, including 18 armored vehicles, 150 automatic
pistols, and 1,000 grenades.
In 1977, France provided more than 1 million French francs’ ($200,000) worth of
equipment, including 12 armored vehicles and 100 automatic guns. Separately, France
delivered an Alouette III helicopter, worth 2.2 million French francs ($442,000), as a gift,
as French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had promised two years earlier.
In 1978, aid from the French Military Cooperation Mission held steady at 1 million French
francs ($213,000), which covered another 12 armored vehicles, among other items.
Separately, but more significantly, the French Ministry of Defense contributed 6.8 million
French francs’ ($1.45 million) worth of material aid to the Rwandan Gendarmerie,
including 1,000 pistols, 1,000 rifles, 965,600 cartridges, and 500 grenades.
In 1979, France provided another 16 armored vehicles.219
The French government’s willingness to help Rwanda build a gendarmerie in the image of
France’s own reflected then-President Giscard d’Estaing’s desire to showcase French military
power on the African continent.220 As one historian wrote: “For Giscard, the display of French
military power in Africa was an even more important indicator than it had been for his predecessors
of France’s position in the international system.”221 Giscard significantly boosted French military
assistance to African countries in the late 1970s,222 with an increase in assistance to Rwanda
following soon afterward. In 1980, French military aid to Habyarimana’s government soared to 15
million French francs ($3.7 million), an expense covering the costs of a new helicopter, weapons,
and ammunition, as well as financing for the construction of an auto repair shop.223 The sharp
increase, and the promise of more helicopters to follow, was notable in and of itself, but even more
so because the aid was no longer directed exclusively for the benefit of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.
France was now subsidizing the Rwandan Army as well.224
Habyarimana showed himself to be a gracious beneficiary of French largesse. In 1977, for
example, when President Giscard d’Estaing dispatched French advisers, weapons, and transport
aircraft to help Zairean dictator Mobutu repel an invasion in the southern province of Shaba,
Habyarimana spoke approvingly of France’s intervention.225 (Though Zaire, like Rwanda, had
been a Belgian colony, France had entered into a military aid agreement with Mobutu’s
government in 1974.226) Habyarimana further refrained from criticizing French military
interventions in the late 1970s in Chad and Mauritania,227 even as, in Paris, Giscard d’Estaing’s
political opponents on both the left and right found common cause in condemning his
interventionism.228 The leader of the Socialist opposition was particularly pointed in his criticisms,
accusing Giscard d’Estaing of having turned France into “NATO’s gendarme.”229 These words
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would be turned against that opposition leader—François Mitterrand—a few years later, when, as
president, he, too, found himself advocating for a French military intervention in Africa
(specifically, the 1983 intervention in Chad).230
F. Mitterrand Overruled Efforts to “Moralize” France’s Africa Policy, Opting Instead to
Placate Autocratic Rulers in Rwanda and Elsewhere.
France has already recognized in you a faithful friend, a Head of State
who knows how to lead his people, a man on whom we can establish a
lasting friendship.231
– François Mitterrand, President of France, to Juvénal Habyarimana,
President of Rwanda
Among the Rwandans taking refuge outside of their homeland’s borders, there was a small
community of expatriates who had found their way to Europe. These Rwandans, who, perhaps
more than most, were especially attuned to the state of French relations with their home country,
saw reason to cheer the outcome of the 1981 presidential election, as voters rejected President
Giscard d’Estaing’s reelection bid in favor of Mitterrand, the Socialist Party candidate.232
While Mitterrand himself had a long history as a faithful colonialist, and later
neocolonialist, his political party had pledged in its platform to revisit relations with corrupt
African governments.233 Specifically, the platform stated:
French imperialism in Africa, which doesn’t think twice about resorting to military
means (Gabon, Zaire, Sahara, Chad, Central Africa) has run its course. The
[current] President [Giscard d’Estaing] . . . has a particular fondness for playing
policeman and for supporting the most backward, if not barbaric, and consistently
most corrupt regimes . . . . All military cooperation agreements must be
renegotiated. They will expressly stipulate that it will be impossible to request and
receive military assistance except in the case of outside attacks against these
states.234
Mitterrand’s candidacy appealed to Tito Rutaremara, a Rwandan living in France who
would become one of the RPF’s highest-ranking leaders and an intellectual force in the
organization. Rutaremara had been lucky, having earned a scholarship to study in ClermontFerrand, a city west of Lyon.235 Before that, though, he had lived among the estimated 200,000
Rwandans in exile in Uganda,236 where, in the late 1960s and again in the early 1980s, many
Rwandan refugees endured persecution under President Milton Obote’s rule.237 Obote exploited
long-simmering public resentment toward refugees, Rwandans in particular, who competed with
locals for land and employment.238 Beginning in 1981, young members of Obote’s political party,
the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), massacred Rwandan refugees “by the hundreds.”239
The refugee experience was not much different in Zaire. In Kivu, near the Rwandan border,
refugees who arrived after the anti-Tutsi pogroms of the late 1950s and early 1960s were often
“harassed and intimidated, robbed and physically assaulted,” not only by locals, but by Zairean
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police officers.240 Persecution continued in the 1970s and 1980s, as did state-sponsored
discrimination, including laws barring recently arrived Rwandan refugees from obtaining Zairean
citizenship.241 (Tanzania, to the east of Rwanda, was generally more hospitable toward Rwandan
refugees,242 but even there the government enacted legislation denying refugees criminal due
process rights and authorizing the state to confiscate refugees’ vehicles and livestock.243)
As was true of many members of the diaspora, Rutaremara was pained by reports of
violence and persecution against Rwandan refugees who, unlike him, had remained in Africa.244
Most alarming of all was the news out of Uganda in October 1982, when the UPC expelled
Rwandan refugees—even evicting Rwandans who had taken Ugandan citizenship—killing scores
in the process and sending 40,000 fleeing toward Rwanda.245 Some of the refugees made it over
the border.246 Soon, though, Habyarimana’s government closed the border, trapping thousands of
refugees in a narrow strip of borderland between UPC youth militia and Rwandan soldiers.247 The
support provided by the International Red Cross was not enough, and many refugees died from
hunger, disease, and suicide.248
Those who were fortunate enough to make it to the Rwandan side of the border were
directed to crowded refugee camps.249 One such refugee, a man who later rose to prominence as
an officer in the RPF, recalled being ordered to bury the bodies of fellow refugees who had died
of cholera or other diseases.250 The man said that, after entering the camps, the refugees were
forced to have their heads shaven so that locals outside of the camps would recognize them as
refugees.251
Rutaremara, who had become politically active since arriving in France, decided after the
1982 crackdown in Uganda to appeal to the French president to help the refugees.252 Without
political connections or clout, he did what he could, writing letters to Mitterrand and other French
politicians pleading for attention to the plight of Rwandan refugees. None responded.253 Soon,
Rutaremara began to lose his optimism about what Mitterrand’s France was willing to do.
Meanwhile, a group of Rwandan refugees in Belgium and France assembled under the
name Intego (“goal”) to advocate for the Rwandan refugees in Uganda.254 Emile Rwamasirabo, an
Intego member and a doctor who had fled Rwanda amid the anti-Tutsi violence in 1973, was also
hopeful that Mitterrand, after winning the French presidency, would be receptive to a plea from
the Rwandan community. Rwamasirabo wrote a letter to Mitterrand asking him to organize a
regional meeting through Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, and to use his influence with
Habyarimana to advocate for the return of refugees to Rwanda. Rwamasirabo delivered the letter
to a local member of the French National Assembly, who appeared moved and pledged to handdeliver the letter to Mitterrand himself, with whom he said he had good relations.255
Several days later, the assemblyman’s office called Rwamasirabo to ask him to come in.
Rwamasirabo knew the news was bad from the look on the man’s face while handing over a letter
written by the French foreign minister on Mitterrand’s behalf. “Rwanda is a small country which
is trying very successfully to overcome poverty,” the letter said, in Rwamasirabo’s recollection.
“It is too small to accommodate everybody. I am sorry for you. Try to find and organize your lives
in those countries where you live.”256 The response, which used the same logic as Habyarimana’s
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deflections, was dispiriting. “This was the shock of my life,” Rwamasirabo would recall. “I was
very naïve.”257
There were signs, at first, that Mitterrand’s election would presage a shift in French
relations with Africa.258 His first minister of cooperation, Jean-Pierre Cot, sought, as one writer
put it, “to moralize Franco-African relations by breaking with certain bad habits” and “defend[ing]
human rights.”259 Cot also resolved to expand the Ministry’s portfolio beyond the “pré carré”—
i.e., francophone Africa—and to begin establishing relations and distributing aid throughout the
whole of the developing world.260 Cot’s initiatives were not well received by those African leaders,
such as Gabon’s Omar Bongo, who had long benefitted from France’s attentions.261 Nor did they
sit well with Mitterrand, who considered it foolhardy to chase after new relationships in the Third
World at the risk of weakening existing bonds in francophone Africa.262 Cot resigned under
pressure in December 1982,263 with Mitterrand declaring, a few days later, “I am the one who
determines French foreign policy, not my ministers.”264
African leaders—some of whom had longstanding friendships with Mitterrand dating to
his tenure as minister of overseas territories in the mid-1950s—recognized that France’s Africa
policy under Mitterrand ran through the Élysée.265 Those with connections simply bypassed the
Ministry of Cooperation, delivering messages instead “through the Élysée’s back door” to the
advisors in Mitterrand’s Africa Cell.266 With power centralized in the office of the presidency, the
Socialist Party’s stated ideals of a more virtuous Africa policy gave way to a more traditional brand
of realpolitik. In short order, the Élysée fell back on old habits, offering its support to francophone
regimes regardless of moral compromise. As journalist and author Philip Short wrote in his
biography of Mitterrand: “Corruption, one-party dictatorship and the murder, imprisonment and
torture of political opponents were passed over in silence.”267
French military aid to Rwanda, specifically, remained fixed in the early years of
Mitterrand’s presidency at 1 million French francs (roughly $220,000) per year.268 Between 1981
and 1983, the French government gave the Rwandan government a Nord Atlas military transport
aircraft.269 French military aid continued throughout the decade, though “at a ‘more modest’
level.”270
Mitterrand’s relationship with President Habyarimana was warm, but business-like.
“Stable country, governed for nine years by a liberal soldier who has imprinted a democratic image
onto the institutions of his country,” read the introductory note Mitterrand received about Rwanda
and Habyarimana before their first meeting, in 1982.271 In a press conference regarding this
meeting, the French president lauded his counterpart: “France has already recognized in you a
faithful friend, a Head of State who knows how to lead his people, a man on whom we can establish
a lasting friendship.”272 A few months later, during a brief visit to Kigali, Mitterrand declared after
meeting with Habyarimana: “We have forged a friendship. It will last and it will be demonstrated
in action, along the historic path that we will now walk together.”273
From their earliest conversations, the refugee situation was a major point of discussion
between the two presidents. Habyarimana raised the subject during their first meeting in Paris,
reportedly noting his concern “about the pressure at his border” and “the vulnerability of his
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residence near the [Kigali] airport.”274 Habyarimana made a point of mentioning his government’s
“need to obtain arms.”275
Mitterrand sympathized with Habyarimana’s refugee burden. In a 1984 speech, the French
president said: “I know, Mr. President, that your constant willingness to maintain good neighborly
relations cannot prevent a refugee problem, in your country or on your doorstep . . . . With an
already very large population, you now find yourself taking on burdens that should not normally
be yours.”276
Mitterrand’s view of Africa’s place, generally, in French foreign policy had changed little
since his ministerial service in the Fourth Republic, roughly a quarter-century earlier. He continued
to believe, in the words of one biographer, that “the raft of French-speaking territories which
stretched from Mauritania to Madagascar remained an essential part of France’s claim to
greatness.”277 “Mitterrand’s old dream of an empire ‘from Flanders to the Congo’ was gone,” the
biographer, Philip Short, wrote, “but ‘Françafrique,’ the vast domain south of the Sahara in which
Paris exercised special rights and responsibilities, lived on.”278 The French president’s desire to
placate African allies and preserve France’s influence on the continent likely fueled his decision,
in 1983, to send troops to Chad to help its president, Hissène Habré, quash an offensive by Libyan
forces and affiliated Chadian rebels.279 (Habré would later be sentenced to life in prison for torture,
rape, sexual slavery, and the ordering of the killing of 40,000 people.280)
General Jean Varret, a French Army Corps veteran who in October 1990 was named head
of France’s Military Cooperation Mission,281 once quipped, in hindsight, that Mitterrand’s Africa
policy in the 1980s could be summarized in just a few words: “It’s the struggle against the
Americans!”282 (Varret would be one of only a handful of officials in Mitterrand’s administration
to voice misgivings about France’s support for Habyarimana during the war in the early 1990s.)
Mitterrand mistrusted the United States’ increased influence after the Cold War and sought to
contain it.283 “Abhorrence is a bit strong, in my opinion,” Varret said. “But there was a wariness
of the Anglo-Saxon, the kind that is deft, that double-crosses. [Mitterrand] had perfectly identified
this devious policy of sidelining us.”284
In the 1980s, Mitterrand was not only opposed to a number of American proposals,285
including Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, known as “Star Wars,” but also resisted pressure
from the United States to join a trade boycott of the Soviet Bloc.286 “To go to New York in these
circumstances would be to recognize America’s imperium,” Mitterrand said during this time.287
Reflecting once on French-US relations, he commented: “We are members of the Atlantic Alliance
. . . . We are friends. But we are a bit like [a] cat and [a] dog in the same house.”288
Hubert Védrine, secretary-general of the Élysée and Mitterrand’s top adviser, has disputed
assertions that Mitterrand held anti-American views, recalling his boss’s “rather friendly relations
with Reagan, exceptional ones with George Bush.”289 Védrine claimed that anti-Americanism was
more of an issue among French military officers—including General Christian Quesnot,
Mitterrand’s top military advisor at the time of the war in Rwanda in the 1990s.290 “Quesnot,” he
said, “was very much that way, for example. Very . . . Fashoda, do you understand? Mitterrand
wasn’t. He didn’t give much of a damn.”291
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As the 1990s dawned and the Cold War came to an end, some of Mitterrand’s ministers
summoned the courage to challenge him about his “paternalistic” Africa policy, which, in their
view, “was becoming an anachronism.”292 Mitterrand chafed at the criticism, holding firm to the
belief, shared by several of his predecessors, that it was more important to maintain “stable
relations” with African leaders than to “promot[e] the welfare of their peoples.”293 When a staffer
pushed back, letting Mitterrand know he disagreed with his position, the president fumed: “You
too! . . . It’s idiotic!”294 Ultimately, though, Mitterrand relented. In June 1990, at a Franco-African
Summit at La Baule in western France, Mitterrand alluded to a new direction for French policy in
Africa, suggesting that, to continue to receive French aid, recipient nations would have to
democratize.295 “[B]y taking the road towards development, you will be committed on the road
towards democracy,” he declared in his opening remarks at the Summit.296 He chose his words so
carefully that a casual listener may well have missed their significance. It was only later, in a press
conference after the Summit, that he made the policy shift explicit: going forward, he explained,
authoritarian African regimes that resist liberalization could expect no more than “lukewarm aid”
from France, while “those who take the step with courage” could expect “enthusiastic aid.”297
Habyarimana, who had made a point of attending every one of the annual (or nearly annual)
Franco-African Summits since 1975,298 found himself, for once, out of sync with the Élysée.299
The remarks he prepared for the La Baule Summit were wholly at odds with Mitterrand’s, pressing
the contrary—and infinitely more self-serving—argument that, in Africa, economic development
must come first, democratization second.300 “For African countries to be able to continue to
advance towards their liberation, towards an ever more real, more authentic participation of all
actors in national development, there is . . . one condition that must be met,” he declared. “It is
necessary to recognize the need for our countries to have some economic stability.”301
Habyarimana seems to have intuited, though, that modest reforms—or even mere declarations of
an intent to implement reforms—would satisfy France enough to keep the aid to his government
flowing.302 In July 1990, he announced plans to establish a commission to open a “national
dialogue” about potential political reforms in Rwanda.303 Habyarimana personally appointed all of
the commission’s members.304
The policy Mitterrand announced at La Baule proved, in time, to be little more than window
dressing.305 One French Foreign Ministry official would later observe: “While maintaining the
course set by his speech in La Baule, he was not too demanding on the pace of democratization
and the quality of elections. His tolerance of electoral rigging even seemed quite high to me.”306
After La Baule, French aid to African countries transitioning to democracy actually decreased,
while debt relief measures aiding authoritarian regimes increased.307
Marcel Ruhurambuga308
Marcel was born in 1977. He was 16 years old at the time of the Genocide.
Dad was the first to be killed—at the beginning of May. First, they took all
of us, saying they were taking us to the district offices at Mukingi commune—
where they used to put people on buses and send them to Kabgayi. But then they
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took my Dad and Mum, my young brother, Serubibi Guido, and my sister,
Marcelline Mukakimenyi. Somewhere on the way, they let Mum go; and one of the
militia helped Serubibi Guido escape through the millet plantation because he
knew what would happen to them. The other attackers looked for him, but they
never found him. I found out later that they killed Marcelline at Karambo.
So they carried on with only my father. Then Dad was handed over to
another gang of killers on Mwendo hill. When he saw the perpetrators with
machetes and clubs, he decided to run away. The group that had taken him there
acted as if they didn’t want to kill him, but the other group ran after him and
grabbed him. He couldn’t run very fast—he was tired, and a lot of people were
chasing him. They led him towards Kiryango River, and when they got there, they
tied him up—his arms and legs were tied tightly. Then they threw him in the river
and drowned him. It was raining heavily, and the flowing water carried him along.
His executioners threw stones at his head, saying, “He can swim. He might get out
of the water.” So they did that until he died.
About a week after my father’s death, a soldier called Shyaka came. He
asked, “How could you kill Nicolas and leave his children? Why didn’t you
eliminate them all?” Then the killers added, “Especially that son who goes to
school. (I was in secondary school then.) He knows all the lnkotanyis’ secrets. He’s
part of them so he must be killed!”
My older brother, Gabriel Burabyo, was hiding at Rusizana’s house. One
night, Rusizana gave my brother some beer. Gabriel took it and got drunk. Then
Rusizana made him talk loudly. The gang of perpetrators that worked with Shyaka
climbed the fence and got inside. The last word I heard Gabriel say was, “Rusizana,
why did you betray me? We fed on the same breast, how could you do this to me?”
When they were babies, my mother had breastfed Rusizana and Gabriel at the same
time, like twins.
Gabriel was about 27. He fought the killers, but they stabbed him. I heard
him screaming. It was moonlight, so I followed them quietly to see how they would
kill him. I didn’t see clearly, but when we exhumed him and re‐buried his remains,
I realized they had stoned him to death.
The following day, around three o’clock in the afternoon, I was attacked in
my hiding place at Munyawera’s home. Then I hid in a shed, in a cow’s manger and
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used manure to cover myself. Maybe someone saw me. I don’t know what
happened. I just saw people searching the house and they later came to find me.
There was Shyaka and his brother, a female Interahamwe . . . and many
others whose names I didn’t know. They made me get out of the manger and took
my clothes off—except for my trousers and shirt. They took me to a place called
Kabuga, whipping my legs all the way, and I was subjected to the worst torture you
can imagine. They beat me up, spat in my face and forced me to move on my knees
and elbows.
…
They made us sit there and they hit us. They tied our arms behind our backs.
Then they took us to Mr. Silas’s ruined house and made us sit there near the septic
tank. That’s where they were throwing the people fleeing from Kibuye after they’d
been killed.
…
The worst times for me? When they took me to that latrine hole, I thought
my life was over. I’d just seen and heard what they did to my brother. All I could
think of was what heaven looked like. I wondered why it took them so long to kill
me. When the killer snatched a hammer, I thought he was going to smash my head
and finish me off. Fortunately—I guess it was by God’s will—he hit my neck instead
of my head. That’s how I survived.
When I pass by that pit now, I change a bit and behave differently. I feel
strange. It’s as though I lose my humanity. But I don’t have a cruel heart, the heart
to kill. I don’t feel like talking to anyone. I just say a prayer, no matter how short.
Just a word of thanksgiving to the Lord. But if I see someone related to the militias
at that time, I become aggressive. Sometimes I think of doing something horrible,
but because it isn’t in my nature, I just get over it.
…
I know there are some people who deny that genocide took place. I would
take them to memorial sites like Ntarama, Bisesero, Nyamata and other places like
Gikongoro. And I would ask them a single question, “Why do you think those
people died? Was it a thunder or floods? Did they commit suicide?”
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…
I know it’s very important to give my testimony so that the whole world,
and especially foreigners, will see it. People have to know about the genocide in
Rwanda and give it its significance. What I want to be remembered is the massive
number of innocent people who were killed. Those people would have been
helping the country to develop now. If you forget the genocide, it’s as if you don’t
value human rights.
G. Stateless and Persecuted in the Countries Where They Sought Refuge, Rwandan Refugees
Were Told They Could Not Return Home Because There Was No Room. War Ensued.
Habyarimana, to that point, had faced little pressure from Western countries to soften his
position on the refugee community’s demands to return to Rwanda. In a 1986 statement, his
political party’s central committee issued a statement flatly rejecting the refugees’ call for
collective repatriation.309 The committee maintained that the solution to the refugee problem was
to facilitate their integration, by way of naturalization or permanent settlement, in the countries
where they lived as refugees.310 The message was crafted in such a way as to appease the
international community, stressing the government’s concern for the refugees’ plight.311 To the
Rwandan diaspora, it was a watershed moment—enshrining in the platform of Rwanda’s only
political party that they would not be welcomed home. The Rwandese Alliance for National Unity
(RANU), a group formed in 1979 by young Rwandan intellectuals who had grown up in exile,
called out the statement as “shameless hypocrisy at its worst,” asserting the government was
effectively condemning refugees to “permanent exile, frustration and hardship.”312
The young men who founded RANU sought more than the mere return of refugees. The
group’s leaders, based in Nairobi and Kampala, articulated a broader goal of bringing about a
“political and social transformation” of Rwanda, defined not by ethnic factionalism, but by
“national unity” and “true democratic and socialist republicanism.”313 RANU’s growth was slow,
and its strategy of lobbying foreign embassies and international organizations to champion the
refugees’ cause gained little traction.314 At a time when President Habyarimana and his party, the
MRND, “still exerted confident control over [Rwanda] and benefitted from broad international
support,” RANU and other refugee organizations were all but “powerless,” as Kimonyo put it,
“because they only had their appeals to the international community.”315
Unable to transform Rwanda, RANU decided to transform itself. In 1986, the year the
MRND formally declared its opposition to repatriation, RANU’s leaders threw their support
behind a proposal to redefine the group’s mission and attract new members, particularly among
younger refugees.316 Dispensing with the more radical, socialist rhetoric of its earlier years, the
group chose, in December 1987, to adopt a minimalist, yet decidedly progressive, political
platform that would, it was hoped, appeal to all Rwandans.317 Its new eight-point political program
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stressed, above all, the organization’s desire to unite Rwandans of all ethnicities and endow the
country with strong democratic institutions, social services, and security for property and
persons.318 RANU leaders viewed these structural issues as critical.319 Refugees, they argued,
would only face new problems were they to return to a country that refused to treat people equally
under the law, that encouraged violence against civilians because of their ethnic background, and
that allowed only certain Rwandans to participate in civil society.320
The political program became the guiding document of a new organization born out of
RANU: the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).321 The RPF was the political wing, and the RPA—the
Rwandan Patriotic Army—its military. (Throughout this document, for ease of discussion, we will
use RPF to stand for both, unless there is an important distinction to be made between their
actions.) The new, two-part structure was a reflection of recent changes in RANU’s membership,
no less than of its increasing frustration with the inefficacy of RANU’s campaign to win the
support of the international community. An increasing number of RANU’s members in the late
1980s came from the ranks of Uganda’s National Resistance Army (NRA), the force that, in 1986,
toppled the Ugandan government and installed Yoweri Museveni as the country’s new
president.322 The NRA recruits were not the first to advocate for a military solution to the refugee
crisis; RANU had previously asserted the right to wage war, if necessary, to achieve its aims.323
Their presence, though, and their increasing influence within RANU (and later the RPF), helped
solidify the turn toward “warfare as the main means of action.”324 “Going home to Rwanda was
not possible without military struggle,” said Richard Sezibera, who would join the RPA as one of
its first medical officers. “We all listened to the radio. The government told us that Rwanda was
not for us—it was full.”325
The RPF’s military leaders were Fred Rwigema, who had risen to become second in
command of the Ugandan army, and Paul Kagame, who was deputy chief of the Ugandan military
intelligence service.326 Rwigema and Kagame would use their positions in the Ugandan military
to train recruits.327 Recruitment needed to be clandestine in order to evade Ugandan intelligence,
which became increasingly concerned about a Rwandan movement inside Uganda.328 Kagame’s
position in the intelligence service was especially valuable in this regard, providing him with cover
to operate in secret and move more freely than most.329
The core preparations took place in Uganda, where stealth training occurred within the
Ugandan Army under the cover of Ugandan military operations.330 Occasionally, this required
guile and swift coordination. For example, at one point, a Ugandan commandant informed
Museveni that the Rwandans in the Ugandan military were training foreigners—Somalis, he said—
at a facility west of Kampala, where, in fact, a Rwandan colonel was training Rwandan refugees
from Burundi.331 Museveni instructed Kagame to travel there and detain the Somalis.332 Kagame
tipped off the local NRA commanders (who were fellow RPF members), and “the Somalis”
promptly disappeared from camp; when Kagame arrived, he found only Ugandan nationals.333
Kagame ordered the commandant to write a letter of apology for lying to President Museveni.334
The case for regime change, by force or other means, only grew stronger as a series of
crises gripped Rwanda at the tail end of the 1980s.335 The economy had been hard hit, mid-way
through the decade, by the collapse of the international market for coffee and tea, the country’s
chief exports.336 A 1989 drought worsened matters, with chronic food shortages in much of the
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country causing more than 1,000 people to die of hunger.337 As unemployment grew, so did violent
crime.338 These crises eroded public support for Habyarimana and the MRND to such an extent
that, in 1990, more than one well-connected Rwandan told RPF leaders in Uganda that the regime
“was on the verge of collapse and any strong push from outside would complete the process.”339
By mid-1990, rumors of an attack from the RPF military were commonplace.340 France’s
new ambassador in Kigali, Georges Martres, had in fact heard the rumors as early as March 1990
and had advised President Mitterrand that Habyarimana would likely highlight his country’s
security concerns at the two presidents’ next meeting in Paris that April.341 Martres seemed to view
Habyarimana’s fears as overblown. “[T]he Tutsi emigrant opposition would only constitute a real
danger [to Habyarimana] if it were able to provoke an armed strike with support from abroad,”
Martres wrote in a March 1990 cable, appearing to suggest he did not view this as likely.342
Mitterrand’s advisors knew enough to prepare the French president to expect Habyarimana
to present a wide range of requests at their 2 April 1990 meeting, including not only a new
presidential plane to replace the one President Pompidou had gifted Habyarimana in the mid1970s, but an anti-aircraft defense system to protect Kigali.343 The view in the Élysée was that
Rwanda had no need for an anti-aircraft defense system.344 Mitterrand, as previously noted, chose
to grant the request for a new plane (and a crew to fly and maintain it).345 It was hoped, according
to Mitterrand’s staff, that this would appease Habyarimana enough to excuse France’s reluctance
to grant some of his other requests—in particular, for “military equipment whose necessity does
not seem obvious to us.”346
The Rwandan government did not cease to press France for military equipment, including
the requested anti-aircraft defense system, after the two presidents’ meeting in April 1990.347 At
the same time, though, other problems, beyond the perceived security threat from Tutsi refugees,
were becoming more and more pressing for Habyarimana and his administration. In August, a
group of 33 intellectuals issued a highly publicized manifesto demanding political pluralism in
Rwanda.348 It was understood that the drafters of this document were planning to form opposition
parties there.349
Habyarimana, according to the historian Gérard Prunier, was “jockeying for survival.”350
From the president’s perspective, a military attack on Rwandan government forces may have
appeared to offer an opportunity to galvanize domestic support.351 As Prunier would later
speculate:
In trying to use the external threat to quell the internal one, Habyarimana held a
major trump-card—the French fear of an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ erosion of their position
on the French continent—and it was this which probably made him decide to
embark on the risky course of not trying to deflect the invasion through serious
negotiation . . . . Habyarimana calculated that Paris would back him in any event,
and he was right.352
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Notes to Chapter I
1
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 100-01 (1995).
2
See GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 100 (1995); JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET
MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS [FRENCH POLITICS, SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 62 (2014). The Élysée Palace
is the official residence and office of the President of the French Republic.
3
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (15 Sept. 1990) (Subject: “Participation aux
cérémonies de remise du Prix ‘Leadership Afrique de lutte contre la faim’”); see Fax from Rwandan Embassy in
Washington (13 Sept. 1990) (describing President Habyarimana’s travel plans).
4
U.N. GAOR, 45th Sess., 13th mtg., U.N. Doc. A/45/PV.13 (4 Oct. 1990). Habyarimana’s statements were made on
28 Sept. 1990 before the General Assembly.
5
U.N. GAOR, 45th Sess., 4th mtg., U.N. Doc. A/45/PV.4 (27 Sept. 1990). Mitterrand’s statements were made on 24
Sept. 1990 before the General Assembly.
6
UN GAOR, 45th Sess., 13th mtg. at 6-7, 16, UN Doc. A/45/PV.13 (4 Oct. 1990); UN GAOR, 45th Sess., 4th mtg. at
31-32, UN Doc. A/45/PV.4 (27 Sept. 1990).
7
UN GAOR, 45th Sess., 4th mtg. at 31, UN Doc. A/45/PV.4 (27 Sept. 1990).
8
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 80 (2016) (“The movement [i.e., the RPF] was made up
of Rwandan refugees living in Uganda as well as those scattered in neighboring countries and elsewhere around the
world. The RPF demanded the rule of law, the abolition of ethnic and regional discrimination policies, and the right
of return for refugees.”).
9
Cable from American Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Invaders Consolidate
Hold on Rwandan Territories; GOR Prepares for Second Offensive”).
10
See Sam Mukalazi, Refugees No More?, AFRICA EVENTS 22 (Nov. 1990); STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS
50 (2008); MIP Tome I 67 (stating that the latest estimates of political refugees from Rwanda by the early 1990s were
600,000 to 700,000 refugees).
11
See US Central Intelligence Agency, Africa Review, Rwanda: Tutsi Exiles Challenge Rwandan Stability (12 Oct.
1990).
12
See ANTOINE MUGESERA, IMIBEREHO Y’ABATUTSI MU RWANDA 1959-1990 [THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE TUTSI
IN RWANDA 1959-1990] 279-81 (2nd ed. 2015).
13
Sam Mukalazi, Refugees No More?, AFRICA EVENTS 22 (Nov. 1990).
14
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 80 (2016).
15
Sam Mukalazi, Refugees No More?, AFRICA EVENTS 22 (Nov. 1990).
16
See MONIQUE MAS, PARIS-KIGALI 1990-1994 40 (1999); Memorandum from the Rwandan Embassy in Kampala
(26 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Traduction d’une dépêche d’une journaliste de New Vision: Résume de l’interview du
Président Museveni sur invasion du Rwanda par refugies rwandais de la NRA et quelques éléments Ugandais”).
17
See Ogenga Otunnu, An Historical Analysis of the Invasion by the Rwanda Patriotic Army, in THE PATH OF A
GENOCIDE 44 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke eds. 1999) (citing NEW VISION, 11 Oct. 1990); Memorandum from
the Rwandan Embassy in Kampala (26 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Traduction d’une dépêche d’une journaliste de New
Vision: Résume de l’interview du Président Museveni sur invasion du Rwanda par refugies rwandais de la NRA et
quelques éléments Ugandais”). Five a.m. Eastern Daylight Time in New York would have been 1 p.m. in Kampala,
Uganda and 12 p.m. in Kigali, Rwanda.
18
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
19
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame. According to Kagame, RPF leaders were aware that Museveni’s government
“had mounted intelligence against us.” “[T]here were a lot of rumors around, some of them true,” Kagame has said.
“Increasingly, the government of Uganda was getting jittery about the level of preparations. They were getting
suspicious.” STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 63 (2008). Rwandan intelligence had, in the months before the
invasion, received reports about the creation of a “military branch” of the RPF; however, the head of the Ugandan
external security service assured his Rwandan counterpart that the Ugandan government was committed to ensuring
Page | 25
Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
that “no refugee will attack Rwanda from Uganda.” See Memorandum from Augustin Nduwayezu to Juvénal
Habyarimana (approximately 10 Sept. 1990) (Subject: “sur la reunion tripartite de sécurité Rwanda-Uganda-Zaïre”).
President Museveni had his own reputation to protect. As chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), he
could expect that an attack emanating from his country would “reflect[]very badly” on him and his government.
WILLIAM PIKE, COMBATANTS: A MEMOIR OF THE BUSH WAR AND THE PRESS IN UGANDA 203 (2019). Museveni, for
his own part, has been less than consistent in his responses to questions about his relationship with RPF leaders in the
lead-up to the war. In a call with a journalist on the evening of 2 October 1990, the day after the attack, Museveni
said, “This took us by surprise. We had been getting intelligence reports which we shared with the Rwanda authorities
but they were not confirmed. . . . We got some information that people were deserting but what surprised us was the
scale and rapidity of the desertions.” WILLIAM PIKE, COMBATANTS: A MEMOIR OF THE BUSH WAR AND THE PRESS IN
UGANDA 203 (2019). Years later, Museveni told a documentary film team a different story: “I kept telling Rwigema .
. . please we have fought here in Uganda and won. But we fought because we had the support of the population in
Rwanda [to] continue to do political work. I will support you because I don’t want you to be defeated and come back
here.” INKOTANYI (2017) (documentary directed by Christophe Cotteret) (at approximately 14:40-15:10).
20
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame. President Kagame explained that President Museveni first tapped Fred
Rwigema—second in command of the Ugandan army and, surreptitiously, the leader of the RPF’s army—for the
training at Fort Leavenworth. When Rwigema claimed personal problems would prevent his attendance, President
Museveni decided Kagame would go instead.
21
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame. The officers’ desertions were not without consequence. Soon after learning
of the invasion, the NRA contacted Rwigema over radio and informed him that “he and his forces are considered
deserters and will be arrested if they attempt to retreat back to Uganda.” The day after the invasion, the NRA had
arrested more than 100 Rwandans who had abandoned their NRA units and were caught on the way to join Rwigema.
Cable from Robert Gribbin to US Secretary of State (3 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “NRA General leads Tutsi invasion”).
Fourteen NRA roadblocks went up from Kampala to Mbarara to prevent more Rwandans from reaching the border.
FRANÇOIS MISSER, VERS UN NOUVEAU RWANDA? [TOWARD A NEW RWANDA?] 21 (1995). To avoid being detected at
the roadblocks, Richard Sezibera, a medical doctor, had to travel through Uganda on the floor of a lorry bed, concealed
by coffee sacks, along with 14 other Rwandans who did not receive a bathroom break for the 11-hour duration of the
ride. Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera.
22
Ogenga Otunnu, An Historical Analysis of the Invasion by the Rwanda Patriotic Army, in THE PATH OF A GENOCIDE
44 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke eds. 1999).
23
LA COMMISSION DE RECHERCHE SUR LES ARCHIVES FRANÇAISES RELATIVES AU RWANDA ET AU GENOCIDE DES
TUTSI, LA FRANCE, LE RWANDA ET LE GENOCIDE DES TUTSI (1990-1994) [FRANCE, RWANDA AND THE TUTSI
GENOCIDE (1990-1994)] (26 Mar. 2021) [hereinafter Duclert Commission Report] 42 (quoting ADIPLO,
20200018AC/3. TD Kigali 487, 1 Oct. 1990).
24
Duclert Commission Report 42 (quoting ADIPLO, 20200018AC/3. TD Kigali 487, 1 Oct. 1990).
25
Duclert Commission Report 42-43 (quoting ADIPLO, 20200018AC/3. TD Kigali 487, 1 Oct. 1990).
26
See HERMAN J. COHEN, INTERVENING IN AFRICA 163-64 (2000); see also Letter from Aloys Uwimana to Rwandan
Minister of Foreign Affairs (27 Sept. 1990) (Subject: “Visite Presidentielle”).
27
HERMAN J. COHEN, INTERVENING IN AFRICA 163-64 (2000).
28
HERMAN J. COHEN, INTERVENING IN AFRICA 164 (2000).
29
HERMAN J. COHEN, INTERVENING IN AFRICA 164 (2000) (describing Habyarimana as “incredulous”).
30
Memorandum de Cooperation Militaire Franco-Rwandaise (31 May 1990) (unsigned Rwandan memorandum
prepared in anticipation of an upcoming meeting with the French Military Cooperation Mission and summarizing
French technical assistance, training, and material assistance).
31
Duclert Commission Report 43 (quoting ADIPLO, 20200018AC/3. TD Kigali 490, 2 Oct. 1990. Situation as of
October 2, 1990 at 11:00 a.m.).
32
Duclert Commission Report 43 (quoting ADIPLO, 20200018AC/3. TD Kigali 490, 2 Oct. 1990. Situation as of
October 2, 1990 at 11:00 a.m.).
33
See Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 110, 112 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Page | 26
Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
34
Le President Habyarimana commence lundi une visite officielle en France [President Habyarimana begins official
visit to France on Monday], AFP, 31 Mar. 1990.
35
Memorandum from Claude Arnaud to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du president du Rwanda
(lundi 2 avril)”); see MIP Tome I 21-23 (providing details about French cooperation in Rwanda before the war).
France’s support, both moral and financial, mattered greatly to the Habyarimana regime in the years before the war.
World coffee prices had collapsed in the mid-1980s, as did prices for tin, which put an end to mining in Rwanda. By
the late 1980s, Rwanda was more than ever reliant on foreign aid, even as it was forced to compete for an ever-smaller
share of international assistance. See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 84 (1995).
36
See Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (26 May 1990) (Subject: “Rapport de mission
consécutif à Vos visites officielle et privée en France du 2 au 9 avril 1990”); Memorandum from Alphonse
Mpatswenumugabo to Juvénal Habyarimana (1 Apr. 1990) (Subject: “Programme detaille de sejour en France du
president de la republique Rwandaise”). Monetary figures in this report are provided in French francs and US dollars.
As necessary, amounts have been converted to US dollars using the online historical currency converter at
https://fxtop.com/en/historical-currency-converter.php. Amounts have not been adjusted for inflation.
37
See Memorandum from Claude Arnaud to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du president du
Rwanda (lundi 2 avril)”). Habyarimana had been agitating for a plane to replace his old Caravelle jet aircraft, naming
it as his “main request” when he met with Mitterrand in Dakar. Id.; see also Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu
to Juvénal Habyarimana (2 June 1989). Bizimungu attached a draft letter for Habyarimana to send to Mitterrand “as
a follow-up to the tête-à-tête you had on 25 May 1989 in Dakar, on the sidelines of the Third Summit of the
Francophonie.” Bizimungu drafted the letter to “stress[] the excellence and solidity of the friendly relations maintained
by our two peoples, and tactfully leads to the promises made by the French Head of State during the aforementioned
meeting, particularly with regard to the replacement of the Impala Caravelle by a new aircraft.”
38
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (23 May 1990) (Subject: “Votre entretien en têteà-tête avec le Président François Mitterrand au Palais de l’Élysée le 2 avril 1990”). In his memorandum, Bizimungu
continued to flatter Habyarimana, writing: “And, indeed, and [this is] rare, the French President made a point of telling
You, during the discussion, that he was aware of the seriousness with which Rwanda manages public affairs and that
he personally appreciates You very much as a politician. A statement of this nature from the mouth of Mitterrand
testifies unequivocally that he had been briefed on Rwanda and its President and that he had not allowed himself to
be intoxicated by the negative literature about our country concocted by certain Ministry of Cooperation officials.”
39
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 100-01 n.15 (1995) (“The Africa Unit (Cellule
Africaine) is part of the French presidential office which benefits from a high degree of independence where decisionmaking in Africa is concerned. It is under the direct control of the President himself. Its existence, an oddity in
administrative terms, is a reflection of the very peculiar status Africa enjoys in the French political landscape.”).
40
See FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 186-94 (1989); Jean-Pierre Bat, Les Diamants (de
Bokassa) sont éternels. Pré carré et guerre fraîche: la fabrique de la Françafrique [Diamonds (from Bokassa) Are
Forever. Pré Carré and the Guerre Fraîche: The Fabric of Françafrique], in AFRIQUE CONTEMPORAINE 142 (2013).
41
FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 188 (1989).
42
JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 155 (1989); see JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ
[WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 159 (2001) (noting that when Admiral Jacques Lanxade, Mitterrand’s
chief military advisor at the start of the war in Rwanda in 1990, “was first assigned to the Élysée in 1989, the Africa
Cell was the one in charge of [Africa] policy”). The Ministry of Cooperation did not play the significant role it was
supposed to: it was a “technical ministry,” as “the African policy was done at the Élysée.” François Garnier, Entretien
avec l’Amiral Jacques Lanxade [Interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade], in LA NUIT RWANDAISE 81, 92 (Nov.
2015).
43
JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 155 (1989).
44
See JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MITTERRAND, MÉMOIRE MEURTRIE [BITTER MEMORIES] 23, 52, 56 (2001).
45
See L.V., Jean-Christophe, un conseiller sulfureux [Jean-Christophe, a Nefarious Advisor], LE PARISIEN, 2 Dec.
2000; Guy Penne, le ‘Foccart de Gauche,’ [Guy Penne, The ‘Foccart of the Left’], AFRIQUE CONTEMPORAINE (last
visited 25 Feb. 2021).
Page | 27
Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
46
See Karl Laske, ‘Papamadit’, VRP Africain du président [‘Daddy Told Me,’ the President’s Traveling Salesman in
Africa], LIBÉRATION, 23 Dec. 2000; FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 188 (1989) (describing
Foccart as a “kingmaker”).
47
Karl Laske, ‘Papamadit’, VRP Africain du président [‘Daddy Told Me,’ the President’s Traveling Salesman in
Africa], LIBÉRATION, 23 Dec. 2000.
48
FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 203 (1989).
49
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 100 (1995). Prunier was in Jean-Christophe
Mitterrand’s office that day to offer advice on international affairs. The two men were discussing Sudanese affairs
when Habyarimana called. See JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS
[FRENCH POLITICS, SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 62 (2014).
50
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 100 (1995).
51
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 100-01 (1995).
52
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 101 (1995).
53
François Mitterrand, Présence française et abandon, in POLITIQUE ÉTRANGÈRE 706-09 (1957); see also Tony
Chafer, French African Policy: Towards Change, in AFRICAN AFFAIRS 40 (Jan. 1992).
54
JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 123-24 (1989) (including chart detailing French military interventions
in 13 different African countries between 1959 and 1986).
55
Le Dispositif français de “dissuasion” se met en place rapidement Jaguar et Mirage F-1 ont atterri à N'Djamena
[The French Deterrence Strategy is Rapidly Put in Place, Jaguar and Mirage F-1 Landed in N’Djamena], LE MONDE,
19 Feb. 1986; PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 491 (2013).
56
Jean De La Guérivière, 200 paras français au Togo à la demande de M. Eyadema [200 French Paras in Togo,
Answering a Request from Mr. Eyadema], LE MONDE, 27 Sept. 1986; JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 136
(1989).
57
JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 136 (1989).
58
Christian Hoche, Le Testament africain de François Mitterrand [African Testimony of François Mitterrand],
L’EXPRESS, 10 Nov. 1994; see also PIERRE FAVIER & MICHEL MARTIN-ROLAND, LA DÉCENNIE MITTERRAND: LES
RUPTURES (1981-1984) [THE MITTERRAND DECADE. THE BREAKS (1981-1984] 426-27 (1990); Philippe Marchesin,
Mitterrand l’africain [Mitterrand the African], in POLITIQUE AFRICAINE 5, 9 (June 1995).
59
Philippe Marchesin, Mitterrand l’africain [Mitterrand the African], in POLITIQUE AFRICAINE 5, 9 (June 1995).
60
Daniel Bourmaud, France in Africa Politics and French Foreign Policy, in A JOURNAL OF OPINION 58, 60 (1995).
61
Daniel Bourmaud, France in Africa Politics and French Foreign Policy, in A JOURNAL OF OPINION 58, 60 (1995).
Daniel Bourmaud, France in Africa Politics and French Foreign Policy, in A JOURNAL OF OPINION 58, 60 (1995).
62
63
Daniel Bourmaud, France in Africa Politics and French Foreign Policy, in A JOURNAL OF OPINION 58, 60-61 (1995)
(noting that “because it allowed France to preserve the appearance of a great power, Africa assured the very survival
of France”); see also Tony Chafer, French African Policy: Towards Change, in AFRICAN AFFAIRS 40 n.10 (Jan. 1992)
(citing Michel Aurillac, the French minister of cooperation from 1986-88).
64
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 149 (2013). Mitterrand
would describe his tenure as the head of this Ministry as “the major experience of his political life, which has
determined its evolution.” 1946-1957: Le Plus jeune des ministres de la IVe Republique [1946-1957: The Youngest
Minister of the Fifth Republic], INSTITUT FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND (last visited on 24 Nov. 2020).
65
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 150 (2013).
66
See RONALD TIERSKY, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND: A VERY FRENCH PRESIDENT 91-92 (2000).
67
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 151 (2013).
68
François Mitterrand, Présence française et abandon [French Presence and Abandonment] in POLITIQUE ÉTRANGÈRE
706-09 (1957); see also Tony Chafer, French African Policy: Towards Change, in AFRICAN AFFAIRS 40 (Jan. 1992).
69
FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, AUX FRONTIÈRES DE L’UNION FRANÇAISE [AT THE BOUNDARIES OF THE FRENCH UNION]
39 (1953).
Page | 28
Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
70
FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, AUX FRONTIÈRES DE L’UNION FRANÇAISE [AT THE BOUNDARIES OF THE FRENCH UNION]
39 (1953).
71
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 170-75 (2013).
72
François Mitterrand, Allocution sur la Toussaint sanglante [Commentary on the Toussaint Sanglante] (7 Nov.
1954); PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 174-75 (2013).
73
Deux Articles de Mm. F. Mauriac et C. Bourdet sur les méthodes policières en Algérie [Two Articles of F. Mauriac
and C. Bourdet on Police Methods in Algeria], LE MONDE, 15 Jan. 1955.
74
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 183-84 (2013).
75
Emmanuel Berretta, François Mitterrand, un guillotineur en Algérie [François Mitterrand, a Guillotiner in
Algeria], LE POINT, 4 Nov. 2010. President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that the declassification of secret
archives more than 50 years old would be accelerated, a move that will facilitate access to documents related to the
Algerian War. Constant Méheut, France Eases Access, a Little, to Its Secrets, N.Y. TIMES, 9 March 2021.
76
See JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 105-07 (1989); PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE
MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 197-98 (2013).
FOR INTRIGUE:
THE
77
See Tony Chafer, French African Policy: Towards Change, in AFRICAN AFFAIRS 44 (Jan. 1992). See also FRANCIS
TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 95 (1989) (explaining that France “wished to avoid at all costs a
repetition of the dreadful colonial wars [it] had experienced in Indochina and [was] experiencing in Algeria”).
78
FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 96-98 (1989); see also Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de
la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981] 12 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université
Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
79
See FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 96 (1989); BRUNO CHARBONNEAU, FRANCE AND THE
NEW IMPERIALISM 53 (2008). As discussed in the next section, France signed a series of cooperation agreements with
Rwanda in the early 1960s. Those agreements were followed by a technical military assistance agreement in 1975.
80
See David Servenay, Les Accords secrets avec l’Afrique: encore d'époque? [Secret Agreements with Africa: Another
Era?], L’OBSERVATEUR, 2 Nov. 2016; Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981
[France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981] 12 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
81
ANTOINE GLASER & SMITH STEPHEN, L’AFRIQUE SANS AFRICAINS [AFRICA WITHOUT AFRICANS] 117 (1994); see
also David Servenay, Les Accords secrets avec l'Afrique: encore d'époque? [Secret Agreements with Africa: Another
Era?], L’OBSERVATEUR, 2 Nov. 2016.
82
Guy Martin, Continuity and Change in Franco-African Relations, in JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES 10
(Mar. 1995). In 1991, 20 percent of French imports from Africa were agricultural and 45 percent were raw energy and
fuel products. France’s heavy reliance on raw materials rather than finished goods deprived erstwhile African
manufacturers of opportunities to develop. This imbalance created an unhealthy reliance on France for such goods.
83
Yves Lacoste, La Question postcoloniale [The Postcolonial Question], in HERODOTE 10 (2006); Jean-Pierre Bat,
Le Rôle de la France après les indépendances: Jacques Foccart et la pax gallica [Role of France After the
Independences: Jacques Foccart and the Pax Gallica], in AFRIQUE CONTEMPORAINE 43 (2010); Elise Lambert,
Pourquoi la France a-t-elle du mal à regarder son histoire coloniale en face? [Why Does France Struggle to Face its
Colonial Past?], FRANCEINFO, 13 Oct. 2020 (interview with Christelle Taraud); FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA,
FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 97 (1989).
84
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981]
13 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
85
FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 98 (1989).
86
FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 98 (1989).
87
STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 24 (2008).
88
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 17 (2016); STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 24
(2008).
89
Rwanda: A Brief History of the Country, UNITED NATIONS (last visited 25 Feb. 2021).
Page | 29
Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
90
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981]
5, 26-27 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) (citing French cable dated 24 Nov. 1961).
91
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981]
21, 27 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
92
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981]
20 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
93
ANTOINE-THEOPHILE NYETERA, THE RWANDA CONFLICT FROM 1990 TO 1994 165-66 (2000).
94
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 37 (2016); Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France
au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981] 20 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I
Panthéon-Sorbonne).
95
See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 26-27 (1995); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 21-23 (2016). While the distinctions among Rwanda’s three main identity groups—
Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa—long predate the colonial era, the resentments that would come to define ethnic relations in
Rwanda in the 20th century were not always so pernicious. As historian Jean-Paul Kimonyo has explained, the three
groups were, at one time, a single cultural entity with a common language and religion, living intermingled within the
same territory overseen by a single monarch, which at the time was of Tutsi lineage. Relations among the groups could
be tense. Id. at 9, 13. However, as Prunier, the French historian, observed, “there is no trace in [Rwanda’s] precolonial
history of systematic violence between Tutsi and Hutu as such.” GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY
OF A GENOCIDE 39 (1995). Even with Tutsi holding the principal positions of power, most Tutsi lived under similar
conditions as Hutu. See LAURIEN UWIZEYIMANA, OCTOBRE ET NOVEMBRE 1990 LE FRONT PATRIOTIQUE RWANDAIS À
L’ASSAUT DU MUTARA [OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER 1990, THE RWANDAN PATRIOTIC FRONT] 7 (Sept. 1992); GÉRARD
PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 39 (1995) (explaining that average family income was
similar between Tutsi and Hutu, but that Twa families, on the other hand, earned roughly a third of the average Tutsi
or Hutu family). Rwanda’s German rulers, after first setting foot in Rwanda in the early 1890s, encouraged the
monarchy to centralize its authority, thereby simplifying Germany’s control over Rwanda’s complex local governance
system and ethnic makeup. Id. at 2, 9, 25. Their justification had an unequivocally racist component. As Kimonyo
summarized, “the colonialists identified Tutsis as the superior race, born to rule over the Hutu, who in turn were
destined to be servants, whereas the Twa were relegated to the less than human.” JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S
POPULAR GENOCIDE 19 (2016). Belgium, in turn, deepened colonial reliance on the Tutsi elite to exert control. See
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 25-26 (1995); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S
POPULAR GENOCIDE 33 (2016). Anthropologist and international development scholar Lyndsay McLean Hilker has
written, “[T]he history of ethnic identification in Rwanda is complex and contested. While the labels ‘Hutu,’ ‘Tutsi’
and ‘Twa’ existed prior to the colonial period… it is broadly agreed that the differences between these groups were
racialised, accentuated and institutionalised under Belgian colonial rule.” LYNDSAY MCLEAN HILKER, THE ROLE OF
EDUCATION IN DRIVING CONFLICT AND BUILDING PEACE: BACKGROUND PAPER PREPARED FOR UNESCO FOR THE
EFA GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT 2011 4-5 (2010) (emphasis in original) (internal citations omitted). In 1933—nine
years before the Nazis required Jews in Belgium to affix yellow stars to their clothing to mark them for future
deportation and extermination—Belgium introduced ethnic identity cards to Rwanda. The cards officially and
permanently characterized individual Rwandans according to how the Belgians perceived their ethnicity. STEPHEN
KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 26 (2008).
96
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 25-30 (2016).
97
See ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 21-22 (2019); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 29
(2016).
98
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 29 (2016).
99
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 29 (2016).
100
See FIDH Report 5-6 (1993); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 30 (2016); GÉRARD PRUNIER,
THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 47 (1995).
101
See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY
RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 31 (2016).
OF A
GENOCIDE 48-49 (1995); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
102
U.N. Trusteeship Council, Visiting Mission to Trust Territories in East Africa, 1960, REPORT ON RUANDA-URUNDI,
T/1538, 82 (3 June 1960) (“According to the information received, there are about 200 dead. The actual figure is
surely much higher, for the people, when they can, prefer to carry off their dead and burry them silently.”).
103
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 31 (2016).
104
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 31 (2016); LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 17
(2nd ed. 2009).
105
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 17 (2nd ed. 2009).
106
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 31 (2016).
107
UN GAOR, 15th Sess., 1137th mgt., UN Doc. A/C.4/SR.1137, 265 (11 Apr. 1961) (“Mr. Koscziusko-Morizet
(France) said that his delegation had no direct or indirect interest in the question of Ruanda-Urundi…. France, which
itself followed a policy of decolonization, hoped that a like policy, bringing with it peace, prosperity and reconciliation,
would prevail in Ruanda-Urundi.”)
108
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 19, 26-27 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); see JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 32-33 (2016).
109
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 27 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
110
Olivier Thimonier, Aux sources de la coopération franco-rwandaise, in GOLIAS MAGAZINE no. 101, 14, 16
(Mar./Apr. 2005) (citing French cable from Oct. 1961).
111
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 48 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
112
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 32-34 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
113
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 104-05 (1995).
114
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 104-05 (1995).
115
Lieutenant Winston Spencer-Churchill, The Fashoda Incident, in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 736-43 (Dec.
1898).
116
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 105 (1995). The confrontation in Fashoda
occurred amid the “scramble for Africa,” in which both countries were vying for control of disputed territories in
Africa. Decades after the standoff, the French force’s unconditional withdrawal from Fashoda, in the face of Britain’s
vastly larger military expedition, remained a bitter memory, emblematic of “British brutality and injustice.” P. M. H.
BELL, FRANCE AND BRITAIN 1900-1940: ENTENTE AND ESTRANGEMENT 3, 9-10 (1996).
117
Olivier Thimonier, Aux sources de la coopération franco-rwandaise [The Origins of Franco-Rwandan
cooperation], in GOLIAS MAGAZINE no. 101, 14, 16 (Mar./Apr. 2005) (citing French cable from Oct. 1961).
118
Olivier Thimonier, Aux sources de la coopération franco-rwandaise [The Origins of Franco-Rwandan
cooperation], in GOLIAS MAGAZINE no. 101, 14, 16 (Mar./Apr. 2005) (citing French cable from Oct. 1961).
119
Olivier Thimonier, Aux sources de la coopération franco-rwandaise [The Origins of Franco-Rwandan
cooperation], in GOLIAS MAGAZINE no. 101, 14, 16 (Mar./Apr. 2005) (citing French cable from Oct. 1961).
120
Friendship and Cooperation Agreement, Fr. – Rw., 20 Oct. 1962.
121
Friendship and Cooperation Agreement, Fr. – Rw., 20 Oct. 1962; Agreement on cultural and technical cooperation
between the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Republic of France, Rw. – Fr., 20 Oct. 1962; Radio
Cooperation Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Government of the French
Republic, Fr. – Rw., 20 Oct. 1962.
122
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 48 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
123
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 48 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
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Chapter I
124
BAUDOUIN PATERNOSTRE DE LA MAIRIEU, VIE DE KAYIBANDA
KAYIBANDA, FIRST PRESIDENT OF RWANDA], 44, 54, 63, 74-75 (1994).
1959 – September 1990
PREMIER PRESIDENT DU
RWANDA [LIFE
OF
125
Const. of the Rwandese Republic art. 5 (24 Nov. 1962); Mel McNulty, France’s Role in Rwanda and External
Military Intervention: A Double Discrediting in INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 43 n.10 (1997) (noting that French
“has been an official language of Rwanda since independence”).
126
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 32 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
127
NICOLE EVEN, ARCHIVES DE CHARLES DE GAULLE, PRESIDENT DE LA REPUBLIQUE (1959-1969) 104, 148, 340, 408,
(2012) (containing entries of President Kayiibanda visits in France, including, for example, at 104, “Déjeuner en
l’honneur de Grégoire Kayibanda, président du Rwanda, 17 octobre 1962”); see also Olivier Thimonier, La Politique
de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981] 29, 73 (2001) (Master’s thesis,
Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne). Kayibanda was quoted as saying, after meeting President de Gaulle in 1962:
“I knew of General de Gaulle’s desire to see the countries he led to independence fully enjoy it by helping them
develop their natural resources. I can now see that this concern also extends to countries which were not under French
guardianship.” MIP Tome I 18-19.
128
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 73 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
129
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 123 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
130
Question on the Future of Ruanda-Urundi: Interim Report of the United Nations Commission for Ruanda-Urundi,
A/4706 (8 Mar. 1961).
131
Question on the Future of Ruanda-Urundi: Interim Report of the United Nations Commission for Ruanda-Urundi,
A/4706 (8 Mar. 1961).
132
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 34 (2016); GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS:
HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 51-53 (1995); Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981
[France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to 1981] (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) 45 (2001); see
also MIP Tome I 19 (stating that the Rwandan government accredited the first French ambassador to Kigali in May
1964).
133
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 56 (1995); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S
POPULAR GENOCIDE 34 (2016).
134
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 34 (2016).
135
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 56 (1995); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S
POPULAR GENOCIDE 34-35 (2016); DAVID RAWSON, PRELUDE TO GENOCIDE 9 (2018); US Central Intelligence
Agency, Current Intelligence Weekly Summary 10 (14 Feb. 1964) (“President Kayibanda . . . threatens to exterminate
the 250,000 or so [Tutsi] who remain in Rwanda if the attacks continue.”).
136
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 34 (2016).
137
A.J., De sanglants incidents auraient lieu au Ruanda [Bloody Incidents Taking Place in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 17
Jan. 1964.
138
Trois mille Tutsis au Congo-Léopoldville lanceraient une attaque suicide contre le Ruanda [Three Thousand Tutsi
Refugees in Congo-Leopoldville Said to Have Launched a “Suicide Attack” Against Rwanda], LE MONDE, 6 Feb.
1964.
139
See Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 38, 43 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) (noting that Belgium had been
“responsible for setting up a Rwandan army by training officers and non-commissioned officers”).
140
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 74 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) (citing French cables dated 13 Sept. 1965
and 12 Feb. 1966).
141
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 74 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) (citing French cables dated 13 Sept. 1965
and 12 Feb. 1966).
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
142
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 74 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne). A challenge in understanding what
Habyarimana was looking for is that there is not a universally accepted definition or description of “gendarmerie.”
Usually, however, when contrasting gendarmerie to a police force, the focus is on the gendarmerie’s military
characteristics and reporting structure as opposed to a civilian police force. See DEREK LUTTERBECK, THE PARADOX
OF GENDARMERIES: BETWEEN EXPANSION, DEMILITARIZATION AND DISSOLUTION 7 (2013) (SSR Paper 8, Center for
the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces).
143
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 75 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
144
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 46 (2019).
145
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 43-44 (2019).
146
STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 37 (2008).
147
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 18, 28, 44 (2019). Habyarimana hailed from Rambura Parish, outside the
northwest town of Gisenyi, which sits atop Lake Kivu on the border with Goma in what was then Zaire. His wife,
Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana, was from the neighboring commune of Giciye in a region called Bushiru.
148
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 44-46 (2019).
149
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 47-48 (2019).
150
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 44-48 (2019).
151
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 48 (2019); see also JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE
38-39 (2016).
152
See Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 91-92 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
153
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 91 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
154
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 92 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
155
Juvénal Habyarimana, Message Addressed to the Nation by the High Command of the National Guard (5 July
1973) (read on Radio Rwanda by Commander Théoneste Lizinde) in JAMES K. GASANA, RWANDA: DU PARTI-ETAT À
L’ETAT-GARNISON 24-25 (2002).
156
See Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 112 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 6263 (2019).
157
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 28 (2019); GABRIEL PÉRIÈS & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE:
ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN
GENOCIDE] 235 (2007) (noting “Agathe Kanziga originating from an important family of Bushiru”).
158
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 28 (2019); Belgian Senate Report 143 (1997) (“President Habyarimana was
born in the commune of Karago, but he . . . did not come from a [well respected] lineage.”).
159
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 28 (2019).
160
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 15-16, 28-29 (2019).
161
Faustin Twagiramungu (former president of the opposition MDR political party and prime minister of Rwanda
from July 1994 to August 1995) has claimed to have coined the term Akazu, meaning “‘small hut,’ which in our
tradition comprises members of three nuclear families.” Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-9841-T, Witness Statement of Faustin Twagiramungu 7 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 13 Apr. 2000). The term “Akazu”
has generated some small amount of controversy. For example, Christophe Mfizi has objected to its use as
underinclusive, since the so-called Akazu included more than just the Habyarimanas’ family members and, instead,
extended to close non-familial associates. CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RESEAU ZERO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DEMOCRATIE ET
DE LA REPUBLIQUE AU RWANDA (1975-1994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE
REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (1975-1994)] 76 (Mar. 2006). Mfizi opted for the term “Zero Network,” which he introduced
Page | 33
Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
in his 1992 open letter on the corruption surrounding Habyarimana. Letter from Christophe Mfizi to Juvénal
Habyarimana (15 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “‘Le Reseau Zero’: Lettre Ouverte a Monsieur le President du Mouvement
Republicain National Pour la Democratie et le Developpement (M.R.N.D.)”). This Report uses the term Akazu
primarily because it is more commonly used than “Zero Network,” but it is used in the same sense as Mfizi’s Zero
Network, that is, to denote “a hard core of people who have methodically pervaded the entire national life at the
political, military, financial, agricultural, scientific, scholarly, family and even religious levels.” Letter from
Christophe Mfizi to Juvénal Habyarimana (15 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “‘Le Reseau Zero’: Lettre Ouverte a Monsieur le
President du Mouvement Republicain National Pour la Democratie et le Developpement (M.R.N.D.)”).
162
See Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 112, 117 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD
62 (2019).
163
See Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 112, 117 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD
62 (2019) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
164
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 102 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
165
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 112 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
166
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 112 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
167
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 112 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
168
ANDRE GUICHAOUA, RWANDA, DE LA GUERRE AU GENOCIDE: LES POLITIQUES CRIMINELLES AU RWANDA (19901994) [FROM WAR TO GENOCIDE: CRIMINAL POLITICS IN RWANDA, 1990-1994] (2010) 49 (2010); ANDREW WALLIS,
STEPP’D IN BLOOD 60, 63 (2019).
169
Prosecutor v. Protais Zigiranyirazo, Case No. ICTR-01-73-T, Judgement, ¶ 5 (Int’l crim. Trib. For Rwanda 18 Dec.
2008); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 63 (2019).
170
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 63 (2019).
171
Prosecutor v. Protais Zigiranyirazo, Case No. ICTR-01-73-T, Judgement, ¶¶ 97, 99-100, 103 (Int’l crim. Trib. For
Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008); See Prosecutor v. Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Statement of Omar Serushago
(Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 June 2003) (statement made on 16, 17, 19 June 2001; admitted into evidence on 25
June 1993); Letter from Christophe Mfizi to Juvénal Habyarimana (15 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “‘Le Reseau Zero’: Lettre
Ouverte a Monsieur le President du Mouvement Republicain National Pour la Democratie et le Developpement
(M.R.N.D.)”).
172
CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RESEAU ZERO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DEMOCRATIE ET DE LA REPUBLIQUE AU RWANDA (19751994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (1975-1994)] 4 (Mar.
2006).
173
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 64, 88 (2019).
174
SHYIRAMBERE J. BARAHINYURA, 1973-1988 LE GÉNÉRAL-MAJOR HABYARIMANA: QUINZE ANS DE TYRANNIE ET DE
TARTUFERIE AU RWANDA [1973-1988 MAJOR-GENERAL HABYARIMANA: FIFTEEN YEARS OF TYRANNY AND
HYPOCRISY IN RWANDA] 84-85 (1988) (reproducing Birara’s letter). Other relatives of Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana
who received positions in her husband’s government included Elie Sagatwa, who became Habyarimana’s private
secretary, controlling “the [regime’s] intelligence network and access to Habyarimana”; and Seraphin Rwabukumba,
who was placed in charge of foreign currency transactions at the National Bank of Rwanda. See ANDREW WALLIS,
STEPP’D IN BLOOD 29, 104-05 (2019); HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 40 (1999) (referring
to Sagatwa as the President’s private secretary); LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 43 (2000).
175
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 53, 87 (2019).
176
See SHYIRAMBERE J. BARAHINYURA, 1973-1988 LE GÉNÉRAL-MAJOR HABYARIMANA: QUINZE ANS DE TYRANNIE
ET DE TARTUFERIE AU RWANDA [1973-1988 MAJOR-GENERAL HABYARIMANA: FIFTEEN YEARS OF TYRANNY AND
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
HYPOCRISY IN RWANDA] 84-85 (1988) (reproducing Birara’s letter); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 105, 137
(2019).
177
SHYIRAMBERE J. BARAHINYURA, 1973-1988 LE GÉNÉRAL-MAJOR HABYARIMANA: QUINZE ANS DE TYRANNIE ET DE
TARTUFERIE AU RWANDA [1973-1988 MAJOR-GENERAL HABYARIMANA: FIFTEEN YEARS OF TYRANNY AND
HYPOCRISY IN RWANDA] 84-85 (1988) (reproducing Birara’s letter).
178
See ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 29, 149-50 (2019); see also LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 62
(2000).
179
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 29-30 (2019).
180
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 68 (2nd ed. 2009).
181
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS
[A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 146 (2007); LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE
BETRAYED 27 (2nd ed. 2009).
182
See THÉONESTE LIZINDE, DES MASSACRES CYCLIQUES AU RWANDA ET DE LA POLITIQUE DU BOUC ÉMISSAIRE
[CYCLICAL MASSACRES IN RWANDA AND THE POLICY OF SCAPEGOATING] 37-39 (23 May 1991); GABRIEL PÉRIÈS &
DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [A DARK WAR:
INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 146 (2007); see also LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE
BETRAYED 27 (2nd ed. 2009) (noting that “a secret purge took place of some fifty-five members of the former
government, including ministers, deputies, Army officers and state functionaries, all of them imprisoned in the
notorious Ruhengeri prison and starved to death”); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 46 (2016).
183
Memorandum from Théoneste Lizinde to François Mitterrand et al. (8 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwandaise,
Rwandais”). Lizinde wrote this a few weeks after being freed during an RPA raid on the Ruhengeri prison where he
had been held as a political prisoner for more than 10 years. Lizinde, who was writing to various world leaders claiming
to reveal secrets about the Rwandan leaders, wrote that Serubuga had admitted to him that he had ordered the
“liquidation” of prisoners.
184
GABRIEL PERIES & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUETE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GENOCIDE RWANDAIS
[A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 146 (2007).
185
SHYIRAMBERE JEAN BARAHINYURA, 1973-1988 LE MAJOR-GENERAL HABYARIMANA: QUINZE ANS DE TYRANNIE ET
DE TARTUFERIE AU RWANDA [1973-1988 MAJOR-GENERAL HABYARIMANA: FIFTEEN YEARS OF TYRANNY AND
HYPOCRISY IN RWANDA] 151 (1988); THEONESTE LIZINDE, LA DECOUVERTE DE KALINGA OU LA FIN D’UN MYTHE [THE
DISCOVERY OF KALINGA OR THE END OF A MYTH] 194 (1979).
186
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 27 (2nd ed. 2009) (“Kayibanda . . . and his wife were put under house
arrest and were also starved to death.”); SHYIRAMBERE JEAN BARAHINYURA, 1973-1988 LE MAJOR-GENERAL
HABYARIMANA: QUINZE ANS DE TYRANNIE ET DE TARTUFERIE AU RWANDA [1973-1988 MAJOR-GENERAL
HABYARIMANA: FIFTEEN YEARS OF TYRANNY AND HYPOCRISY IN RWANDA] 153-55 (1988) (quoting Lizinde as
stating, “General Habyarimana gave me the order to go and kill him . . . . Kayibanda did not die a natural death, it was
on the orders of Habyarimana that he was assassinated”) (“Kayibanda was hammered to death by Colonel Sagatwa”
after being poisoned); CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RESEAU ZERO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DÉMOCRATIE ET DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE AU
RWANDA (1975-1994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (19751994)] 26 (Mar. 2006) (noting Kayibanda’s “suspicious death”).
187
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 46 (2016).
188
See ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 74-75 (2019) (citing interview with Antoine Mugesera in February 2013);
Interview by LFM with Emile Rwamasirabo.
189
190
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 46 (2016).
THE GOVERNMENT OF RWANDA, RWANDA, FACE
REFUGEES] 4 (26 Aug. 1986).
AU PROBLÈME DES RÉFUGIÉS
[THE PROBLEM
OF
RWANDAN
191
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech in Semuto, Uganda (approximately 1987). He said essentially the same when in
Canada between 3 and 5 September 1987. See Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to Rwandans Living in Canada
(Sept.1987).
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192
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech in Semuto, Uganda (approximately 1987). He said essentially the same when in
Canada between 3 and 5 September 1987. See Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to Rwandans Living in Canada
(Sept.1987).
193
Kanyarengwe is one of two figures involved in the 1973 coup d’état (the other is Théoneste Lizinde) who by 1980
were accused of denouncing the Habyarimana regime’s “politico-financial ‘shenanigans.’” Kanyarengwe fled to
Tanzania, and Linzinde was thrown into prison in Ruhengeri. The RPF and history caught up with both of them:
Kanyarengwe was appointed chairman of the RPF in December 1990, and Lizinde was freed from prison by RPF
troops in January 1991 and joined their ranks. MONIQUE MAS, PARIS-KIGALI 1990-1994: LUNETTES COLONIALES,
POLITIQUES DU SABRE ET ONCTION HUMANITAIRE POUR UN GENOCIDE EN AFRIQUE [PARIS-KIGALI 1990-1994:
COLONIAL LENSES, POLITICS OF THE SWORD AND HUMANITARIAN UNCTION FOR A GENOCIDE IN AFRICA] 21, 46
(1999). Kanyarengwe and Lizinde are discussed further in Chapter 3.
194
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 46 (2016).
195
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 17 (2019);
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 47-50, 277-78 (2016).
196
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 47-50 (2016).
197
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 47-48 (2016); see Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades
in Exile: Rwandan Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE STUDIES 261 (1996).
198
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 48 (2016).
199
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 48 (2016).
200
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 48-50 (2016).
201
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 48-50 (2016).
202
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 125 (2016).
203
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 51 (2016).
204
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 51 (2016).
205
Jean-Pierre Chrétien, Un “nazisme tropical” au Rwanda? Image ou logique d’un genocide [A “Tropical Nazism”
in Rwanda? Image or Reason of a Genocide] in VINGTIÈME SIÈCLE, 132 (Oct.-Dec. 1995) (noting that under the
Rwandan constitution enacted in 1978, Rwandans by birth were members of the MRND); Rwanda Juvénal
Habyarimana, “l'homme viril” [Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana, “The Strong Man”], LE MONDE, 8 Apr. 1994
(explaining that the MRND was the only political party authorized in the country until 1991); NATIONAL CONGRESS
OF MRND, STATUTES OF THE MOUVEMENT REVOLUTIONNAIRE NATIONAL POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT [STATUTES OF
THE NATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT FOR DEVELOPMENT] 2 (29 June 1983).
206
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 78-79 (2019).
207
See Presentation of President Habyarimana’s Candidature to the “Africa Prize for Leadership 1990” 16 (1 Jan.
1990); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 53 (2019) (noting Habyarimana’s promotion to Major-General in April
1973); see, also, e.g., Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (18
Mar. 1982).
208
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 27-28 (2nd ed. 2009).
209
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 27-28 (2nd ed. 2009).
210
Les Derniers moments [The Final Moments], LE MONDE, 4 Apr. 1974.
211
Les Derniers moments [The Final Moments], LE MONDE, 4 Apr. 1974.
212
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 62 (2019).
213
Accord particulier d’assistance militaire du 18 juillet 1975 [Military Technical Assistance Agreement of 18 July
1975], Fr. – Rw., 18 July 1975.
214
Accord particulier d’assistance militaire du 18 juillet 1975 [Military Technical Assistance Agreement of 18 July
1975], Fr. – Rw., 18 July 1975 (“The Government of the French Republic shall place at the disposal of the Government
of the Republic of Rwanda French military personnel whose assistance is necessary for the organization and training
of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.”). “Technical cooperation” is one aspect of development aid supplied by one country
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
to another that refers to building skills and abilities aimed at strengthening the capacities of the local population (as
opposed to supplying physical infrastructure); OCDE, COOPÉRATION POUR LE DÉVELOPPEMENT: RAPPORT 2005
[DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION: 2005 REPORT] 121-144 (2006).
215
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 27-28 (2nd ed. 2009).
216
Special Agreement of Military Assistance, Fr. – Rw., 18 July 1975.
217
See MIP Tome I 29; BRUNO CHARBONNEAU, FRANCE AND THE NEW IMPERIALISM 126-27 (2008). For a discussion
of these amendments, see Chapters 3 and 5 of this report.
218
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 116 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
219
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 117 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
220
See JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 130 (1989).
221
JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 130 (1989).
222
JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 130 (1989).
223
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 119-20 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
224
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 119-20 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
225
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 114 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); see JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN
AFRICA 133 (1989); TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 167 (1989).
226
FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 150, 167 (1989).
227
Olivier Thimonier, La Politique de la France au Rwanda de 1960 à 1981 [France’s Policy in Rwanda: 1960 to
1981] 114 (2001) (Master’s thesis, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); see also FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA,
FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 165 (1989).
228
see FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 169 (1989).
229
see FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 169 (1989).
230
see FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 169 (1989).
231
François Mitterrand, Speech during the lunch offered by Juvénal Habyarimana in Kigali (7 Oct. 1982).
232
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara; see also RONALD TIERSKY, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND: A VERY FRENCH
PRESIDENT 118-20 (2000).
233
234
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
PARTI SOCIALISTE, PROJET SOCIALISTE: POUR
FRANCE] 357-59 (1980).
235
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
LA
FRANCE
DES
ANNEES 80 [SOCIALIST PROJECT: FOR 1980S
236
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara; see also Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades in Exile: Rwandan
Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE STUDIES 261 (1996).
237
See Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades in Exile: Rwandan Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE
STUDIES 261 (1996); Ogenga Otunnu, Rwandese Refugees and Immigrants in Uganda, in THE PATH OF A GENOCIDE
13-14, 17 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke eds. 1999).
238
See Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades in Exile: Rwandan Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE
STUDIES 261 (1996); Ogenga Otunnu, Rwandese Refugees and Immigrants in Uganda, in THE PATH OF A GENOCIDE
17-19 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke eds. 1999); see also AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, RWANDA: PROTECTING
THEIR RIGHTS: RWANDESE REFUGEES IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION 8 (2004).
239
Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “La cammunaute rwandaise en ouganda”).
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240
Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades in Exile: Rwandan Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE STUDIES
262-63 (1996).
241
Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades in Exile: Rwandan Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE STUDIES
262-63 (1996).
242
Rachel Van Der Meeren, Three Decades in Exile: Rwandan Refugees 1960-1990, in JOURNAL OF REFUGEE STUDIES
259, 265 (1996).
243
See Chris Maina Peter, Rights and Duties of Refugees under Municipal Law in Tanzania: Examining a Proposed
New Legislation, in JOURNAL OF AFRICAN LAW 86-87 (1997); AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, RWANDA: PROTECTING
THEIR RIGHTS: RWANDESE REFUGEES IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION 8, 171, 175 (2004).
244
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
245
Alan Cowell, Uganda is Evicting Thousands of Rwandans, N.Y. TIMES, 12 Oct. 1982; JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 52 (2016).
246
Roger Winter, Uganda—Creating a Refugee Crisis, in CULTURAL SURVIVAL (June 1983).
247
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 52 (2016); GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS:
HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 70 (1995); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO
RECONSTRUCTION 45 (2019).
248
PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 52 (2016).
249
See Roger Winter, Uganda—Creating a Refugee Crisis, in CULTURAL SURVIVAL (June 1983); Interview by LFM
with James Kabarebe.
250
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
251
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
252
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
253
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
254
Interview by LFM with Emile Rwamasirabo. Intego included Kayitesi Rusera and Immacule Nyirinkwaya, who
currently sit on the Rwandan Supreme Court, as well as Jose Kagabo, Kabatsi Bagirishya, Louis Bagirishya, and
Ignace Beraho, among others.
255
Interview by LFM with Emile Rwamasirabo.
256
Interview by LFM with Emile Rwamasirabo.
257
Interview by LFM with Emile Rwamasirabo.
258
See Frank Petiteville, Quatre décennias de “coopération franco-africaine”: usages et usure d’un clientélisme
[Four Decades of French African Policy: An Obsolete Clientelist Relationship], in ÉTUDES INTERNATIONALES 58485 (Nov. 1996).
259
Philippe Marchesin, Mitterrand l’Africain [Mitterrand the African], in POLITIQUE AFRICAINE 17 (June 1995).
260
See Frank Petiteville, Quatre décennias de “coopération franco-africaine”: usages et usure d’un clientélisme
[Four Decades of French African Policy: An Obsolete Clientelist Relationship], in ÉTUDES INTERNATIONALES 584586 (Nov. 1996); JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 202 (1989); see also GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA
CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 103 (1995) (defining “le pré carré” as “our own backyard”).
261
See Frank Petiteville, Quatre décennias de “coopération franco-africaine”: usages et usure d’un clientélisme
[Four Decades of French African Policy: An Obsolete Clientelist Relationship], in ÉTUDES INTERNATIONALES 584586 (Nov. 1996).
262
See Frank Petiteville, Quatre décennias de “coopération franco-africaine”: usages et usure d’un clientélisme
[Four Decades of French African Policy: An Obsolete Clientelist Relationship], in ÉTUDES INTERNATIONALES 586
(Nov. 1996); FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 200-01 (1989).
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Chapter I
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263
See JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 202-03 (1989) (referring to Cot’s “forced resignation”). Cot’s
resignation was on the evening of 7 December 1982. Julien Meimon, Se Découvrir Militant: le cabinet Cot à l'épreuve
de la Coopération (1981-1983) [Becoming an Activist: the Cot cabinet in the Face of Cooperation (1981-1983)], in
POLITIX 130 (2005); Frank Petiteville, Quatre décennias de “coopération franco-africaine”: usages et usure d’un
clientélisme [Four Decades of French African Policy: An Obsolete Clientelist Relationship], in ÉTUDES
INTERNATIONALES 585 (Nov. 1996); Philippe Marchesin, Mitterrand l’africain [Mitterrand the African], in POLITIQUE
AFRICAINE 18 (June 1995).
264
Philippe Marchesin, Mitterrand l’africain [Mitterrand the African], in POLITIQUE AFRICAINE 18 (June 1995).
265
See FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 200-01 (1989).
266
See FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 201 (1989).
267
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 491 (2013).
268
Duclert Commission Report 81.
269
See Duclert Commission Report 81-82; Mémorandum sur la coopération militaire franco-rwandaise 4 (March
1982).
270
Duclert Commission Report 83 (quoting ADIPLO, 184COOP/7. Note by Lieutenant General Gastaldi on military
cooperation, September 1989).
271
Memorandum from Guy Penne to François Mitterrand (11 June 1982) (Subject: “Entretien du President de la
Republique avec le President Habyarimana”).
272
François Mitterrand, Speech during the lunch offered by Juvénal Habyarimana in Kigali (7 Oct. 1982).
273
Déclaration de Monsieur François Mitterrand à l’aéroport de Kigali, 7 Oct. 1982.
274
Duclert Commission Report 84.
275
Duclert Commission Report 84.
276
François Mitterrand, Speech given following a luncheon hosted by Juvénal Habyarimana in Kigali (10 Dec. 1984).
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 491 (2013).
277
278
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 491 (2013).
279
See FRANCIS TERRY MCNAMARA, FRANCE IN BLACK AFRICA 206 (1989); PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE:
THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 491 (2013) (stating that Mitterrand’s support for Habré was intended
“to show France’s African allies that Paris could protect them”).
280
Tchad: l’ancien dictateur Hissène Habré condamné à la prison à vie [Chad: Former dictator Hissène Habré
sentenced to life in prison], LE PARISIEN, 30 May 2016.
281
MIP Audition of Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol. 1, 217.
282
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 511 (2019).
283
Philippe Marchesin, Mitterrand l’africain [Mitterrand the African], in POLITIQUE AFRICAINE 10-11 (June 1995);
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 512 (2013).
284
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 512 (2019).
285
François Mitterrand, Speech in François Mitterrand, Réflexions sur la politique extérieure de la France,
Introduction à vingt-cinq discours (1981-1985) [Thoughts on the Foreign Policy of France, Introduction to TwentyFive Speeches (1981-1985) (1986); Paul Chaput, François Mitterrand et l’Initiative de Défense Stratégique [François
Mitterrand and the Strategic Defense Initiative], INSTITUT FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, 5 Dec. 2011; PHILIP SHORT, A
TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 402 (2013).
286
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 396 (2013).
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 403 (2013) (emphasis
original).
288
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 400 (2013).
289
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 708-09 (2019).
287
290
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 708-09 (2019).
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Chapter I
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291
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 709 (2019). Védrine, it bears noting, has
been said to have held similarly negative views of the United States. He once remarked, during his tenure as
Mitterrand’s diplomatic advisor, that when the Americans are after something, “they’re terrifying, they behave like
door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen,” caring “as little about the effects their actions have on us as we would care
about the fallout our policies might have on Luxembourg.” PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE
LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 337 (2013).
292
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 492 (2013).
293
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 492 (2013).
294
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE: THE MULTIPLE LIVES OF FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 492 (2013).
295
See François Mitterrand, Opening Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (June 1990).
296
See François Mitterrand, Opening Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (June 1990);
French President Georges Pompidou hosted the first Franco-African Summit at the Élysée in 1973. His successor,
President Giscard d’Estaing, regularized the gatherings. See JOHN CHIPMAN, FRENCH POWER IN AFRICA 130 (1989);
Les 24 sommets France-Afrique (1973-1981) [The 24 France-Africa summits (1973-1981)], RFI, 28 May 2010.
297
MIP Tome I 35.
298
Memorandum from Claude Arnaud to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du President du
Rwanda (lundi 2 avril)”).
299
See Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (20 June 1990).
300
See Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (20 June 1990).
301
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (20 June 1990).
302
MIP Tome I 36 (“Faced with procrastination by Rwandan authorities and concerned about the stability of states
and regional security, France never made the decision to suspend all cooperation, or even to decrease the level of its
civil and military aid. Thus, President Juvénal Habyarimana was able to convince himself that ‘France . . . would be
behind him regardless of the situation, and he could do anything military and politically’ as Mr. Herman Cohen
assessed during his [MIP] hearing.”).
303
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU RWANDA (1990-1994) [FRANCE IN RWANDA (1990-1994)] 70-71 (2007).
304
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU RWANDA (1990-1994) [FRANCE IN RWANDA (1990-1994)] 71 (2007).
305
See Tony Chafer, French African Policy: Towards Change, in AFRICAN AFFAIRS 50 (Jan. 1992) (assessing, two
years after Mitterrand’s speech, that “[s]o far . . . it seems that little more than lip-service is being paid to the idea”
that democratic reforms would be a prerequisite for aid).
306
JEAN-MARC DE LA SABLIERE, DANS LES COULISSES DU MONDE [BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE WORLD STAGE] 78
(2013).
307
Guy Martin, Continuity and Change in Franco-African Relations, in JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES 15
(Mar. 1995).
308
Account taken from WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 176 – 185 (2006).
309
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 51-52 (2016).
310
Note sur l’évolution du problème des réfugiés rwandais, depuis la publication de la position du Comité Central du
MRND sur cette question [Note on the evolution of the Rwandan refugee problem since the publication of the position
of the MRND Central Committee on this issue] (undated) (summarizing the MRND’s position).
311
RANU, THE RESPONSE OF THE RWANDESE ALLIANCE FOR NATIONAL UNITY (R.A.N.U.) TO THE RECENT
STATEMENT OF THE COMITE CENTRAL DU MOUVEMENT REVOLUTIONNAIRE NATIONAL POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT
(M.R.N.D.) ON THE QUESTION OF REFUGEES 1 (1986) (summarizing the MRND’s position).
312
RANU, THE RESPONSE OF THE RWANDESE ALLIANCE FOR NATIONAL UNITY (R.A.N.U.) TO THE RECENT
STATEMENT OF THE COMITE CENTRAL DU MOUVEMENT REVOLUTIONNAIRE NATIONAL POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT
(M.R.N.D.) ON THE QUESTION OF REFUGEES 1, 9 (1986) (signed Alexis Mutsinzi, RANU Chairman); see also JEANPAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 71 (2019).
313
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 78-80 (2019).
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314
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 79-80 (2019).
315
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 79-80 (2019).
316
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 80-81 (2019).
317
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 82 (2019).
318
RPF, POLITICAL PROGRAMME (1987); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES
ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 82 (2019).
ON THE
319
ON THE
RPF, POLITICAL PROGRAMME (1987); JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES
ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 82 (2019).
320
See RPF, POLITICAL PROGRAMME (1987).
321
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 82 (2019).
322
See Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni; JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON
ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 45 (2019); US Central Intelligence Agency, Uganda Under a Museveni Regime
[redacted] (Feb. 1986).
THE
323
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 79-80 (2019).
324
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 81 (2019).
325
Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera.
326
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 45 (2019).
327
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni.
328
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
329
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
330
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
331
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
333
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
332
334
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
335
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 90 (1995).
336
See JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 37, 63, 69 (2016); BRUNO CHARBONNEAU, FRANCE
AND THE NEW IMPERIALISM 125 (2008); see also DALEEP SINGH, FRANCOPHONE AFRICA 1905-2005: A CENTURY OF
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CHANGE 97 (2008) (noting that arabica coffee “has been Rwanda’s main export crop since its
enforced plantation during the colonial period,” and that tea, the country’s second-most important crop, “accounts for
another 24 percent of export income”).
337
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 69 (2016).
338
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 69-71 (2016).
339
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY
RWANDA’S POPULAR GENOCIDE 72 (2016).
340
OF A
GENOCIDE 90 (1995). See also JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 97 (1995).
341
Cable from Georges Martres (12 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “visite officielle du President Habyarimana à Paris (2, 3 et
4 Avril 1990) – (2/2)”); see also Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject:
“Visite du President du Rwanda (lundi 2 avril)”); Martres became ambassador to Rwanda in September 1989. He
arrived with nearly two decades of prior experience working in France’s foreign colonies in West Africa, having
previously headed the French cooperation missions in Mali (1974), Niger (1978), and Senegal (1982-1985). See M.
Georges Martres nommé ambassadeur de France au Rwanda [Georges Martres Appointed French Ambassador to
Rwanda], AFP, 9 Sept. 1989.
342
Cable from Georges Martres (12 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “visite officielle du President Habyarimana à Paris (2, 3 et
4 Avril 1990) – (2/2)”).
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Chapter I
1959 – September 1990
343
See Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du President du
Rwanda (lundi 2 avril)”); Cable from Georges Martres (12 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “visite officielle du President
Habyarimana à Paris (2, 3 et 4 Avril 1990) – (2/2)”).
344
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du President du Rwanda
(lundi 2 avril)”).
345
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du President du Rwanda
(lundi 2 avril)”).
346
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1990) (Subject: “Visite du President du Rwanda
(lundi 2 avril)”).
347
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (23 May 1990) (Subject: “Votre entretien en têteà-tête avec le Président François Mitterrand au Palais de l’Élysée le 2 avril 1990”).
348
ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, REPORT TO THE HAUT COMMISSARIAT DES NATIONS UNIES POUR LES RÉFUGIÉS: LE PROBLÈME
DES RÉFUGIÉS RWANDAIS ET DES POPULATIONS BANYARWANDA DANS LA RÉGION DES GRANDS LACS AFRICAINS
[REPORT TO THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES: THE PROBLEM OF RWANDAN REFUGEES AND
BANYARWANDA POPULATIONS IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION OF AFRICA] 13 (May 1992) (“In August, a Manifesto
signed by 33 intellectuals demanded rapid democratization, and in September the Synthesis Commission was set up
to draw up a preliminary draft of the National Political Charter.”).
349
See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 91 (1995).
350
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 99 (1995).
351
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 87, 99 (1995); see also JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 77 (2019).
352
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 99 (1995); see also JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO,
TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 77 (2019) (“President Habyarimana was
aware of the RPF preparations for an invasion. He counted on French military support and opted for military
confrontation as a diversion from the intense domestic opposition that he was facing.”).
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CHAPTER II
October 1990
A. The RPF Launched Its Military Offensive into Rwanda on 1 October 1990. French Soldiers
Arrived Days Later.
A telegram arrived from Paris indicating that President Habyarimana was
asking for France’s military intervention: he feared he would be
overwhelmed by the RPF forces. Immediately, the [French] President asked
me to deploy a company in Rwanda.1
– Jacques Lanxade, Chief Military Advisor to the President
(1989 –1991), Chief of Defense Staff (1991 – 1995)
In late September 1990, Charles Kayonga, then a junior officer in Uganda’s National
Resistance Army (NRA), received a message from an RPF comrade: “Stay close, don’t go far.”2
Several days later, James Kabarebe, a 2nd lieutenant in the NRA, received one of his own: “Tonight,
we move.”3 Until the last days of September, only a handful of people—Fred Rwigema, Paul
Kagame, and a few other commanders—knew that the RPF military would cross into Rwanda on
1 October.4
Fred Rwigema led a convoy that departed Kampala on the night of 30 September.5 Five
hours later, it reached Mbarara, an hour and a half north of the border crossing with Rwanda at
Kagitumba.6 As the convoy approached the border, “there was excitement,” Kayonga recalled.7
“All those who had money were throwing it to people on the road because they would not need
Ugandan shilling—there was no return.”8 It was also the first time that the RPF’s army was going
to come together as a fighting force on the battlefield.
At the border, around mid-morning on 1 October, a “vanguard” consisting of 30 to 60 RPF
troops engaged and scattered a detachment of Rwandan government forces stationed on the
Rwandan side.9 The remainder of the convoy crossed into their homeland without resistance—for
now.10
The RPF battalions split up, taking different routes to a meeting point six miles into
Rwanda. Two battalions took a slightly longer but less-traveled gravel road, pushing past an
ambush and capturing weapons and vehicles in the process.11 The two battalions that took the
more-traveled direct route to Matimba encountered serious resistance, which claimed a
consequential casualty: Fred Rwigema.12 When the battalions converged at Matimba, the meeting
point, the commanders13—not wanting to destroy morale—said nothing about Rwigema’s death,
but also issued no new orders, as Rwigema’s “death deprived the RPA of a unified command, and
units fought on their own.”14 Even to the troops who would not learn of Rwigema’s death until
several weeks later, the disorientation was palpable.15
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Chapter II
October 1990
The Rwandan Armed Forces [FAR] ground troops were reinforced by “two French-built
Gazelle helicopters equipped with rockets.”16 A US cable, citing “French pilots,” reported that the
Gazelles were “perform[ing] well[,] firing 8 rockets against enemy positions.”17 A US Defense
Intelligence Brief would later note the “considerable effectiveness” of the Gazelle’s rocket attacks
on 3 October.”18 By the following morning, the FAR’s helicopters had destroyed, “a column of
ten trucks, including two carrying fuel” as well as the RPF army’s “main headquarters” near the
Ugandan border, according to a cable from Colonel René Galinié, the defense attaché in the French
embassy in Kigali.19
Col. Galinié’s cable that day, 3 October, predicted that President Habyarimana would “[i]n
all likelihood . . . address the French government today in order to obtain immediate aid in the
form of ammunition and equipment, as well as an intervention by French forces.”20 Mitterrand,
then aboard a French frigate in the Persian Gulf,21 would seem to have received the Rwandan
president’s message. As Mitterrand’s chief military advisor, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, later
recalled in his memoir, a telegram arrived from Paris on 3 October “indicating that President
Habyarimana was asking for France’s military intervention: he feared he would be overwhelmed
by the RPF forces.”22 Mitterrand did not hesitate. “Immediately,” Lanxade wrote, “the [French]
President asked me to deploy a company in Rwanda.”23
Lanxade has said that French Minister of Defense Jean-Pierre Chevènement—who would
soon resign in opposition to France’s participation in the Gulf War—“tried in vain to present some
objections” to the planned intervention in Rwanda and cautioned against measures that could be
viewed as “neocolonial.”24 However, Chevènement has said that, although he was also on the
frigate that day, the Élysée had not sought his opinion on whether to intervene in Rwanda—a
remarkable assertion, considering he was the French government’s defense minister at the time.25
Whether over Chevènement’s dissent or not, Lanxade on 4 October delivered the order to
the French Army état-major to launch Operation Noroît (“Northwest Wind”), resulting in the
immediate deployment of a company of 150 soldiers from the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment,26
stationed in the Central African Republic, to Kigali.27 French officials did not publicly
acknowledge that the Noroît deployment was a direct response to Habyarimana’s plea for military
assistance. Rather, they insisted—falsely—that Noroît’s sole mission was to protect the French
embassy and French nationals in Rwanda.28 It was an assertion that French officials would repeat
for more than three years, until the last Noroît troops were finally withdrawn in December 1993.
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Chapter II
October 1990
B. French Geopolitical Interests in Africa Motivated Mitterrand’s Military Support of the
Habyarimana Government. To Justify Pursuing Those Interests, French Officials Sought
to Delegitimize the RPF by Casting It As a Foreign Aggressor.
I think that Noroît was absolutely geopolitical.29
– Jacques Lanxade, Chief Military Advisor to the President
(1989 –1991), Chief of Defense Staff (1991 – 1995)
France will be in a better position to help Rwanda if it’s clearly
demonstrated to the international community that this is not a civil war.30
– George Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
Mitterrand had his reasons for wanting to defend the Habyarimana regime, of which one,
to be sure, was reassuring French allies in Africa. “If France hadn’t responded, it would have lost
the confidence of most African countries,” one French official—the minister for cooperation and
development at the time of the invasion—later explained to a French parliamentary mission that
was examining the French government’s conduct in Rwanda.31 There could be no doubt that other
African leaders—close allies of France, in many cases—would be eyeing developments in
Rwanda, perhaps fearing that an RPF victory would start a “chain reaction in the region.”32 A
demonstration of support for Habyarimana was a way for France to reassure those allies.
There was also the regional picture in East Africa to consider. Mitterrand had no desire to
see a reliable ally toppled—most especially by a rebel army formed in English-speaking Uganda.33
According to Admiral Jacques Lanxade, the French president’s chief military advisor, Mitterrand
“suspected that [East African destabilization] was secretly led by the Anglo-Americans. And so,
to [Mitterrand], we were in a situation in which France had to hold on to its position.”34
Mitterrand was fixated on Uganda in the early days of the war. According to his closest
advisor, Élysée Secretary-General Hubert Védrine, Mitterrand “would often talk about ‘the
Ugandans’” at meetings in Paris, in October 1990.35 A US cable that month observed, “The
Rwandans and the French are both virtually convinced of the complicity of the Ugandan
government in the incursion.”36 French cables and internal government memos in October 1990
often referred to the RPF army as the “Ugandan-Tutsi” forces, a phrasing that both painted the
government’s opponents, inaccurately, as foreign and defined them, crudely, by their assumed
ethnic identity.37
The RPF was never “Ugandan,” even after it convinced Uganda’s President, Yoweri
Museveni, to back its cause. Although the RPF incursion into Rwanda on 1 October 1990 had
surprised and angered Museveni, he soon came to offer his assistance, gradually increasing his
support over time.38 After learning of Fred Rwigema’s death, Paul Kagame raced to the front from
the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.39 He
found RPF forces in “chaos” and set about reorganizing the army he now led.40 This effort required
Museveni’s cooperation to allow his troops to cross back and forth across the border between
Rwanda and Uganda and to permit RPF supporters in Uganda to bring food and other supplies to
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Chapter II
October 1990
soldiers at the front.41 “Museveni was angry with me,” Kagame recalled.42 “He told me that we
had done this [operation] without his knowledge and now he was being blamed by the whole
world.”43 Kagame apologized “for the mess,” but, he implored the Ugandan President, “I need
your help.”44 Museveni agreed not to interfere with RPF activities but this did not mean he would
furnish material support, at least, not at first.45
Kagame returned to Museveni, however, “more than a dozen times” between 1990 and
1994.46 “Sometimes we would ask for something, and he would refuse and would say we had
caused him problems. I took every insult and said, ‘thank you,’ but can you please help; we need
this or that.”47 Over time, Museveni agreed to provide weapons and ammunition.48 RPF troops had
left Uganda on 1 October 1990 with arms taken from the NRA without Museveni’s knowledge or
approval, but this did not mean they relied on Ugandan arms exclusively.49 RPF soldiers also
captured equipment on the battlefield and purchased arms and equipment in other countries that
Museveni allowed to be routed through Uganda.50 “It was a hybrid,” Kagame explained.51 “Partly
we relied on ourselves for arms and other things necessary, and then also some supplies from
Uganda.”52 Sometimes individual NRA commanders approved arms and equipment transfers with
clearance from higher authorities, and sometimes without clearance.53
“But for fighting,” Kagame clarified, “we fought our own war.”54 By this he meant that the
RPF’s army was made up of Rwandan refugees, not only from Uganda, but from Burundi, Zaire,
and countries further afield. Between October 1990 and the Genocide, French officials may not
have known the extent, nature, and level of RPF support from allies within Uganda, but there was
never any compelling reason to doubt that it was the RPF military, and the RPF military alone,
that planned the war effort and saw it through. The RPF was what it claimed to be: a movement of
Rwandan refugees, resorting to war to force the end of Habyarimana’s autocratic reign. Indeed,
the French National Assembly’s 1998 information mission (Mission d’information parlemantaire,
or MIP), which conducted hearings on France’s involvement in Rwanda and issued a voluminous
report on the subject, would later acknowledge: “[I]t appears that the return of the armed refugees
of October 1 was in fact an incident in the Rwandan civil war rather than in a two-state conflict.”55
To be sure, French officials knew exactly what the RPF was and why it had resorted to
war.56 In a 10 October 1990 diplomatic cable, for example, France’s ambassador in Kampala
provided historical context for the conflict.57 Noting the influx of Tutsi refugees to Uganda fleeing
Rwanda since 1959, he explained, “Rwandan refugees . . . believe that their country - they often
say their homeland - is Rwanda and not Uganda.”58 And, in a cable the next day detailing his
deputy’s meeting with RPF representatives, the same ambassador relayed that the RPF’s objective
was not merely to secure a right of return for their fellow refugees, but “to liberate the country
from the dictatorship of Habyarimana.”59 The RPF representatives had explained that, while they
were open to participating in international talks, those talks “should not only deal with the question
of refugees. [They] should also address all the political problems of today’s Rwanda,” including
“widespread corruption, embezzlement of international aid, [and] political assassinations.”60
(Notably, the RPF representatives said the RPF would find it acceptable—at that time—for France
to keep a limited number of troops in Rwanda “for purely humanitarian reasons.” They cautioned,
though, that RPF leaders “would not understand” if France—“the homeland of human rights”—
retained a large military contingent in the country, “thus allowing Habyarimana to emulate
Pinochet by locking up his opponents in a stadium and by ordering summary executions.”61)
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Chapter II
October 1990
Yet in spite of everything they knew about the RPF, French officials preferred to conflate
the RPF with the country (Uganda) from which the organization’s military leaders had launched
their attack.62 It was only a few months earlier, at the June 1990 Franco-African Summit in La
Baule, that Mitterrand had pledged to uphold certain restrictions on French involvement in African
conflicts.63 “I repeat the principle of French policy: every time a foreign menace appears that could
undermine your independence, France will be by your side,” he told the assembled African leaders
at the summit. But, he said: “[O]ur own role, as a foreign country, even though we are friends, is
not to intervene in domestic conflicts. In these cases, France, with the country’s leaders, will ensure
the protection of its citizens, its nationals, but does not intend to arbitrate conflicts.”64 What was
critical, he was saying, was whether the threat was external (in which case, French intervention
would be permissible) or internal (in which case, it would not be). The 1 October 1990 attack, as
Mitterrand would later acknowledge (albeit privately), did not fit neatly into either category: it had
been planned abroad, but by Rwandan refugees with grievances against Habyarimana’s anti-Tutsi
policies.65 Publicly acknowledging these complexities, however, could invite only criticism.
Mitterrand could more easily justify French intervention on the regime’s behalf—while projecting
the appearance of a consistent Africa intervention policy—if the French public perceived the threat
as foreign.
Senior Rwandan officials, viewing the support of France and other allies as critical to the
regime’s prospects for victory, had similarly strong incentives to mischaracterize the RPF attack
as a foreign invasion and were determined to ensure that the West would perceive it as such. On 9
October 1990, just over a week into the war, two advisors warned President Habyarimana that the
use of the term “rebel forces” for the RPF was allowing certain international media to portray the
conflict as an internal “rebellion” instead of, in their words, an “external aggression.”66 They
alerted Habyarimana to the “terrible danger” such a portrayal presented by threatening to “alienate
us from international public opinion.”67
The weeks that followed would see a concerted effort by French and Rwandan officials
alike to reframe public perceptions of the RPF and the war. Newly uncovered evidence, disclosed
in the March 2021 Duclert Commission Report, shows the Élysée played a significant role in this
campaign, with Mitterrand’s deputy military advisor, Colonel Jean-Pierre Huchon, emerging as a
key operator. Huchon, the Commission found, regularly sent confidential handwritten faxes to
Colonel Galinié, the French defense attaché in Kigali, often marking his communications “to be
destroyed after reading.”68 In one such fax, on 24 October 1990, Huchon called on the French
embassy to help repair the Rwandan government’s public image by, among other things,
persuading the French-speaking media in Rwanda “that this is not a home-grown rebellion, it is
foreign aggression.”69 “Make a real effort to show evidence of the Ugandan origin of the attack,”
Huchon urged.70 Huchon later wrote in a follow-up: “We absolutely need to explain to
international opinion that this is indeed an offensive by the Ugandan army (deserters or not) and
not a domestic rebellion. Otherwise we will . . . be forced, politically speaking, to align ourselves
with the Belgians.”71 (By this, Huchon presumably meant that France would be compelled to
withdraw its troops from Rwanda, as Belgium was preparing to do.)
France’s ambassador in Kigali, Georges Martres, voiced similar concerns in a 24 October
1990 cable, remarking with some frustration that Radio France International, in particular, and
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Chapter II
October 1990
Western media generally, “continue[d] to be manipulated by a Rwandan diaspora dominated by
Tutsi.”72 The same day, in a meeting with Habyarimana, Martres advised the Rwandan president
to “highlight in the media”73 the RPF’s military attack as an external aggression, explaining that
“France will be in a better position to help Rwanda if it’s clearly demonstrated to the international
community that this is not a civil war.”74
Portraying a link between Uganda and the RPF would remain an ongoing concern between
French and Rwandan officials in the first months of the war. When, in December 1990, two French
officers visited Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, the FAR’s military intelligence chief, they
reiterated the stronger position Rwanda would enjoy with the international community if it could
provide “irrefutable proof” of Uganda’s involvement.75 Nsengiyumva, a hardliner who would later
serve 15 years in prison for his role in the slaughter of civilians at the outset of the Genocide,76
turned to FAR commanders in Byumba (central Rwanda) and Mutara (northeast Rwanda) with
instructions to send captured RPF soldiers to Kigali for interrogation “on the role of the Ugandan
government and of its armed forces.”77
The Rwandan government proceeded with its planned “media offensive,” an effort to offset
what a senior French advisor would later credit as an “obvious advantage” that the RPF held at the
start of hostilities.78 Nsengiyumva recommended that the media offensive involve Ferdinand
Nahimana, the newly appointed head of ORINFOR, the Rwandan government’s media and
propaganda ministry, whose “dynamism” Nsengiyumva praised.79 An international tribunal would
later convict and sentence Nahimana to life in prison (reduced on appeal to 30 years) for inciting
violence during the Genocide through his stewardship of the infamous hate media radio station
Radio-Television Milles Collines (RTLM).80
C. In Support of Its Desire to Intervene, the French Government Also Mischaracterized the
RPF As a Tutsi Movement Intent on Dominating the Hutu Majority, Though the RPF Was
a Pluralistic Group with Broad Political Aims.
In 1990, when Kagame planned his invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, we
saw it as an excluded minority trying to seize power. It’s not French
diplomatic logic to accept these sorts of methods, regardless of their
arguments’ merits.81
– Georges Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
French leaders starting with President Mitterrand also sought to justify French intervention
by demonizing the RPF as representatives of an ethnic minority trying to re-establish a Tutsi
monarchy over the Hutu majority—a highly inflammatory notion in Rwanda, and a highly
erroneous one.
As discussed in Chapter 1 of this Report, the RPF had gone to pains not only to minimize
the importance of ethnicity within its ranks, but to promulgate a pluralist platform.82 Democracy
figured prominently in the RPF platform, second in its list of principles only to “Consolidation of
National Unity” (meaning the rejection of ethnic politics and divisionism).83 Democracy for the
RPF meant the following:
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Chapter II
October 1990
- “popular democracy where the population is organized in small cells . . . where national
affairs will be discussed.”
- a democratically elected national assembly, “free of prejudice by the government or any
other political tendency, manipulated or riggings as is now done in Rwanda.”
- a democracy “within the broader context of liberation of our people from all forms of
social, economic and political oppression.”84
Charles Kayonga, the RPF battalion commander, explained:
The RPF/RPA never saw itself as a Tutsi movement or a Tutsi army. That mindset
was the biggest problem in Rwanda, which is why the RPF was focused on
principles of unity and togetherness. In refugee camps, there were Hutu who had
fled in the 1950’s, and when the RPF started, there were Hutu who joined. The RPF
did not identify people based on ethnicity. The RPF went out of its way to recruit
people from different walks of life. There were Hutu in the RPF, and there were
Hutus in the RPA [the RPF’s army].85
RPF representatives, as noted above, had explained much of this to staff at the French
embassy in Kampala, in mid-October 1990.86 An “open letter” that same month from the Rwandan
community in Switzerland, addressed to Mitterrand and other world leaders, said much the same:
We would like to point out that the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which is fighting the
bloodthirsty regime in Kigali, has no objective other than the restoration of human
rights and democracy in Rwanda. It aims only to establish political pluralism [that]
excludes any reference to ethnic and regional character, which are the pillars of the
Habyarimana system.87
Western news outlets depicted the RPF in similar terms.88 French officials, though, seemed
uninterested in exploring, even with skepticism, the possibility that the RPF meant what it said.
President Mitterrand mischaracterized the conflict using reductive ethnic terms that
rationalized his desire to reassure African partners by supporting Habyarimana: in his false logic,
the RPF represented the minority Tutsi; Habyarimana represented the majority Hutu; all Rwandans
would vote according to their ethnicity; the minority Tutsi, who were in pursuit of full political
control, could not offer stable democratic rule over the Hutu; and, therefore, France should support
Habyarimana against the RPF. As Ambassador Martres would recall in a 2014 interview with the
French newspaper L’Indépendant: “In 1990, when Kagame planned his invasion of Rwanda from
Uganda, we saw it as an excluded minority trying to seize power. It’s not French diplomatic logic
to accept these sorts of methods, regardless of their arguments’ merits.”89
The Habyarimana regime encouraged the effort. Védrine would recall in 2014, “On the
government side, they kept on telling us that they represented the immense majority, so why should
there be a political compromise with a small minority?”90 On 10 October 1990, Le Monde reported
on the Rwandan foreign minister’s claim that the RPF had included in its ranks “a Hutu opponent,
Pasteur Bizimungu” only “to show that it was not an ethnic party,” not because it stood for
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Chapter II
October 1990
pluralism.91 The foreign minister went on to accuse the RPF of “wanting to establish a feudal-like
‘minority-rule’ regime.”92 Le Monde remarked skeptically that the minister “could not have
alluded more clearly to the Tutsi monarchy, which reigned until 1959, the year of the Hutu revolt,”
but President Mitterrand internalized the idea that the RPF was after Tutsi political domination,
when remarking at a 17 October 1990 meeting with French ministers that “there is no value to a
revolt by a small Tutsi minority that prevails over the majority of the Hutu population.”93
Mitterrand would cling to this rationale for years, even repeating it as his primary motivation for
sending troops to Rwanda during the Genocide in Operation Turquoise.94
Freddy Mutanguha95
Freddy was 18 years old at the time of the Genocide. He lived with his parents and four
sisters in Kibuye.
My strongest memory of the Genocide, the one that hurts me most, is the
night of 13 April 1994. That was the day they came to kill my family. I was away
from the house, in hiding, but Mum came to find me. She knew I was very hungry
because by then nobody could cook any food. There was practically nothing left in
the house. By then people had been bribing the hungry Interahamwe . . . with
food—to let them live a few days longer. At home the only thing we had left was
beans. Mum knew I didnʹt like beans and so she brought me some vegetables and
passion fruit. She told me, “I couldnʹt find anything for you to eat . . . The people I
told you about—the ones who don’t like us—took everything away from me. I don’t
even have anything to give my child.” Then she added, “Try and eat this, it will be
OK. Be strong.” Today, passion fruit still reminds me of that last meal my Mum
gave me.
I also remember that before she was killed, Mum told me I had to be strong.
She said that if my sister and I survived, I had to be a man. Those are the two things
still on my heart to this day.
I was there when the perpetrators came to kill my family. They came saying,
“We’re tired, we’ll take these two fat kids [Freddy and his sister] later.” So they took
the younger ones; my sister Rosette and I were left behind. We saw them being
taken with our own eyes, and they were killed not far away. We couldn’t see it
happening, but we could hear them screaming . . . . They took Mum far away to kill
her. Later at night, I went with another boy to find her body. We rushed there and
buried her. We simply covered her with soil. So I saw my Mum’s body, but not the
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Chapter II
October 1990
rest of the family. I just heard my sisters being killed. I didn’t see my father killed—
people told me about it later.
I know some of the killers very well. One of them wanted to rape my sister,
but he didnʹt succeed. I know the people who took them away. They were our
neighbours, among them a man called Benoit who had been our neighbour for years
and owned a shop nearby. He was Mumʹs friend, and he even used to lend her
money for me to go to school. They got on very well. He was one of the leaders of
the group that took them. And there was another young man called Kanani—Mum
had been his teacher in primary school. Some people inside the compound tried to
fight off the killers, but it was Kanani who held on to Mum when they took her out
of the house. Later, he let go of Mumʹs hand, and she ran away. But they found her
again, and she was beaten to death with clubs.
...
It’s hard to describe how I felt during the Genocide. I was so afraid. I used
to imagine a machete cutting my neck all the time—or my neck on the ground. All
the time I was hiding in the roof of someone’s house, my heart was full of fear. They
sometimes used to let me sit near the fire because I was freezing in the cold. I used
to hide behind a big sieve (used for sorghum) so that whoever was making the fire
couldn’t see me. I was so afraid and lost all hope of survival. But then I reached a
point where I wasn’t scared any more. I was no longer afraid of death. Death or life,
it meant nothing anymore.
Sometimes my sister and I would walk along the road. We walked a lot but
we weren’t afraid of passing the roadblocks. There was only once we were
frightened. That was in a place called Mwendo in Kibuye. They took us up to the
roadblock and asked us if we were Tutsis. We told them we werenʹt, but they looked
at us and said we must be Tutsis because of our soft hair. They told us to stop lying
to them. They asked me to dig my own grave and I refused. They said the
burgomaster would judge our case and took us to the commune. We ended up
spending a night in a cell because the burgomaster was drunk. But I wasn’t afraid.
I had lost my fear after my parents were murdered and after all the terrible things
I had experienced. Only my sister Rosette and I survived.
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D. French Cooperants Had Been Training the Rwandan Army Units That Stopped the RPF’s
Military Progress at the Start of the War and the French Government Sent More Troops
Immediately Thereafter.
[T]hese units, backed by France, gave Rwanda the October victory.96
– Laurent Serubuga, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army
(1973 – 1992, 1994)
The “small force of armed helicopters” whose “rocket attacks against rebel
concentrations”97 helped stop the RPF’s army at Gabiro was reinforcing the Rwandan Army’s
para-commando battalion, one of three elite FAR units that had been receiving French training and
support prior to the war.98 The other two elite FAR units were an aviation squadron (escadrille de
l’aviation)99 and the reconnaissance (“recce”) battalion.100 Both deployed against the RPF troops
in the first days of the war.101
On 1 October 1990, there were 17 French military cooperants training the Rwandan
military under the auspices of the French Military Assistance Mission (MAM).102 For instance,
five French soldiers trained the aviation squadron’s flight engineers and ground mechanics, and
shared their expertise in the Nord 2501, a military transport aircraft.103 The FAR needed a lot of
training. “[T]he chief challenges encountered this year,” a French officer had written in a January
1990 report, “result from a lack of motivation and taking care, from a lack of interest, from
secretiveness and from Rwandan soldiers’ outsized pride, and the economic crisis is making their
behavior even worse.”104
The outbreak of war did little to disrupt the MAM cooperants’ efforts to professionalize
Rwanda’s military. A report by Col. Galinié, the French defense attaché in Rwanda, explained that
even after he ordered the cooperants to temporarily withdraw from the Rwandan military camps
where some of them had been living, French cooperation with the FAR “never ceased.”105 If
anything, he said, the withdrawal only strengthened France’s assistance, as French cooperants
devoted themselves to gathering intelligence.106 This, Galinié wrote, “allowed us to advise the
[Rwandan] officers in a discreet manner without ill-intentioned observers being able to claim that
we were participating in military actions.”107
Galinié delivered much of this advice personally. According to the Duclert Commission
Report, Galinié was “[the] de facto military and political advisor to the Rwandan President,” with
whom he met four times in October 1990, “and was also the main contact for the Rwandan Minister
of Defense and the various staffs.”108 In addition to advising Habyarimana, Galinié provided both
advice and, as he put it, “encouragement” to FAR operational commanders.109 He did this while,
at the same time, pressing French military and Ministry of Cooperation officials to supply the FAR
with needed ammunition.110
Other French military cooperants maintained contacts with their Rwandan colleagues
throughout the opening weeks of the war, even after France temporarily called its officers back to
the embassy to help prepare plans to evacuate French nationals.111 During this time, armed
helicopters from the FAR’s aviation squadron, which continued to receive advice from French
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October 1990
military cooperants,112 made six “shooting passes” per day over enemy positions—a “very high
rate,” in the estimation of one French officer who worked with the unit.113 The helicopters fired
640 rockets in the three weeks after the invasion.114
In his MIP testimony, the head of the French Military Cooperation Mission, General Jean
Varret, confirmed that there were times, during the early phase of the war, when French instructorpilots were on board the Gazelle helicopters alongside their Rwandan pupils.115 French officials
have maintained that the French instructors “were not at the controls of the helicopter to fire”116—
they were onboard only “to provide training in flying and shooting.”117
Efforts to improve the reconnaissance battalion and para-commando battalion continued as
well,118 to considerable effect on the war effort. The impact was such that, in December 1990, Col.
Laurent Serubuga, the FAR deputy chief of staff, declared to the head of the French Military
Cooperation Mission that “these units, backed by France, gave Rwanda the October victory.”119
Serubuga’s plea for French support of these units to continue was successful. In fact, in the three
and a half years leading up to the Genocide, the French government expanded its support.120
The 4 October launch of Operation Noroît, in which approximately 150 French troops from
a French base in the Central African Republic landed in Kigali, joining the French advisers already
in Rwanda, was followed the next day by the arrival of approximately 500 Belgian paratroopers.121
Both Belgium and France characterized their missions as the protection of their nationals in
Rwanda.122 As Admiral Lanxade wrote in a 2001 memoir, however, “This increase in our forces
was also a clear signal sent to the RPF and, indirectly, to Uganda.”123 In other words, these troops
also served as a deterrent of the RPF military advance.
Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko sent an entire battalion plus his personal protection
force, the French-trained and well-equipped Division Speciale Presidentielle (“DSP”), which
helped drive the RPF troops from Gabiro.124 Reports placed the number of Zairean forces in
Rwanda variously at 1,000, 1,200, and 1,500,125 some of which reportedly participated in
“wantonly killing, looting, and raping,” including a massacre of 200 civilians in Gabiro.126
Habyarimana soon asked Zaire to remove its troops from Rwanda.127
France’s involvement had other consequences. When, for example, French and Belgian
soldiers secured the Kigali airport, ostensibly to facilitate the evacuation of their nationals, their
actions doubled as a favor to the Rwandan government; as the RPF’s James Kabarebe explained,
the decision “freed up the FAR to go to the front. The French action said, ‘we are securing Kigali
for you; you can go to the front.’”128 Col. Galinié—France’s military attaché, the head of the
Military Assistance Mission to Rwanda, and the commander of Noroît—confirmed as much in an
11 October telegram: “If the French and Belgian forces had not relieved [the FAR] by taking over
missions and terrain (protecting the airport and the roads leading to it) and if the Zairean forces
had not participated directly in the conflict, they would have, at best, shuttered themselves in Kigali
in conditions and with a less-than-effective plan.”129
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October 1990
E. In the Early Months of the Conflict, the Élysée Extended Military Support to the
Habyarimana Regime Despite Human Rights Abuses, Anti-Tutsi Massacres, and
Reservations among French Officials.
Of course, we fear it could get worse and turn into an ethnic disaster.130
– Georges Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
Shortly after the 1 October RPF military attack, the international press began to report that
the Rwandan government was sponsoring massacres of civilians. On 10 October 1990, Reuters
reported that approximately 400 Rwandan civilians fled to Uganda after Rwandan troops and antiTutsi militias attacked peasants accused of supporting the RPF outside the northeast Rwandan
town of Nyakatale in the Mutara region near the border with Uganda: “Soldiers shot peasants and
burned down huts while Hutus hacked women and children with machetes Monday in attacks on
at least nine settlements inhabited mainly by the minority Tutsi tribe in northeast Rwanda, the
villagers said.”131 One witness recounted the kind of scene that would become all too familiar
four years later: “One woman died after Hutus hacked off her arms and forced them into her
mouth…. Her two small children, aged one and five were then slaughtered.”132 Another witness
said, “The whole place was littered with bodies, it seems more people died than escaped.”133 The
fleeing villagers said that hundreds of villagers had been killed.134
Around the same time, other massacres took place around Nyagatare, also in the Mutara
region. As one surviving farmer said, “They began shooting our cattle, then they ordered us
outside. We thought we were going to be released, but they formed us in a line and then began
shooting people.”135 The farmer “displayed festering gunshot wounds on his leg and back,”
Reuters reported at the time. “He said he had fallen behind a bush where he remained for three
days, too scared to move.”136
The violence was not limited to the northeastern border region. On the other side of the
country, in and around Kibilira, roughly 175 miles southwest of where the RPF troops had
attacked, local authorities directed the massacre of more than 300 mostly Tutsi civilians, and the
burning of more than 400 mostly Tutsi homes.137
Kigali issued feeble denials. Rwandan Foreign Minister Casimir Bizimungu said the
murdered civilians were actually rebels in civilian clothing “because ‘that’s their guerilla
tactics.’”138 A public report issued in March 1993 by an independent consortium of human rights
groups led by the Paris-based Federation Internationale des Droits de L’Homme (International
Federation of Human Rights) (“FIDH”), would set the historical record straight:
According to [a FAR] officer…and verified by testimony of displaced persons in
camps in the region of Ngarama and others who had fled to Kigali, several
companies of the Rwandan army were ordered to clear the zone between Nyagatare
and Kagitumba [both in the northeast] of all humans and animals. The massacre
was carried out on October 8, 1990 by helicopters and soldiers on the ground. . . .
Between 500 and 1,000 persons were killed. The Rwandan Red Cross buried the
dead.139
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Chapter II
October 1990
The FIDH also concluded that beginning on 10 October, local Rwandan officials led
massacres in Kibilira and Satinsyi in western Rwanda, killing over 300 (mainly Tutsi), burning
over 400 homes, and destroying and pillaging “nearly all the farm animals, food reserves and
household furnishings” in 48 hours, confirming the broad outlines of the contemporaneous
Reuters report.140
French officials knew about the violence, and, what is more, they knew that President
Habyarimana’s party, the MRND, had, in some cases at least, played a role in it. A 13 October
1990 cable by Col. Galinié reported: “Organized by the MRND, Hutu farmers have intensified
their search for suspicious Tutsis in the foothills; massacres are reported in the region of Kibilira,
20 kilometers northwest of Gitarama. As previously indicated, the risk that this conflict will
spread seems to be becoming a reality.”141
Ambassador Martres was equally aware of the massacres and mass arrests.142 Martres, who
had been on vacation when the war began,143 returning to Kigali on 5 October, was on good terms
with Habyarimana and was a regular lunch guest at the president’s home.144 The two men were
close enough, in fact, that members of the diplomatic corps liked to joke that Martres acted less
like France’s ambassador to Rwanda than like Habyarimana’s ambassador to France.145 “Without
questioning the diplomatic talents of my colleague,” Belgian Ambassador Johan Swinnen would
later say, “I found it somewhat shameful, a bit humiliating and even dangerous for Martres to be
the object of the perception that he was a tool of the other country.”146
On 7 October, Martres told Reuters that the situation outside the capital was very confused,
and conceded that “there had been what he termed slip-ups because the troops were nervous. ‘Of
course, we fear it could get worse and turn into an ethnic disaster,’ [Martres] said.”147 By 15
October 1990, Martres acknowledged that the Tutsi population in Rwanda feared a genocide.
“[The Tutsi population] is still counting on a military victory,” Martres wrote in a memo titled
“analysis of the situation by the Tutsi population.” “A military victory,” he continued, “even a
partial one, would allow them to escape genocide.”148 Martres did not dismiss the possibility of
genocide. Indeed, he would later tell the French Parliamentary Information Mission (MIP) that as
early as October 1990, it was possible to see the calamity ahead:
The genocide was foreseeable as early as then [October 1990], even if we couldn’t
imagine its magnitude and atrociousness. Some Hutus had in fact had the audacity
to refer to it. Colonel Laurent Serubuga, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Rwandan
army, was pleased with the RPF attack, which would serve to justify the massacre
of Tutsis.149
The massacres took place in rural areas, where they were harder to see for the media and
the international community. In Kigali itself, late in the night of 4 October, the Rwandan
government staged a fake attack, supposedly by RPF troops, on the capital, and used it as a pretext
to arrest “several thousand people as suspected rebels or sympathizers;” many were tortured.150
While most were Tutsi or Habyarimana’s political opponents,151 the regime’s indiscriminate sweep
even took in Ambassador Martres’ driver Jean Rwabahizi, who had worked at the embassy for
more than two decades. Rwabahizi was arrested ostensibly for being out after curfew. He said he
was first taken to Kanombe Military Camp and beaten so severely that when the responsible
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Chapter II
October 1990
officers transferred him to Nyamirambo stadium with numerous other arrestees, the authorities
there did not want to accept Rwabahizi because they did not take “corpses.”152 Ambassador
Martres’ wife was ultimately able to get him released.153 To this day, Rwabahizi does not know
how she learned of his arrest.154 According to Rwabahizi, he told Ambassador Martres what
happened to him and also about the plight of the abuse of others who were held at Nyamirambo
stadium.155 It took Rwabahizi two months to recover from his injuries and return to driving
Ambassador Martres.156
The mass arrests made news in Europe. On 9 October 1990, Le Monde reported that the
Rwandan government’s “hunt for arms and rebels in the working-class Nyamirambo neighborhood
is reportedly brutal. In the stadium next door, the army has rounded up several hundred
‘suspects.’”157 Within days, Le Monde revised its estimate of the number arrested from “a few
hundred” to 3,000, as did publications in the United States.158 A 12 October cable signed by Col.
Galinié and sent by Ambassador Martres put the number at 10,000, noting also that “the
interrogations are violent,” and “people are held for several days without food or drink.”159
On 8 October, Belgian Foreign Minister Mark Eyskens spoke to Rwandan Ambassador to
Belgium Francois Ngarukiyintwali about the arrests.160 On 10 October, the Quai d’Orsay issued a
statement declaring its hope that the Rwandan government would avoid “excess” and called on
local authorities to “engage in dialogue.”161 Belgium’s ambassador to Rwanda, Johan Swinnen,
was far more forceful, personally urging President Juvénal Habyarimana “to respect the rights of
people detained in an anti-rebel mopping up operation.”162 A formal demarche from Swinnen to
the Habyarimana government on 11 October laid out the full range of Belgium’s concerns,
decrying the reported massacres, other human rights abuses, and Rwanda’s denial of Red Cross
access to detainees.163
Habyarimana eventually released many of the detainees, and Martres would later claim
credit by attributing the decision to apply “international pressure, mainly that of France because
of its significant military presence. Therefore, it was with the sole purpose of avoiding the worst
outbursts of violence that French military presence was maintained [in Rwanda].”164
Lost in Martres’ attempt to assign credit to the French government for Habyarimana’s
concessions was the hard truth that France was backing the Rwandan government despite French
officials’ knowledge of the Habyarimana’s regime’s “worst excesses.”165 The warnings would
only grow louder. A 19 October 1990 cable by Col. Galinié cautioned that “hardliners of the
current regime” might encourage Rwandans to commit more “serious abuses against the inland
Tutsi populations” if the RPF succeeded in seizing more territory.166 Galinié assessed that
Rwanda’s Hutu majority was primed to fear that an RPF military victory would mark a return to
Tutsi rule.167 Rwandans, he argued in a 24 October note, would never accept the reestablishment
in northeast Rwanda of what he called “the despised regime of the first Tutsi kingdom.”168 His
prediction—chilling, in light of what was come—was that “this overt or covert reestablishment
would lead: in all likelihood, to the physical elimination of the Tutsi within the country, 500,000
to 700,000 people, by the Hutu, 7,000,000 individuals.”169
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October 1990
F. As Belgium Withdrew, the French Government Increased Its Support.
Belgium has its conscience, and we have ours.170
– Georges Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
On 11 October, Col. Galinié delivered a grimly blunt assessment of the FAR’s capabilities:
“[T]he Rwandan army is unable to handle the situation.”171 According to the MIP, Galinié
“recommend[ed] that France send advisers on the ground in the northeast in the combat zone and
in Kigali” to, in Galiné’s words, “educate, organize and motivate a troop that had languished for
thirty years and that had forgotten the basic rules of combat.”172 This recommendation would
become reality in March 1991, when France sent a detachment of 30 officers to instruct Rwandan
troops in Ruhengeri, in the northwest. Those troops would supplement the high-level
reinforcement France sent in fall 1990: the appointment of a special advisor to Col. Serubuga to
“improve [the Rwandan] army’s operational abilities in order to get it quickly capable of opposing
the increasing number of raids by RPF troops.”173
The man selected for this assignment, Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Canovas, was, in the
words of French authors Gabriel Périès and David Servenay, “un homme de terrain”—roughly, a
man with hands-on experience in the field.174 He came from the 1st Marine Infantry Paratrooper
Regiment,175 an arm of the French Army Special Forces Command, where, according to JeanFrançois Dupaquier, a French investigative journalist who served as an expert at the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (“ICTR”), Canovas had a “brilliant career” as a paratrooper.176
Dupaquier wrote darkly of Canovas, describing him as “a specialist in total warfare and in
disinformation as a weapon of war,”177 while Périès and Servenay have described Canovas as an
experienced soldier who could offer Rwanda the benefit of “French know-how in defense
matters.”178
Officially, Canovas served under Galinié both as deputy defense attaché and as deputy of
operations for the Military Assistance Mission.179 It appears, though, that Canovas operated
outside of the usual reporting channels, with the Duclert Commission deducing that his mission
was likely “closely managed” by President Mitterrand’s staff at the Élysée.180
Canovas testified before the MIP in 1998. While that testimony has not been made public,
the MIP report itself stated that Canovas insisted his mission was “official and avowed”—just one
component of France’s emergency response “in the context of a major crisis, which the Rwandan
Armed Forces—few in number and largely inexperienced—had trouble handling.”181
Canovas’ presence at Col. Serubuga’s side during the first nine months of the war, from
October 1990 to June 1991, was never publicized. (In his 2004 book on France’s role in Rwanda,
the journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupéry quoted an unnamed French officer as saying that Canovas’
charge was to advise the Rwandan command on the sly.182) The secrecy suggests that French
officials were concerned about the controversy it might create, in both France and Rwanda, as
would happen in February 1992, when opposition political parties decried reports that Lieutenant
Colonel Gilles Chollet, the head of the detachment sent in March 1991, was advising both
President Habyarimana and Col. Serubuga on military operations.183 The Quai d’Orsay denied
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October 1990
those reports,184 and it never mentioned that Canovas had been advising Serubuga long before
Chollet.
From the beginning, Canovas enjoyed what the historian Daniela Kroslak would describe
as “privileged access to information about troop deployment and other military activities of the
FAR.”185 The MIP report reflects that at his hearing, Canovas acknowledged his role in helping
the FAR develop a defense plan for the city of Kigali, as well as plans to strengthen the FAR’s
fighting capabilities “in the border regions facing the greatest threat,” including Gisenyi and
Ruhengeri in the northwest, Byumba in the center, and the Mutara Lake region in the northeast.186
The MIP offers no further specifics on the advice he provided. Documents show, however, that he
had a voice in high-level strategic military discussions.187 Canovas spoke freely in meetings with
FAR leaders, such as a 2 November 1990 meeting with Col. Serubuga, during which Canovas
recommended having Rwandan reconnaissance planes fly at low enough altitude to evade enemy
fire and also “to create enemy panic.”188
Other French officers had their own opportunities to advise the FAR. Beginning in late
October 1990, Rwandan Army and Gendarmerie leaders began holding daily, or near-daily,
briefings for French and Belgian military officers in Kigali.189 Typically, two Noroît officers and
a French advisor to the para-commando battalion attended.190 The mid-afternoon briefings
invariably began with an overview of the security situation in the country, followed by a review
of the latest skirmishes in the combat zone, and finally a question-and-answer session, during
which the Rwandan military leaders shared highly sensitive information—for instance,
intelligence gleaned from the FAR’s aerial reconnaissance missions.191 Colonel Anatole
Nsengiyumva, the FAR’s chief of military intelligence, would continue for a time to provide
briefings to the Noroît officers after Belgium withdrew its troops from the country on 1
November.192
The MIP suggested that France did not at first envision keeping Canovas in Rwanda for
more than a few weeks.193 President Habyarimana hoped otherwise, telling French officials in
November 1990 that Canovas and Galinié had “played a decisive role as advisers that were
effective and had the ear of Rwandan military authorities of all ranks.”194 In December 1990,
during a visit to Rwanda by General Jean Varret, the head of the Military Cooperation Mission in
Paris, Habyarimana, Serubuga, and Colonel Léonidas Rusatira (the Secretary General of the
Defense Ministry) all pleaded with Varret to extend Canovas’ tour (as well as the tours of French
advisers working with the aviation squadron and para-commando battalion).195 Varret obliged,
assuring Habyarimana that France would extend Canovas’ term for six months, until June 1991.196
French support for the FAR extended beyond strategic advice to material support. On 8
October, Admiral Lanxade reported to President Mitterrand that France had sent munitions to
Habyarimana in the “first days of the crisis” and recommended adding a small shipment of
helicopter rockets, which President Mitterrand authorized in a handwritten note.197 (Belgium
provided two planeloads of munitions to resupply the Rwandan Army.198) The following week, on
16 October, Lanxade’s deputy, Colonel Huchon, warned Mitterrand that President Habyarimana
remained in a “very difficult” situation:
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October 1990
The Hutu peasantry, even though it has an 85% majority in Rwanda, will not be
able to single-handedly oppose an offensive by Tutsi forces, whose supply of arms
and ammunition appears to be abnormally sustained. President Habyarimana’s
future depends more and more on the diplomatic and material aid that we can give
him.199
Rwandan officials persisted in “asking France for direct military intervention and for help
with their ammunition and weapons supply,” as Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the head of the Africa
Cell at the Élysée, reported to President Mitterrand on 16 October.200 Dismissing the possibility of
intervening directly, the president’s son proposed two options: (1) “minimum deliveries [to] allow
the army to maintain a status quo on the ground[,]” such as “heavy equipment—helicopters, light
armored vehicles, AML [a type of light armored vehicle],” or (2) “a reliable logistics flow [that
would] allow Habyarimana to score decisive military points in order to negotiate from a
comfortable position.”201 He noted the latter option would “allow France to forcefully demand
respect for human rights and a speedy move towards democracy once calm has returned.”202 He
concluded by pointing out the urgency of decision: “A plane must leave for Kigali Wednesday
morning [17 October]. Depending on the decision, it will be almost empty . . . or full, which will
allow regular [that is, Rwandan—ed.] troops to resume the offensive or at least to contain one.”203
While it is unclear whether the plane left empty or full, an 18 October memo by an advisor reported
to President Mitterrand, “We . . . responded positively to the requests made by the Rwandan
authorities for the supply of ammunition and that we have in particular sent rockets for ‘Gazelle’
helicopters. A plane carrying new rockets left this morning for Kigali.”204
In total, during October 1990, the French Ministry of Cooperation granted to Rwanda in
the form of direct aid (i.e. for free): 130,000 9mm cartridges for sidearms, 2,040 20mm shells,
2,000 60mm mortar shells, and 100 68mm rockets, for use on Gazelle helicopters.205 In addition,
during 1990, France sold 3.3 million French francs (about $600,000) in equipment from its own
military stocks to the Rwandan government, likely consisting primarily of 90mm explosive
artillery shell rounds, 120mm explosive mortar shells, spare parts for Alouette II helicopters, as
well as nonlethal supplies.206 In the course of 1990, the French government also authorized 191
million French francs (about $34.7 million) in arms sales by French companies to Rwanda.207
At least one French official, President Mitterrand’s top military advisor, Admiral Lanxade,
questioned whether France should reduce its support for Habyarimana in light of the allegations
of the regime’s human rights abuses. Lanxade was “very close” to Mitterrand.208 The two had met
in 1987, when Mitterrand visited a French aircraft carrier under Lanxade’s authority as the head
of French naval operations in the Indian Ocean.209 According to Lanxade’s memoir, it was a
meeting of like minds: “From the outset, with Mitterrand, we were on the same page on
international affairs. . . . He must have said to himself: ‘Here is a soldier with whom we can talk
about strategy.’”210 On 11 October 1990, Lanxade recommended that France partially withdraw
its forces so as “not to appear too implicated in supporting Rwandan forces should serious acts of
violence against the population be brought to light in current operations.”211 Mitterrand,
apparently, did not share his concern. The admiral’s recommendation for a partial withdrawal went
unheeded, causing no discernible change in France’s policy in Rwanda.
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October 1990
Belgium, by contrast, was reconsidering its commitment. According to the Belgian
Senate’s Commission of Parliamentary Inquiry Concerning Events in Rwanda, Belgium decided
to withdraw its forces in response to broad domestic opposition to “news of arrests of many people
from the opposition and on the militarization of the Rwandan regime.”212 The Belgian Senate urged
the government, as an alternative, to focus on helping Rwanda achieve “democratization and a
negotiated peace.”213
Rwandan officials hoped that some other Western country—the United States, perhaps—
would come in to fill the void left by Belgium.214 But France was also willing to take on an
additional load. In a 29 October meeting, Col. Serubuga asked Col. Galinié, Lt. Col. Canovas, and
other French officers for help in assessing the needs of the FAR’s most elite units in light of the
Belgian troops’ upcoming departure, then just a few days away.215 (Belgian military advisors
remained even after Belgian troops departed.216) Serubuga’s Rwandan colleagues rattled off a list
of supplies France might provide, including 400 rockets and 1,000 cannon shells for the aviation
squadron and radio equipment for the transmission company.217 Galinié signaled his agreement
and said he would forward the requests for approval.218
President Mitterrand welcomed the opportunity to spotlight France’s support for
Habyarimana. “We maintain friendly relations with the Government of Rwanda, which has come
closer to France after noticing Belgium’s relative indifference towards its former colony,” he
reportedly said on 17 October, according to notes from a meeting he held with French ministers.219
Ambassador Martres, meanwhile, accused Belgium of more than mere indifference. “On a
diplomatic level,” he wrote in a 24 October cable to Paris, “the rush of the Belgian side to give
away Rwanda as it did the Congo in 1960, and for analogous domestic political reasons, poses a
grave threat to the future of the Rwandan people.”220 On 29 July 1991, as France’s involvement
in Rwanda continued to increase, Martres would tell a Rwandan newspaper: “Belgium has its
conscience, and we have ours.”221
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Notes to Chapter II
1
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001).
2
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
3
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
4
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
5
Interview by LFM with Eric Murokore; Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
6
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
7
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
8
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
9
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe; Interview by LFM with Eric Murokore. According to Gen. Murokore, an
accurate count of RPF soldiers on 1 October 1990 is difficult. Prior to that day, he said, these troops had never been
together as a singular force. Some Rwandans who had been in the NRA were delayed in making it to the front—those
who were on leave when the call came to mobilize, those who got the information late, or those who were delayed
because of the roadblocks set up by the NRA soldiers. It took some of the Rwandan NRA soldiers one or two months
to get to the border. There were also Rwandan exiles from all over central and east Africa who were making their way
to the front, not only from Uganda, but from 30 years of living in exile in Burundi, Zaire, Tanzania, and Kenya. See
also Memorandum from Celestin Rwagafilita (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Compte rendu de la réunion d’EM Gd N tenue
en date du 01 Octobre 1990 de 1145 A 1220 B”) (placing the RPF initial attack at 10:00 a.m.).
10
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
11
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
12
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe; interview by LFM with Eric Murokore.
13
RPF officers were addressed as “commander.” Interview by LFM with Eric Murokore.
14
JEAN-PAUL KIMONYO, TRANSFORMING RWANDA: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD TO RECONSTRUCTION 85 (2019).
15
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga; Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemera.
16
Cable from American Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Invaders consolidate
hold on Rwandan territories: GOR prepares for second offensive”) (reporting on a meeting with French, Belgian, and
German military attachés).
17
Cable from American Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Invaders consolidate
hold on Rwandan territories: GOR prepares for second offensive”).
18
US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications for the Region”).
19
Duclert Commission Report 46 (quoting ADIPLO, 20200018AC/3, TD Kigali 499, October 4, 1990).
20
Duclert Commission Report 44 n.18 (quoting ADIPLO, 20200018AC/3, TD Kigali 495, 3 Oct. 1990).
21
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 163-64 (2001).
22
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001).
23
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001).
24
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001).
25
MIP Audition of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Tome III, Vol. 2, 85-86. Chevènement once said, “A minister shuts
their trap. If they want to open it, then they resign.” Auberie Perreaut, Chevènement, un ancien ministre aux démissions
fracassantes, LE FIGARO, 29 Aug. 2016.
26
See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 101
MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001).
27
(1995); JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE
MIP Tome I 129-30.
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Chapter II
October 1990
28
See Press Conference by François Mitterrand, Conférence de presse de M. François Mitterrand, Président de la
République, notamment sur les récents événements au Liban, le conflit dans le Golfe et la proposition d'une conférence
internationale pour régler les conflits au Proche et Moyen-Orient, Paris [Press Conference by Mr. François Mitterrand,
President of the Republic, Notably on the Recent Events in Lebanon, the Conflict in the Golf and the Proposition of
an International Conference to Resolve the Conflicts in the Middle East, Paris] (15 Oct. 1990); Cable from American
Embassy in Paris to US Secretary of State (4 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Rwanda: France Will Send Ammunition”).
29
François Graner, Entretien avec l’amiral Jacques Lanxade [Interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade], LA NUIT
10, 8 Apr. 2016.
RWANDAISE, NO.
30
Cable from Georges Martres to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et al. (25 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le
Président Habyarimana”).
31
MIP Audition of Jacques Pelletier, Tome III, Vol. 2, 88 (quoting Jacques Pelletier Audition summary) (Pelletier’s
testimony, like all witnesses heard by the MIP, is a summary and not a verbatim transcript); see also THE NATIONAL
SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE: RWANDA 1990-1994,
Annotated Transcript 1-64 (2 June 2014). While discussing Mitterrand’s reasons for military opposition to the RPF,
his advisor Hubert Védrine recalled hearing the President “talk frequently about France’s commitment to stability and
security in Africa, from Senegal to Djibouti.”
32
MIP Audition of Jacques Pelletier, Tome III, Vol. 2, 88 (quoting Jacques Pelletier Audition summary); see also THE
NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE: RWANDA 19901994, Annotated Transcript 1-64 (2 June 2014). A January 1991 French military intelligence report took note of this
concern, stating: “President Habyarimana considers that a European military presence is likely to provide him with
stabilizing support. It is possible that this view is shared by several other heads of state in francophone Africa.” Duclert
Commission Report 834 (quoting SHD, GR 1999 Z 117/93, Fiche n° 4009 /DEF/EMA/CERM/2 “Rwanda-situation
and French presence,” 3 Jan. 1991).
33
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 104 (1995) (referring to Ugandan President
Museveni as, from the French government’s perspective, “an incarnation of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ menace in its truest
form”).
34
François Graner, Entretien avec l’amiral Jacques Lanxade [Interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade], in LA NUIT
100 (2016).
RWANDAISE
35
Védrine was a mainstay of Mitterrand’s 14-year presidency, beginning with his tenure as Mitterrand’s personal
diplomatic counsel from 1981 to 1986. He went on to serve as Élysée spokesman (1988 – 1991) and as secretary
general to the president (1991 – 1995). See Biographie, HUBERT VÉDRINE, https://www.hubertvedrine.net/biographie/
(last visited 17 Nov. 2020). Although the powers of the secretary general have never been legally defined and have
varied greatly between presidencies, Védrine received and reviewed all incoming information for Mitterrand,
selecting, prioritizing, and following up on requests by adding handwritten comments characterizing and highlighting
information for the president. See Jacques Morel & Georges Kapler, Hubert Védrine, gardien de l’Inavouable [Hubert
Védrine, Guardian of the Unmentionable], in LA NUIT RWANDAISE 2-3 (2008); see generally Xavier Magnon,
L’organisation particulière du secrétariat général de l’Elysée et du cabinet du Premier ministre: considérations
générales et regard particulier sur l’organisation actuelle [The Special Organization of the General Secretariat of
the Élysée Palace and the Prime Minister’s Office: General Considerations and a Special Look into the Current
Organization], TOULOUSE CAPITOLE PUBLICATIONS (2015).
Védrine has acknowledged having had some influence on President Mitterrand’s decision-making through
one-on-one discussions of various foreign-policy issues. He has long claimed, though, that he did not play any role in
decision-making over Africa, and Rwanda more specifically, citing his comparative lack of expertise on Africa
matters, the existence of the Africa Cell within the Élysée, and the dominant part the president’s top military advisor
would play in Africa matters. See LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 718, 763-64
(2019). Since the end of the Rwanda conflict, Védrine has been one of the most vocal defenders of Mitterrand’s legacy
(and of his Rwanda policy), as the director, since 2003, of the late president’s archive in the Institut François
Mitterrand. See Hubert Védrine – Président de l’Institut Francois Mitterrand, INSTITUT FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND (last
visited 24 Feb. 2021).
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Chapter II
October 1990
36
Cable from American Embassy Paris to US Secretary of State (19 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Rwanda: October 18
Meeting of Presidents Mitterrand and Habyarimana”).
37
See Duclert Commission Report 50-51. On 8 Nov. 1990, the DGSE noted that, while Rwandan authorities
persistently accused President Museveni of orchestrating a “deliberate attack” against Rwanda, “there is no evidence
that the rebels actually received significant aid from” Uganda. See Duclert Commission Report 110-11 (quoting
AN/PR-PIN, AG/5(4)/DP/34, Second sub-file. 1989-1990-1991 Rwanda. Policy. File (DGSE blue) no. 18974/N, 8
Nov. 1990. Rwanda. Involvement of Uganda and Libya).
38
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
39
STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 70-77 (2008).
40
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
41
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
42
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
43
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
44
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
45
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
46
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
47
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
48
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
49
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
50
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
51
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
52
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
53
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
54
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
55
MIP Tome I 126. For a detailed discussion of the MIP and its shortcomings, see the Epilogue.
56
See, e.g., Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “La communauté rwandaise en ouganda”)
(identifying the insurgents as “Rwandan refugees” who “believe that their country—they often say their homeland—
is Rwanda and not Uganda”); Cable from Yannick Gérard (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec des représentants
du front patriotique rwandais”) (“The objective of the RPF is to liberate the country from the dictatorship of
Habyarimana.”).
57
Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “La communauté rwandaise en ouganda”).
58
Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “La communauté rwandaise en ouganda”).
59
Cable from Yannick Gérard (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec des représentants du front patriotique
rwandais”).
60
Cable from Yannick Gérard (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec des représentants du front patriotique
rwandais”).
61
Cable from Yannick Gérard (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec des représentants du front patriotique
rwandais”).
62
See, e.g., Notes of Meeting at the Élysée (23 Jan. 1991) (“Uganda cannot allow itself to do just anything and
everything. We must tell President Museveni: it’s not normal that the Tutsi minority wants to impose its rule over the
[Hutu] majority . . . .”); Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (asserting that the
RPF army benefitted from “Uganda’s military support”); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François
Mitterrand (23 July 1992) (referring to a “Ugandan-RPF offensive”).
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Chapter II
October 1990
63
See François Mitterrand, Opening Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (June 1990).
64
See François Mitterrand, Opening Speech to the 16th Franco-African Summit in La Baule, France (June 1990).
65
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993). Mitterrand remarked that, ordinarily, France would not intervene
in a conflict “unless there is a foreign aggression, and not in cases of tribal conflict,” but that “in this case, it’s an
amalgamation [of the two] because of the Tutsi problem.”
66
Memorandum from Boniface Ngulinzira and Juvénal Habimana to Juvénal Habyarimana (9 Oct. 1990) (Subject:
“Mobilisation de la presse internationale”).
67
Memorandum from Boniface Ngulinzira and Juvénal Habimana to Juvénal Habyarimana (9 Oct. 1990) (Subject:
“Mobilisation de la presse internationale”).
68
Duclert Commission Report 74, 752. A note on one fax said, “To be destroyed after reading like all my handwritten
messages.” Id. at 75.
69
Duclert Commission Report 752 (quoting SHD, versement tardif n°1. Avec une mention « Personnel –
Confidentiel »).
70
Duclert Commission Report 752 (quoting SHD, versement tardif n°1. Avec une mention « Personnel –
Confidentiel »).
71
Duclert Commission Report 75 (quoting SHD, versement tardif numéro 1, Fax du général Huchon au colonel
Galinié, sans date).
72
Cable from Georges Martres (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
73
Cable from Georges Martres to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et al. (25 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le
Président Habyarimana”).
74
Cable from Georges Martres to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et al. (25 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le
Président Habyarimana”).
75
Memorandum from Anatole Nsengiyumva (15 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Exploitation d’un rapport”). The day before,
Nsengiyumva received a letter from one of the French officer’s primary points of contact in the Rwandan army: the
commander of the para-commando battalion, Commandant Aloys Ntabakuze. Ntabakuze’s 14 December 1990 letter
gave rise to Nsengiyumva’s argument that Rwandan officials “must exploit the fact that the aggression against our
country is supported by Museveni’s Uganda and Kaddafi’s Libya,” as “[c]ertain countries could be sensitive to this
and resolutely come to our aid, or at least put pressure on Museveni so that he puts an end to this deliberate and
unjustified aggression.” Nsengiyumva praised Ntabakuze: “If only all of the unit [commanders], if not all of the
officers, could be animated by the same spirit,” he wrote in his 15 December letter to Habyarimana. Prosecutor v.
Aloys Ntabakuze, Case No. ICTR-98-41A-A, Appeal Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 8 Nov. 2012).
Ntabakuze is presently serving a 35-year sentence following his convictions for genocide, extermination, and crimes
against humanity, among other offenses.
76
Théoneste Bagosora and Anatole Nsengiyumva v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 111,
400, 428-430 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
77
Memorandum from Anatole Nsengiyumva (15 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Exploitation d’un rapport”).
78
MIP Tome I 138-39.
79
Memorandum from Anatole Nsengiyumva (15 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Exploitation d’un rapport”).
80
See Ferdinand Nahimana et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-99-52-A, Appeal Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 28 Nov. 2007).
81
Prisca Borrel, Narbonne: ‘la France doit des excuses au peuple rwandais’, témoigne l’ex-ambassadeur [Narbonne:
“France Owes an Apology to the Rwandan People” States the Former Ambassador], L’INDEPENDANT, 10 Apr. 2014
(interview with Georges Martres).
82
RPF, POLITICAL PROGRAMME (1987).
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Chapter II
October 1990
83
RPF, POLITICAL PROGRAMME (1987); see also Cable to US Defense Intelligence Agency et al. (18 Oct. 1990)
(Subject: “[Redacted] Rwanda Patriotic Front Political Program”) (including the RPF’s Political Programme as an
enclosure).
84
RPF, POLITICAL PROGRAMME (1987); see also Cable to US Defense Intelligence Agency et al. (18 Oct. 1990)
(Subject: “[Redacted] Rwanda Patriotic Front Political Program”) (including the RPF’s Political Programme as an
enclosure).
85
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
86
Cable from Yannick Gérard (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec des représentants du front patriotique
rwandais”).
87
Letter from Pierre Karemera to François Mitterrand et al. (10 Oct. 1990) (on behalf of the Communuté rwandaise
de Suisse).
88
See, e.g., Belgium and France Send Troops to Rwanda as Army Holds Rebels, REUTERS, 4 Oct. 1990 (“In Kampala,
the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) said it was behind the attack to oust Habyarimana but denied that it was an
ethnically-based organization. ‘It is neither a Hutu-Tutsi conflict, nor a refugee problem. We are opposing a system
which is under a small clique that is undemocratic, corrupt and abuses human rights,’ an RPF spokesman said.”);
Aidan Hartley, Rwandan Rebellion Draws Exiles Back Home from Uganda, REUTERS, 9 Oct. 1990 (reporting that the
rebels’ “aims, they say, are to topple the government of President Juvénal Habyarimana, end government corruption
and repression, institute democracy, and solve the refugee problem created when thousands fled tribal massacres three
decades ago”).
89
Prisca Borrel, Narbonne: ‘la France doit des excuses au peuple rwandais’, témoigne l’ex-ambassadeur [Narbonne:
“France Owes an Apology to the Rwandan People” States the Former Ambassador], L’INDEPENDANT, 10 Apr. 2014
(interview with Georges Martres).
90
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 1-77 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
91
Jean Hélène, Rwanda: retour au calme dans la capitale [Rwanda: Return to Calm in the Capital], LE MONDE, 10
Oct. 1990.
92
Jean Hélène, Rwanda: retour au calme dans la capitale [Rwanda: Return to Calm in the Capital], LE MONDE, 10
Oct. 1990.
93
French ministerial meeting notes (17 Oct. 1990).
94
Restricted Council meeting notes (22 June 1994) (“If this country were to come under the domination of the Tutsi,
a small ethnic minority based in Uganda where some favor the creation of a ‘Tutsiland’ encompassing not only that
country but also Rwanda and Burundi, it is certain that the democratization process will be interrupted.”); see also
Notes of Meeting at the Élysée (23 Jan. 1991) (quoting Mitterrand as declaring, “[w]e must tell President Museveni:
it’s not normal that the Tutsi minority wants to impose its rule over the Hutu majority”).
95
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 114 - 119 (2006).
96
Letter from Athanase Gasake to Juvénal Habyarimana (31 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien du Général Varret, Chef
de la Mission Militaire de Coopération Française”).
97
US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications for the Region”).
98
US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications for the Region”).
99
Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (17 Aug. 1989) (dossier regarding the issuance of a technical assistance card
to French officer Daniel Leroyer).
100
Memorandum from Celestin Rwagafilita (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Compte rendu de la réunion d’EM Gd N tenue
en date du 01 Octobre 1990 de 1145 A 1220 B”).
101
Memorandum from Celestin Rwagafilita (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Compte rendu de la réunion d’EM Gd N tenue
en date du 01 Octobre 1990 de 1145 A 1220 B”).
102
Memorandum de Coopération Militaire Franco-Rwandaise (31 May 1990).
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Chapter II
October 1990
103
Tri-monthly DMAT report from Bruno Ducoin (10 Jan. 1991) (describing mission of the mécaniciens d’équipage);
Proposition d’affectation au titre de l’assistance technique [Proposal for Assignment under Technical Assistance] (24
Jan. 1989) (noting Leroyer’s expertise with regard to the “N 2501”).
104
Report from Marc Sagniez, Compte-rendu du capitaine Marc Sagniez chef du détachement militaire d’assistance
technique “air” (15 Jan. 1990).
105
Duclert Commission Report 60 (quoting SHD, versement tardif I, Rapport du colonel Galinié n°33/4/AD/RWA).
106
Duclert Commission Report 60-61 (citing SHD, versement tardif I, Rapport du colonel Galinié n°33/4/AD/RWA).
107
Duclert Commission Report 60-61 (quoting SHD, versement tardif I, Rapport du colonel Galinié
n°33/4/AD/RWA).
108
Duclert Commission Report 59.
109
Duclert Commission Report 59 (quoting SHD, versement tardif I, Rapport n°33/4/AD/RWA du colonel Galinié,
20 Nov. 1990).
110
Duclert Commission Report 63.
111
Tri-montly DMAT report from Bruno Ducoin (10 Jan. 1991).
112
Tri-montly DMAT report from Bruno Ducoin (10 Jan. 1991).
113
Report from Marliac, emploi de l’escadrille d’aviation des Forces Armées Rwandaises pendant les évènements du
mois d’octobre (6 Nov. 1990).
114
Report from Marliac, emploi de l’escadrille d’aviation des Forces Armées Rwandaises pendant les évènements du
mois d’octobre (6 Nov. 1990).
115
MIP Audition of Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol. 1, 8.
116
MIP Audition of Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol. 1, 8 (“President Paul Quilès asked whether the instructors were at the
controls of the helicopter to fire. General Jean Varret said that although the training missions were extended in the
field in October 1990, our technical assistants did not carry out firing operations because the Rwandan soldiers were
at the controls.”).
117
MIP Tome I 169-70.
118
See, e.g., Memorandum from Bernard Cussac (14 May 1992) (Subject: “Activités de la Mission d’Assistance
Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990”). In late October 1990, Col. Galinié agreed to send two French technicians to
Rwanda to help the reconnaissance battalion repair its light armored vehicles. See Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990)
(signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza). The technicians, specialists in turrets and armament, helped bring the battalion’s
weaponry into “acceptable” working condition. See Memorandum from Bernard Cussac (14 May 1992) (Subject:
“Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990”).
119
Memorandum from Athanase Gasake to Juvénal Habyarimana (31 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien du Général
Varret, Chef de la Mission Militaire de Coopération Française”).
120
See generally Compte rendu semestriel de fonctionnement (8 Oct. 1991); Memorandum from Bernard Cussac (14
May 1992) (Subject: “Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990”); Compte rendu
semestriel de fonctionnement (21 Oct. 1992).
121
Redistribution politique dans le conflit rwandais [Political Redistribution in the Rwandan Conflict], AFP, 15 Oct.
1990; US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications for the
Region”); Cable from American Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State (5 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Invasions of
Rwanda: Update of October 5: SITREP 10”) (“Foreign military assets on hand: as of 1300 hrs., approximately 300
French forces, 150 French legionnaires, are on the ground. The French also say 400 Zairian troops . . . are in Kigali. .
. . The first plane load of what will total 5 to 600 Belgium paratroopers landed this morning. French and Belgian forces
protect the airport which continues to function. Belgian forces have also as their mission and the protection of access
road to the airport. According to the Belgian ambassador Furnneu, they would be prepared to assist evacuation of
Belgians and other foreign national should it become necessary.”).
122
See, e.g., US Department of State, Rwanda: Tutsi Exiles Challenge Rwandan Stability (12 Oct. 1990) (“Paris and
Brussels have insisted, however, that their forces are in Rwanda solely to evacuate and protect French and Belgian
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Chapter II
October 1990
nationals and will not intervene in the fighting.”). See also US Department of State, Africa Trends (25 Oct. 1990)
(France’s agenda was “to protect its nationals and assist Belgian troops in securing Kigali airport.”).
123
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001).
124
Frances Kerry, Foreign Minister Says 10,000 Rebel Force Could Double or Triple, REUTERS, 8 Oct. 1990; France,
Belgium, Zaire Send Troops to Rebel-Hit Rwanda, REUTERS, 5 Oct. 1990; Cable to US Defense Intelligence Agency
(Oct. 11, 1990) (Subject: “IIR [redacted]/Tutsi Patriotic Rwandan Front in Zaire Produces Leaflet Explaining Reasons
Behind the Rwandan Invasion”); US Department of State, Rwanda: Tutsi Exiles Challenge Rwandan Stability (12
Oct. 1990); US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications for the
Region”).
125
Frances Kerry, Kigali Reported Quiet, Belgium and France Send in More Planes, REUTERS, 7 Oct. 1990 (“A senior
French official, who asked not to be named, said there were now about 1,000 troops from Zaire in the country.”);
Cable to US Defense Intelligence Agency (Oct. 11, 1990) (Subject: “IIR [redacted]/Tutsi Patriotic Rwandan Front in
Zaire Produces Leaflet Explaining Reasons Behind the Rwandan Invasion”); Aidan Hartley, Rebels Say 1,500 Zairean
Troops in Rwanda, Belgians Involved, REUTERS, 12 Oct. 1990; US Department of State, Rwanda: Tutsi Exiles
Challenge Rwandan Stability (12 Oct. 1990) (estimating the number at 1200).
126
Cable to US Defense Intelligence Agency (Oct. 11, 1990) (Subject: “IIR [redacted]/Tutsi Patriotic Rwandan Front
in Zaire Produces Leaflet Explaining Reasons Behind the Rwandan Invasion”); Zaire’s Troops Loot in Rwanda, 100
Killed, Newspaper Says, REUTERS, 18 Oct. 1990 (“At least 100 Zairean troops sent to Rwanda to help quell a rebellion
have been killed and others have disgraced themselves by raping and robbing Rwandans, a Zairean newspaper said
on Thursday.”).
127
Habyarimana gave the implausible explanation that the Zairean forces had been withdrawn to “allow fresh
[Rwandan] troops to take their place.” Nicholas Doughty, Belgium Says Troops Will Stay in Rwanda Until Ceasefire,
REUTERS, 20 Oct. 1990. A 13 October 1990 cable from Ambassador Martres, however, reported:
The behavior of Zairian troops is a subject of concern for the Rwandan population and for
settlements of expatriates. In fact, traders, automobile drivers, and simple pedestrians are held for
ransom daily at the Zairian control posts. Certain reports indicate numerous lootings (in particular
in Gabiro, where the hotel was entirely stripped bare). Rapes have also been reported. Conscious of
the significance of these abuses, the country’s highest authorities have decided to take measures
within 24 hours (information provided at the A.D. by Colonel Rusatira), among which the most
probable is the withdrawal of the Zairians from urban zones.
Cable from Georges Martres (13 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation générale le 13 octobre 1990 à 12 heures locales”).
128
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe; Cable from Leonard Spearman to US Secretary of State (8 Oct. 1990)
(Subject: “SITREP 13: Zairians Mobilize in Mutara, Rwandans Lose Observation Plane, French Arrange Convoy for
Expats from Gisenyi and Ruhengeri”) (“Airport access road and Kigali airport remain well defended by French and
Belgian troops.”); see also MIP Tome I 129 (noting the ostensible purpose of controlling the airport).
129
MIP Tome I 137 (The quoted diplomatic telegram from René Galinié is excerpted in the MIP report, but the full
document was not made public.) Col. Galinié of the French Gendarmerie had been on the ground in Rwanda since
August 1988, serving as the Defense Attaché and Head of the Military Assistance Mission in Rwanda (August 1988July 1991) and as Commanding Officer, Operation Noroît (October 1990-July 1991, except November 1990). See
MIP Tome II, Annex 1.1.
130
Frances Kerry, Kigali Reported Quiet, Belgium and France Send in More Planes, REUTERS, 7 Oct. 1990.
131
Aidan Hartley, Fleeing Peasants Report Massacres by Rwandan Army, REUTERS, 10 Oct. 1990; see also Cable
from John Burroughs to US Secretary of State (19 Oct. 1990) (confirming press reports that the number of civilians,
mostly Tutsi but some Hutu, seeking refuge in Kizinga, Uganda, had swelled to over 2200, and noting that the refugees
recounted stories of “indiscriminate killings by GOR and Zairois troops and civilian vigilantes”).
132
Aidan Hartley, Fleeing Peasants Report Massacres by Rwandan Army, REUTERS, 10 Oct. 1990.
133
Aidan Hartley, Fleeing Peasants Report Massacres by Rwandan Army, REUTERS, 10 Oct. 1990.
134
Frances Kerry, Rwanda Denies Civilian Massacre, Says Up to 500 Rebels Killed, REUTERS, 11 Oct. 1990.
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Chapter II
October 1990
135
Adain Hartley, Rwanda Rebels, Farmers Say Government Troops Killed Civilians, REUTERS, 22 Oct. 1990.
136
Adain Hartley, Rwanda Rebels, Farmers Say Government Troops Killed Civilians, REUTERS, 22 Oct. 1990.
137
Cable from SRS Ngororero to SCR (19 Nov. 1990) (regarding Kibilira massacres, 352 civilians killed, including
345 Tutsi and seven Hutus, 45 Tutsi injured, and 423 homes burned in Kibilira; and 20 Tutsi killed and eight injured
in nearby Satinsyi commune); see also Francis Kerry, Priests say 335 killed in Rwanda Ethnic Clashes, REUTERS, 18
Oct. 1990. The government reported only 50 killings, but a local priest said that “335 people had died in the Kibilira
sub-district of Ngorolero, most of them Tutsis.”
138
Frances Kerry, Rwanda Denies Civilian Massacre, Says up to 500 Rebels Killed, REUTERS, 11 Oct. 1990. See
Rwanda: Plusieurs centaines de “rebelles en civil” tués par l’armée. Bruxelles et Washington prennent leurs distances
vis-a-vis de Kigali [Rwanda: Several Hundreds of “Plainclothes Rebels” Killed by the Army. Brussels and Washington
Distance Themselves from Kigali], LE MONDE, 13 Oct. 1990 (reporting that Brussels and Washington were keeping
their distance from Kigali despite Bizimungu’s denials); see also Cable from Leonard Spearman to US Secretary of
State (8 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “SITREP 13: Zairians Mobilize in Mutara, Rwandans Lose Observation Plane, French
Arrange Convoy for Expats from Gisenyi and Ruhengeri”) (“Rwandan military officer informed EMBOFF that
Rwandans are having great difficulty dealing with invaders’ guerrilla tactics—changing into civilian clothes and
hiding in local population.”).
139
FIDH Report 34 (1993).
140
FIDH Report 13 (1993). The FIDH report did not identify the ethnicity of those killed, however, several
contemporaneous reports establish that those massacred were mainly Tutsi. See Cable from SRS Ngororero to SCR
(19 Nov. 1990); see also Francis Kerry, Priests Say 335 Killed in Rwanda Ethnic Clashes, REUTERS, 18 Oct. 1990.
141
Cable from Georges Martres (13 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation générale le 13 octobre 1990 à 12 heures locales”).
142
MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 118.
143
Duclert Commission Report 41.
144
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 234 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
145
ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE, ¶ 9.3 (July 2000); see also JOHAN
SWINNEN, RWANDA MIJN VERHAAL [RWANDA: MY STORY] 347 (2017). Martres was reportedly the only foreigner
invited to Habyarimana’s son’s wedding. See OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE
ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA (1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE
ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT COMMITMENT] 234 n.384 (2007).
146
JOHAN SWINNEN, RWANDA MIJN VERHAAL [RWANDA: MY STORY] 347 (2017).
147
Kigali Reported Quiet, Belgium and France Send in More Planes, REUTERS, 7 Oct. 1990.
148
Cable from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Analyse de la situation par la population d’origine Tutsi”).
149
MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 119. In its report, the MIP interpreted Martres’ remarks as
indicating that a genocide was “foreseeable starting in October 1993.” MIP Tome I 297 (emphasis added). This can
only have been a misunderstanding of Martres’ testimony, or perhaps a typo. Martres’ tenure as ambassador to Rwanda
ended in April 1993. See MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 121. He would have little reason to
comment on circumstances in Rwanda in October 1993, several months after his departure from the country. Indeed,
the context of his remarks leaves little doubt that he was referring to October 1990.
150
MIP Tome I 127; US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications
for the Region”).
151
MIP Tome I 127; see also Interview by LFM with Jean Rwabahizi.
152
Interview by LFM with Jean Rwabahizi.
153
Interview by LFM with Jean Rwabahizi.
154
Interview by LFM with Jean Rwabahizi.
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Chapter II
155
Interview by LFM with Jean Rwabahizi.
156
Interview by LFM with Jean Rwabahizi.
October 1990
157
Jean Hélène, Rwanda une semaine après le début de la rebellion, arrestations et limogeages se multiplient
[Rwanda, One Week After the Beginning of the Rebellion, Arrests and Dismissals Multiply], LE MONDE, 9 Oct. 1990.
158
Jean Hélène, Trois mille “suspects” arrêtés Paris presse le gouvernement de Kigali “d’engager le dialogue” avec
l’opposition [Three Thousand “Suspects” Arrested, Paris Urges the Kigali Government to “Engage in Dialogue”
with the Opposition], LE MONDE, 12 Oct. 1990; see Bettina Gaus, Rwanda Civil War: Concern Over Fate of Detainees,
UPI, 10 Oct. 1990; Rwandan Government Denies Massacre Reports, REUTERS, 11 Oct. 1990.
159
Cable from Georges Martres (12 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Analyse de la Situation Politique”).
160
Belgium Concerned at Human Rights in Rwandan Rebel Clampdown, REUTERS, 8 Oct. 1990; see also Bettina Gaus,
Rwanda Civil War: Concern Over Fate of Detainees, UPI, 10 Oct. 1990 (“A Belgian Foreign Ministry Spokesman
said Foreign Minister Mark Eyskens had twice expressed concern to Rwanda over reports of possible human rights
violations and had received assurances that no such violations were taking place.”).
161
Jean Hélène, Trois mille “suspects” arrêtés Paris presse le gouvernement de Kigali “d’engager le dialogue” avec
l’opposition [Three Thousand “Suspects” Arrested, Paris Urges the Kigali Government to “Engage in Dialogue”
with the Opposition], LE MONDE, 12 Oct. 1990.
162
Rwandan Government Denies Massacre Reports, REUTERS, 11 Oct. 1990.
163
See Memorandum from François Ngarukiyintwali to Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (11 Oct. 1990); see also
Rwanda: Plusieurs centaines de ‘rebelles en civil’ tués par l’armée. Bruxelles et Washington prennent leurs distances
vis-à-vis de Kigali [Rwanda: Several Hundreds of “Plainclothes Rebels” Killed by the Army. Brussels and Washington
Distance Themselves from Kigali], LE MONDE, 13 Oct. 1990; Cable from Maynard Glitman to US Secretary of State
(11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Rwanda Incursion: Belgium Says No to Rwandan Request—Cabinet Discusses Military,
Diplomatic Options”).
164
MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 119.
165
MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 119.
166
Duclert Commission Report 343-44 (quoting SHD, Versement tardif n°1, TD Kigali 686/2/MAM/RWA/19 Oct.
1990).
167
See Duclert Commission Report 76, 343-44.
168
Duclert Commission Report 76 (quoting SHD, versement tardif numéro 1, Msg n° 703/2/MAM/RWA, 24 Oct.
1994).
169
Duclert Commission Report 76 (quoting SHD, versement tardif numéro 1, Msg n° 703/2/MAM/RWA, 24 Oct.
1994).
170
André Kamyea, Interview avec l’ambassadeur de France au Rwanda [Interview with the French Ambassador to
Rwanda], in RWANDA RUSHYA (1991) (interview conducted on 29 July 1991).
171
MIP Tome I 137.
172
MIP Tome I 137-38.
173
MIP Tome I 138.
174
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS AND DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE
RWANDAIS (1959-1994) [A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE (1959-1994)]
186 (2007).
175
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS AND DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS
(1959-1994) [A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE (1959-1994)] 186 (2007).
176
JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS AU RWANDA [FRENCH POLITICS,
SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 94 (2014).
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Chapter II
October 1990
177
JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS AU RWANDA [FRENCH POLITICS,
SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 94 (2014).
178
GABRIEL PERIES AND DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUETE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GENOCIDE RWANDAIS
(1959-1994) [A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE (1959-1994)] 186 (2007).
179
See MIP Tome I 137-38; Memorandum from Jean Varret to the French Ministry of Cooperation and Development
(27 May 1992) (Subject: “Compte rendu de mission au Rwanda et au Burundi”) (enclosing document titled
“Principales actions de la MMC au profit des FAR depuis octobre 1990”).
180
Duclert Commission Report 779.
181
MIP Tome I 138. The MIP has not made Canovas’ testimony public.
182
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE: LA FRANCE
RWANDA] 244 (2004).
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
183
See Press Release, UPR, Communiqué du parti Union du Peuple Rwandais (UPR) sur la nomination du LieutenantColonel Chollet comme conseiller du président rwandais et de son chef d’état-major [Communiqué from the Rwandan
People’s Union Party (UPR) on the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel Chollet as adviser to the Rwandan president
and his chief of staff] (24 Feb. 1992); Press Release, MDR, Communiqué no. 9 (14 Feb. 1992).
184
Pas de fonctions de conseiller auprès du président rwandais pour le chef de la mission d’assistance militaire
française [No Advisory Functions to the Rwandan President for the Head of the French Military Assistance Mission],
AFP, 28 Feb. 1992.
185
DANIELA KROSLAK, THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EXTERNAL BYSTANDERS IN CASES OF GENOCIDE: THE FRENCH IN
RWANDA, 1990-1994 258 (2002).
186
MIP Tome I 138.
187
See, e.g., Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza); Meeting Notes (2 Nov. 1990) (signed
Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
188
Meeting Notes (2 Nov. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
189
See Meeting Notes (24 Oct. 1990) (signed Emmanuel Kanyadekwe); Meeting Notes (29 Oct. 1990) (signed JeanBosco Ruhorahoza); Meeting Notes (31 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
190
See Meeting Notes (16 Oct. 1990) (signed Augustin Balihenda); Meeting Notes (31 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco
Ruhorahoza); Meeting Notes (6 Nov. 1990) (signed Grégoire Rutakamize); Meeting Notes (7 Nov. 1990) (signed
Pierre Célestin Kabatsi); Meeting Notes (8 Nov.1990) (signed Xavier F. Nzuwonemeye); Meeting Notes (9 Nov.
1990) (signed Xavier Nzuwonemeye). Lieutenant Colonel Patrice Caille and Captain Pedro Rodriguez were the Noroît
officers, and Captain Christian Refalo the para-commando advisor.
191
See Meeting Notes (29 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza); Meeting Notes (6 Nov. 1990) (signed Grégoire
Rutakamize); Meeting Notes (8 Nov. 1990) (signed Xavier F. Nzuwonemeye).
192
See Meeting Notes (2 Nov. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza); Meeting Notes (6 Nov. 1990) (signed Grégoire
Rutakamize); Meeting Notes (7 Nov. 1990) (signed Pierre Célestin Kabatsi); Meeting Notes (8 Nov. 1990) (signed
Xavier F. Nzuwonemeye); Meeting Notes (9 Nov. 1990) (signed Xavier F. Nzuwonemeye).
193
MIP Tome I 139. The MIP explains that, because of his effectiveness, Canovas’ tour was extended to the end of
November 1990.
194
Memorandum from Léonidas Rusatira (17 Nov. 1990) (Subject: “Note d’appréciation de l’Assistance Militaire
française au Rwanda”).
195
Memorandum from Athanase Gasake to Juvénal Habyarimana (31 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien du General
Varret”).
196
Memorandum from Athanase Gasake to Juvénal Habyarimana (31 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien du General
Varret”).
197
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (8 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
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October 1990
198
Cable from American Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State (2 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Invaders Consolidate
Hold on Rwandan Territories: GOR Prepares for Second Offensive”). The cable states that “Belgium has pledged
assistance in the form of munitions which should arrive in the next 24 hours.” US Defense Intelligence Brief (24 Oct.
1990) (Subject: “War in Rwanda: Troubling Implications for the Region”) (“By 4 October the rebel attack had bogged
down in the northeast, and the Rwandan government pulled its para-commando and one infantry battalion, now low
on munitions, back to the capital of Kigali. In addition, the FAR was bolstered by the arrival of two plane loads of
Belgian munitions.”).
199
Duclert Commission Report 51 (quoting AN/PR-EMP, AG/5(4)/12456, Note from Colonel Huchon to the President
of the Republic under cover of the Secretary General, 16 October 1990. Rwanda. Update on the situation).
200
Memorandum from Jean-Christophe Mitterrand to François Mitterrand (16 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au
Rwanda”).
201
Memorandum from Jean-Christophe Mitterrand to François Mitterrand (16 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au
Rwanda”).
202
Memorandum from Jean-Christophe Mitterrand to François Mitterrand (16 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au
Rwanda”).
203
Memorandum from Jean-Christophe Mitterrand to François Mitterrand (16 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au
Rwanda”).
204
Memorandum from Claude Arnaud to François Mitterrand (18 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président
Habyarimana Jeudi 18 Octobre 1990 à 18h30”).
205
Memorandum from French Ministry of Cooperation (22 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aide logistique –
historique”); Memorandum from Jean Varret to the French Ministry of Cooperation and Development (27 May 1992)
(Subject: “Compte rendu de mission au Rwanda et au Burundi”) (enclosing document titled “Principales actions de la
MMC au profit des FAR depuis octobre 1990”) (noting that direct aid, which had been set at 4 MF “for many years,
reached 8.34 MF in 1991” and that “[t]he effort made is continued in the current financial year”).
206
MIP Tome I 180-81.
207
MIP Tome I 179.
208
François Graner, Entretien avec l’amiral Jacques Lanxade [Interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade], in LA NUIT
100 (2016). Mitterrand named Lanxade his chief military advisor in 1989. The president would later
elevate him to chief of defense staff.
RWANDAISE
209
François Graner, Entretien avec l’amiral Jacques Lanxade [Interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade], in LA NUIT
100 (2016).
RWANDAISE
210
François Graner, Entretien avec l’amiral Jacques Lanxade [Interview with Admiral Jacques Lanxade], in LA NUIT
100 (2016).
RWANDAISE
211
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Rwanda – Situation”).
212
Belgian Senate Report 83 (1997).
213
Belgian Senate Report 83 (1997).
214
Memorandum from Anatole Nsengiyumva (15 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Exploitation d’un rapport”).
215
Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
216
Belgian Senate Report 698 (1997) (citing Audition of Colonel Vincent, Head of the Coopération Technique
Militaire (CTM) in Rwanda). Colonel Vincent stated, “[I]n October 1990, the war broke out and relations chilled.
Belgian technical and military cooperation was relegated to a figurative role.” The Belgian Report continued, saying
that “Colonel Vincent even [went] so far as to specify that the officers and non-commissioned officers were doing
‘little or nothing’ and that they hoped that ‘the peace process would break the situation’s deadlock.’ In light of all of
the above, the [Belgian] commission question[ed] the appropriateness of maintaining the CTM.”
217
Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
218
Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
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Chapter II
219
October 1990
Meeting Notes (17 Oct. 1990).
220
Cable from Georges Martres (24 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”). The year 1960 was when Congo
achieved independence from Belgium and then descended into civil war. See, e.g., The Congo, Decolonization, and
the
Cold
War,
1960-1965, US DEPARTMENT OF STATE OFFICE OF THE HISTORIAN,
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/congo-decolonization (last visited 18 Nov. 2020).
221
André Kamyea, Interview avec l’ambassadeur de France au Rwanda [Interview with the French Ambassador to
Rwanda], in RWANDA RUSHYA (1991).
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CHAPTER III
November 1990 - June 1991
A. Noroît Troops Remained to Deter the RPF Military, Despite Mitterrand’s Claims That
French Troops Were in Rwanda Solely to Evacuate French Citizens.
The presence of our troops, even reduced, no longer only appears as a
guarantee of security for the expatriate population, but also as an indirect
reassuring factor for the entire country. Many believe that [Noroît’s]
presence reassures Rwandans as much as foreigners. The Noroît operation
thus increasingly tends to be placed in a new light.1
– Georges Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
When the troops of Operation Noroît touched down in Kigali on 4 October 1990, there
were an estimated 750 French nationals in Rwanda.2 By 12 October, Noroît had evacuated 313 of
them,3 presumably all those who wished to leave, as the French government’s evacuation order
was not mandatory.4 But the Noroît troops showed no sign of leaving.
At a 15 October press conference, a journalist pressed President Mitterrand for an
explanation: “All the French nationals who were in danger [in Rwanda] have been evacuated. What
still justifies today the mission of the French troops on the ground?”5 Mitterrand answered without
answering: “France sent two companies that permitted the evacuation of the French and of a
number of foreigners who placed themselves under our protection. . . . These troops had no other
mission but that one, and once this mission is completed, of course, they will return to France.”6
As noted in Chapter 2, Admiral Lanxade had already, by that point, recommended that
President Mitterrand withdraw one of the two Noroît companies, expressing concern in an 11
October memorandum that allegations of “serious acts of violence against the population,” at the
hands of the regime that France was supporting, might surface in the media.7 His recommendation
was not heeded. Both Noroît companies stayed in Rwanda. By 20 October, the operation’s 314
soldiers and tactical staff exceeded the estimated number of French nationals remaining in the
country.8
Pleas from President Habyarimana, who “called President Mitterrand every week asking
him especially not to, above all, withdraw French forces,”9 found a sympathetic ear. After
Mitterrand and Habyarimana spoke on 18 October, Habyarimana followed up with a letter of
gratitude: “I was pleased with your reassurances regarding the friendship and support that France
grants and will continue to grant Rwanda.”10 A week after he met with Mitterrand, Habyarimana
lobbied Ambassador Martres, who reported that Habyarimana’s “main concern” at the meeting
was to know what France would do after the Belgians departed.11 “President Mitterrand . . .
promised me he would not abandon Rwanda,”12 Habyarimana told Martres. The ambassador
wrote, “[I] confirmed to him that we were doing everything in our power to help him,” referring
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Chapter III
November 1990 – June 1991
in particular to a delivery of artillery shells and spare parts for armored vehicles to the Rwandan
Army.13
The RPF took France to task for continuing to intervene on behalf of a regime that had
committed “massacres and unbearable cruelty,” asserting in a 6 November press release:
The Rwandan Patriotic Front is entitled to ask the French authorities not to play a
double game. . . . Why do the declared defenders of “human rights,” the “free
world” and “democracy” feel the need to trample on all of these values [just] to
lend a strong hand to a dictatorial, racist and bloodthirsty regime?14
Admiral Lanxade continued, in late October 1990, to recommend a phased withdrawal of
the Noroît contingent.15 Other French officials made similar recommendations. On 30 October, a
researcher at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ analysis center (the Centre d’analyse et de prévision,
or CAP) argued that France’s policy of backing the current Rwandan authorities was
unsustainable, as it would, among other things, “support the arrests, executions and massacres that
the government of Juvénal Habyarimana will carry out in order to break not only the Rwandan
Patriotic Front but also its potential sociological base (the Tutsi minority) and Hutu opposition.”16
Predicting more trouble ahead if French forces remain, the researcher recommended that Noroît
be withdrawn “as soon as circumstances allow.”17
Soon afterward, on 9 November, Colonel Jean-Claude Thomann, who briefly took over
command of Noroît forces from Col. René Galinié, from mid-October into December 1990,
advocated a phased withdrawal of the entire Noroît force over the following month.18 Thomann’s
assessment was that the FAR, despite some “tactical blunders,” was in a position of strength.19
“Unless there is a new development or a major element that has escaped analysis . . . we can assume
that there is no longer a large-scale military threat,” he wrote.20
The French government proceeded with a partial withdrawal in November 1990,
repatriating half of its forces.21 Preparations were soon under way to withdraw the rest of the
contingent,22 though not without some pushback. Ambassador Martres, who was well aware of the
Rwandan government’s human rights abuses,23 wrote to Paris at the end of November, “The
presence of our troops, even reduced, no longer only appears as a guarantee of security for the
expatriate population, but also as an indirect reassuring factor for the entire country.”24 He added,
“Many believe that this presence reassures Rwandans as much as foreigners. The Noroît operation
thus increasingly tends to be placed in a new light.”25
In the end, events outside Rwanda caused France to withdraw some Noroît troops—
namely, France’s armed forces were stretched thin due to its military involvement in the Persian
Gulf, where France was part of a coalition challenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.26
Once he learned of the intended withdrawal, Habyarimana did not mince words, calling it an
“abandonment.”27 It is unclear whether Habyarimana’s objection was the impetus, but on 15
December, only one of the two Noroît companies withdrew, on orders from France’s highest
office: “By decision of President of the Republic François Mitterrand,” the second company would
remain in Rwanda “beyond the term originally planned.”28
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Chapter III
November 1990 – June 1991
B. Early Warnings by a Senior French Official That Rwandan Leaders Had Genocidal Aims
Did Not Alter French Policy and May Have Caused the Élysée to Marginalize the French
Official.
My reports and diplomatic telegrams were for nearly three months
unambiguous: I stressed the risks of a massacre of the Tutsis. I became
aware, gradually, that my messages embarrassed a military “lobby” for
whom the enemy to be fought was the Tutsis’ RPF.29
– Jean Varret, Head of the Military Cooperation Mission
(1990 –1993)
While Habyarimana fretted about a possible “abandonment,” he could take comfort in
knowing that one Noroît company still remained, and that a smaller contingent of French troops—
the Military Assistance Mission (MAM) officers advising the Rwandan Gendarmerie (i.e., the
national police) and several elite FAR units—had actually taken on additional duties since the start
of the war. A French captain named Christian Refalo was now working not only with the paracommando battalion, but the reconnaissance battalion as well,30 retraining the latter on the use of
MILAN anti-tank guided missiles.31 In December 1990, Refalo and a French colleague worked
with FAR officials to create an intelligence unit within the para-commando battalion.32 Refalo
vowed to “do everything they could, unconditionally to ensure thorough and effective training.”33
This intelligence unit would soon function as a “front line observer of RPF movements into
Rwandan territory” and would direct mortar fire on enemy troops.34 (Soldiers in both the
reconnaissance and para-commando battalions would go on to commit atrocities in the early days
of the Genocide.35)
The network of French military assistance missions in Africa (including the mission in
Kigali) was under new leadership that fall. General Jean Varret, a veteran of multiple military
operations in Africa, had volunteered to take over as head of the Military Cooperation Mission
(MCM)—the office within the Ministry of Cooperation that supervised France’s military
partnerships with its African allies—just as the war in Rwanda was starting, in October 1990.36
Two months later, in mid-December 1990, Varret paid a visit to Kigali to inspect the French
assistance mission there.37
Newsstands in the Rwandan capital that month bore startling evidence of the anti-Tutsi
animus that had been increasingly pervading local public discourse since the war began. The
December 1990 issue of Kangura, a bimonthly newspaper whose name, in Kinyarwanda, meant
“Wake Them Up,” featured a noxious and soon-to-be-notorious manifesto under the heading, “Ten
Commandments of the Bahutu.”38 Published in French, the “Ten Commandments” admonished
Hutu, on threat of being “deemed a traitor,” to avoid consorting with Tutsi women; to know that
“all Tutsis are dishonest in their business dealings” and “are only seeking ethnic supremacy”; and
to reserve Armed Forces membership, and dominance in politics and education, for Hutu. This
“ideology must be taught to Hutus at all levels,” the commandments concluded. “Hutus must cease
having any pity for the Tutsi.”39
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Chapter III
November 1990 – June 1991
Founded in May 1990, Kangura was privately run—it was the brainchild of journalist
Hassan Ngeze (later convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, or ICTR, for,
among other things, inciting the Genocide through Kangura)—but it also benefited from close ties
to some of the Habyarimana era’s most powerful state officials.40 Its early backers were rumored
to include Augustin Nduwayezu, the “charming but deadly” former chief of Rwanda’s national
intelligence services.41 Though ICTR prosecutors were unable, ultimately, to conclusively
establish that the government had bankrolled Kangura, they presented evidence “suggesting that
financial support for Kangura came from the government, and more specifically from” one of
Nduwayezu’s successors as chief of the intelligence services,42 Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva, as well
as Robert Kajuga, the president of the Interahamwe, and Joseph Nzirorera, the minister for public
works and trade and the executive secretary of the MRND. (Habyarimana called Nzirorera—who
was notoriously corrupt, a lavish spender, and often drunk in public—his “rogue minister.”43) All
three of those men would go on to play a central role in the Genocide.
The publication of the “Ten Commandments” caught Ambassador Martres’ attention. A
few weeks after the Kangura issue appeared on newsstands, the ambassador wrote a letter to the
French foreign minister in which he “feebly denounce[d] the ‘excessive nature [of these] ‘ten
commandments,’ none of which leaves room for dialogue with the opposing clan, in any area
whatsoever.”44 Martres noted in a separate report that the article’s “racist language, reminiscent of
the worst anathemas of Nazi anti-Semitism, is finding an increasingly sympathetic audience” in
Rwanda, particularly among the ranks of the Rwandan army, where, he said, it received “almost
unanimous approval.”45
The depravity within the upper ranks of the Rwandan military would reveal itself during
General Varret’s December 1990 visit to Kigali. Among the Rwandan government officials Varret
met during his brief stay, one was shockingly blunt: Colonel Pierre-Célestin Rwagafilita, the
deputy chief of staff of the Gendarmerie (the national police) and a cousin of Agathe Kanziga
Habyarimana, the president’s wife and a central figure in the Akazu. First, Rwagafilita asked
Varret for heavy weapons. Varret demurred, “[T]he Gendarmerie’s mission is to maintain order
within the country and . . . this type of weaponry is reserved for the Army.”46
Rwagafilita then asked if he could speak to Varret in private. When they were one-on-one,
Rwagafilita said:
We’re between soldiers and I will speak to you more clearly than in diplomatic
terms. The Gendarmerie needs these weapons because it will participate in solving
our problem with the Tutsis: they are very few, we will liquidate them and that will
go very quickly.47
It is striking that a Rwandan military official felt secure enough in his sense of French backing to
confide such inflammatory intentions to his French counterpart. Varret was horrified by
Rwagafilita’s statement and relayed it the next day in a meeting with President Habyarimana at
which Ambassador Martres and Col. Galinié, the French defense attaché, were also present.48 On
hearing what Rwagafilita had said, Habyarimana grew angry and promised to dismiss him.49 But
Rwagafilita remained in his job.50
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It was not only Rwagafilita who caused Varret concern. As Varret wrote in a 2018 memoir,
“Colonel Serubuga, whom I met at each of my missions in his country, was more diplomatic in his
remarks, but I could read between the lines that genocide was one of the solutions being
considered.”51 Varret’s unease was confirmed by strong local intelligence from Col. René Galinié,
who, in Varret’s words, “used the [investigative] methods of the Gendarmerie,” that is, of a good
policeman.52 “To be well informed,” Varret told a French journalist, “[Galinié] had interlocutors
everywhere, including members of religious communities,”53 which offered particularly reliable
insight into what people were really thinking. Varret explained that Galinié “told [him,] in essence,
‘There is a danger… in Rwanda, of politico-ethnic violence and massacres. And this time, the risk
is very high.’ We both quickly used the phrase ‘danger of genocide.’” 54
Galinié told the MIP that he had warned of the threat of ethnic violence as early as January
1990. And more than one of his cables, which Ambassador Martres co-signed, reflect as much.56
In his memoir, Varret elaborated on the alarm he sounded:
55
My reports and diplomatic telegrams were for nearly three months unambiguous: I
stressed the risks of a massacre of the Tutsis. I became aware, gradually, that my
messages embarrassed a military “lobby” for whom the enemy to be fought was the
Tutsis’ RPF.57
As the French journalist Jean-François Dupaquier has noted, “successive French governments and
presidents since 1990 have so far refused to declassify two notes written by [Varret]”: one sent on
14 December 1990, the day after Varret met with Rwagafilita, and another on 17 December,
following the conclusion of his trip.58
Varret also recalled having raised his concerns about Rwanda in meetings to discuss French
military-cooperation missions that brought together representatives of the chief of staff of French
Armed Forces, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the President’s special chief of staff (the top
military adviser in the Élysée—Admiral Jacques Lanxade, and then, in mid-1991, after Lanxade
was named chief of defense staff, General Christian Quesnot).59 When Rwanda came up, Varret
says, the others present regularly urged Varret to “send more cooperants, more money.”60 In
response, Varret recalled, “I stalled every time. . . . [E]very time I said no!”61 Varret tried to limit
France’s military entanglement; for instance, he kept French judicial police training of Rwandan
gendarmes to a minimum.62 Varret told his colleagues that he opposed French support because he
feared it would lead to massacres.63 As a result, he says that he became “a nuisance for some
people.”64 In 1993, Varret was dismissed from his position and replaced by an anti-RPF hardliner,
Gen. Jean-Pierre Huchon.
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C. After the Habyarimana Regime Retaliated against an RPF Military Attack by Massacring
Tutsi Civilians, French Officials Increased French Military Support for the Regime.
We are at the edge of the English-speaking front. Uganda cannot allow itself
to do just anything and everything. We must tell President Museveni: it’s
not normal that the Tutsi minority wants to impose its rule over the [Hutu]
majority.65
– François Mitterrand, President of France (1981 – 1995)
By January 1991, French officials believed the RPF’s threat had dwindled sufficiently for
the French government to reduce its military footprint. On 2 January 1991, the chief of staff of the
French army, General Maurice Schmitt, recommended the withdrawal of the one remaining Noroît
company.66 Admiral Lanxade, Mitterrand’s top military adviser, was of the same mind. In a 2
January note to the president, Lanxade acknowledged “President Habyarimana’s concerns,” but
noted that the “situation is calm in the interior.”67 As reassurance, he added that France could
“maintain a company on a twelve-hour alert in Bangui [in the Central African Republic, where
France kept troops poised for rapid reaction to conflicts in Africa].”68 President Mitterrand rejected
the recommendation. “Yes,” he wrote by hand, “but I would favorably consider delaying the
departure of the company stationed in Kigali. At least for one month.”69
Emboldened by continuing French military support, the Rwandan government resisted
diplomatic and political engagement with the RPF. For example, when Rwandan government
officials met with regional leaders at a conference held in Zaire to discuss how to address the
Rwandan refugee problem, the RPF was denied a seat at the table at the request of President
Habyarimana.70 Without political recourse, the RPF resolved to take its case back to the only forum
that demanded the regime’s attention: the battlefield. In the preceding several months, the RPF
military had evolved from a fledgling force whose commanders were disoriented by Fred
Rwigema’s death71 to a disciplined guerrilla army under the leadership of Paul Kagame,72 who had
spent years in the NRA and the RPF Military with Rwigema.73 On 23 January, RPF troops attacked
Ruhengeri, a government stronghold and one of the key cities in President Habyarimana’s region
of influence.74 As Kagame would explain to author Steven Kinzer, the RPF intended the Ruhengeri
offensive to free political prisoners, seize FAR weapons, and
to bring to the world and the government news of our continued existence, not only
our existence but also that we had the capability carry out such a significant raid on
the forces of Rwanda. . . . And of course, that would also result in some significant
establishment of ourselves in that particular area, a totally new sector, and that would
help us in fighting the war.”75
France knew of the RPF’s attack on Ruhengeri the day it happened.76 President Mitterrand
immediately authorized French action to protect expatriates,77 and over the next 24 hours Noroît
troops evacuated 185 people from Ruhengeri to Kigali.78 Admiral Lanxade again tried to keep
France’s military operations limited by proposing that France leave it to the Rwandan government
to “try to get the rebels to leave,” while France would focus, instead, on “getting our nationals
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back.”79 He failed to convince President Mitterrand, who proceeded to neatly summarize France’s
interest in the Rwandan conflict, as he perceived it:
We cannot limit our presence.
We are at the edge of the English-speaking front. Uganda cannot allow itself to do
just anything and everything. We must tell President Museveni: it’s not normal that
the Tutsi minority wants to impose its rule over the [Hutu] majority. 80
Habyarimana promptly used the Ruhengeri attack to pressure the French government to
return a second Noroît company to Kigali.81 Mitterrand withheld his assent to redeploy a second
company but, in a 30 January letter to President Habyarimana, committed to maintaining the one
company that remained in Rwanda “provisionally, and for a length of time bound to the situation’s
development.”82 Mitterrand used the opportunity to push Habyarimana for reforms, specifying that
French troops would remain “during this period while the policy of openness you announced is
being put into place, and while the conference on the refugees is being prepared for.”83
Habyarimana was proving, though, that his “policy of openness” was no more than a
façade. On 25 January, two days after the RPF attack on Ruhengeri, his regime resorted to the
same retaliatory tactic it had deployed in October: slaughter of Tutsi civilians. Local authorities in
the Ruhengeri region organized attacks against the Bagogwe, a pastoral Tutsi subgroup that made
its home in the area.84 In the three weeks that followed, “five hundred to a thousand people
belonging to the Bagogwe ethnic group . . . were massacred by the [FAR] and Hutu civilians.”85
Government representatives, from the bourgmestre (mayor) of a local commune to Army soldiers,
directed and committed the atrocities.86
Béatrice Nikuze87
Béatrice was born in 1967. She lived in Kucikiro.
Then people started having meetings, but peasants like us didn’t know that
they were dangerous. We never thought anything bad would come out of the Hutus
or the Tutsis. Although I’d seen some of the Hutu’s deeds in the 1970’s, by then I’d
forgotten everything. I couldn’t differentiate between the Hutus and the Tutsis
because they used to be very sociable and intermarry. Later on, I knew all about the
political parties, and some parties joined together and started fighting against
others. It was all very confusing, especially for the peasants.
...
We’d been there [in Kicukiro—ed.] for two months when President
Habyarimana died in the plane crash [on 6 April 1994—ed.]. After his death, a priest
called Patrice told us to go to ETO school [Ecole Technique Officielle]. When we got
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there, a group of people—including Mr. John from Nyakabanda—came and took
my husband, seemingly to collect some property he had left at home. Nevertheless,
I knew they were going to kill him because these were the people who had hunted
him in the past. Later, a lady called Bibi came crying to me and said, “Your husband
Masabo was murdered along with a boy called Ndohera. John killed them.”
We remained at ETO under the protection of United Nations forces, but after
a short time the police came and told the UN soldiers there was no need for them
to continue guarding us. The police said they would ensure our safety themselves.
The UN forces packed up and left us at the mercy of the mob.
As soon as they left, the policemen took us to Sonatubes [Société Nationale des
Tubes, a factory and the surrounding area] where we stayed a short time. A man
called Rusatira came and said, “Take the garbage to Nyanza” [where there was a
waste tip on the outskirts of Kigali]. By ‘garbage,’ he meant us. Many people started
showing their identity cards claiming that they were Hutus, and the police started
sorting out the Hutus and letting them go. The rest of us were taken to Nyanza.
When we were taken to Sonatubes, my brothers and some other boys had
been kept behind at the parish. Whilst we were in the factory, my older brother
came running and told me that the rest of them had all been killed. They had hacked
him as well, but he was still able to run away although he was bleeding. The others
had been thrown into a pit.
So we were taken to Nyanza. I was still with my Mum then, but my husband
had already been taken. There were so many people going to Nyanza. On the way
there, we were stopped at Kicukiro centre because there was a traffic jam. In front,
there were military tanks surrounded by lnterahamwe . . . with machetes and clubs.
Some of them suggested we should be killed there at the centre, but it was later
agreed that we would be taken to Nyanza for execution. In fact, many people were
killed on the way; others were kidnapped and taken to an unknown destination.
When we reached Nyanza, they gathered us in one place and started
throwing grenades at us. After many people had been killed and others injured,
their leader said there was no need to waste their ammunition. He said machetes
and clubs would easily execute us because we were wounded and very weak.
But before killing us, they first sorted out the young, energetic boys and men,
and killed them right away. Then, instead of killing us in small groups, they finally
decided to do it all at once. They started hacking us. But around 2:30 in the
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afternoon, they got tired. They had taken us there at around eight or nine in the
morning. That was when I managed to crawl towards a nearby bush with my child.
My mother hadn’t been injured, but she had passed out when Nyiramutangwa was
killed on top of her.
I crawled slowly and finally reached the bush, although I had already been
hacked on the head and back. But after the lnterahamwe had killed all people on
the field, they surrounded the bush, looking for those who were in hiding. They
shouted, “Come out and join the others.” Then we were put on the field with the
corpses, and they started killing. People were screaming in agony; babies being
hacked to death; young women being raped and murdered . . . . I remember Oliva
who was murdered so maliciously. She was raped first, then tortured to death. It
was a horrible scene. And Cécile, who was accused of going to visit the RPF. A
soldier called John told Cécile, “I’ll kill you myself.” And he did horrible things to
her. I could hear her crying for help from where I was.
After reports of ethnic violence in the area,88 on 4 February, President Habyarimana,
without acknowledging the massacres, let alone his government’s role in them, disingenuously
announced in a speech before the Rwandan parliament that he would not tolerate ethnic killings.89
US cables noted the violence and the President’s speech.90 Although the French government has
not made public any documents reflecting contemporaneous knowledge of the Bagogwe
massacres, given Col. Galinié’s intelligence network,91 it is difficult to believe that the United
States, but not France, would have known of them at the time. (If they did not know
contemporaneously, French officials knew by the summer, when media reports, primarily out of
Belgium, insinuated that the Habyarimana government and the Rwandan Armed Forces were
accomplices to the killings.92 French military support would proceed unaffected by these
accounts.)
The RPF military staged a follow-up attack on Ruhengeri on 2 February,93 effectively
snuffing out any remaining illusions that the FAR were headed for a quick victory. After that,
Admiral Lanxade changed his position on continuing the French military presence in Rwanda and
conceded in a note to President Mitterrand that removing the final Noroît company was “hardly
conceivable.”94 Instead, Lanxade recommended replacing the company with 30 fresh military
trainers who would travel to the Ruhengeri-Gisenyi area to “toughen” the Rwandan military
apparatus.95 Lanxade also recommended that French combat aircraft fly in a “visible” way over
“sensitive Rwandan regions.”96 With a handwritten “yes,” Mitterrand approved.97
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D. Mitterrand Escalated French Military Support by Sending Military Trainers to Ruhengeri
and, against Counsel from His Military Advisors, by Keeping the Last Noroît Company in
Kigali.
These decisions would provide some assistance to President Habyarimana
and would remove any ambiguity towards President Museveni. However,
they carry the risk of being interpreted by the Rwandan authorities as
unconditional support for their policy.98
– Jacques Lanxade, Chief Military Advisor (1989 – 1991),
Chief of Defense Staff (1991 – 1995)
France acted quickly on Lanxade’s recommendation to send a new detachment of military
advisors (the French acronym is DAMI, short for Détachement d’assistance militaire d’instruction
or Military Instruction Assistance Detachment, in English), who arrived in Rwanda on 22 March
1991.99 One stated reason for this deployment was the security of French nationals in the Ruhengeri
area. Many of those French nationals who had been evacuated to Kigali after the RPF Army’s
attacks occupied key positions in non-governmental organizations and other civil society groups,
and French officials viewed their presence in the Ruhengeri area as “vital for getting the country’s
economy back on track.”100 If France did not want them to abandon their development missions in
the area,101 as Admiral Lanxade wrote President Mitterrand in early February, the deployment of
the DAMI unit to train the FAR units at the front could make a difference for security. (Noroît
troops were based in Kigali and ventured into the war zone only—or at least, primarily—for
evacuation operations.)
But as with Noroît, the concern for French expatriates was hardly the only motivation. As
the MIP reported, the decision was related to France’s refusal to accede to President
Habyarimana’s “constantly asking for France’s direct military engagement.”102 As an alternative,
a 1 February 1991 memo from the Directorate for African Affairs in the French Foreign Ministry
“indicated that France could help [Habyarimana] deal with any threat in the northern area of the
country by sending a detachment of fifteen men of the 1st RPIMA [a French special forces unit] to
Ruhengeri on a cooperation mission to train the Rwandan battalion stationed in this city.”103
Lanxade, however, was concerned that deploying the DAMI while keeping the remaining
Noroît company in place could be “interpreted by the Rwandan authorities as unconditional
support for their policy.”104 He urged Mitterrand to advise Habyarimana that France was extending
this support “in order to facilitate [Habyarimana’s] policy of openness towards the internal
opposition and [his] attention to the refugee issue.”105 Lanxade, like several other French officials,
suggested that to end the conflict, it was necessary both to strengthen the Habyarimana regime and
resolve the refugee crisis.106 Lanxade did not consider the imperative of reforming the governing
system that had produced the refugee issue in the first place.
It is easy to understand why the idea of sending the DAMI appealed to French
policymakers: secrecy and efficiency. The DAMI had a smaller footprint than Operation Noroît
(30 vs. 160 troops, respectively),107 and, unlike the Noroît troops, which were generally confined
to the capital,108 the DAMI would work directly with FAR troops nearer the combat zone, advising
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high-ranking officers on tactical matters, helping battalion commanders reorganize their units, and
training soldiers to use heavy weapons and explosives.109 (A “proposed directive” from General
Schmitt, the chief of staff of France’s army, called for DAMI officers to also “provide information
on the local situation [in Ruhengeri], limited to the passive collection of information.”110)
One potential complication, as Ambassador Martres conceded to the MIP, was that, much
like Noroît, the DAMI deployment “lacked a legal basis.”111 The 1975 military assistance
agreement between France and Rwanda had authorized France to provide military assistance as
“necessary for the organization and the training of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.”112 The agreement
had not authorized assistance to Rwanda’s army, and though the French government had quickly
proceeded, regardless, to provide technical assistance to the entire Rwandan Armed Forces,113 it
had, on at least one occasion in the early 1980s, declined the Rwandan authorities’ entreaties to
legitimate this practice through a formal amendment.114 This state of affairs left both Noroît and
the DAMI on shaky ground, as a legal matter (a lapse that French officials would not attempt to
rectify until mid-1992, after a cease-fire agreement between the Rwandan government and the RPF
threatened to force France to withdraw its forces).115
For all these reasons, the rollout of the DAMI Panda, as it was known, was purposefully
low-key. French officials had no intention of announcing it publicly116 and alerted Habyarimana
of the deployment less than a week before the DAMI arrived in Kigali.117 Martres was directed to
ask Habyarimana to show the same discretion.118
On 29 March 1991, the day after the DAMI arrived outside Ruhengeri, the Rwandan
government and the RPF reached a cease-fire in N’Sele, Zaire.119 The cease-fire was a milestone
for two reasons other than the cessation of hostilities: 1) Rwanda agreed to the withdrawal of
foreign troops (with the exception of military cooperants such as the ones who were present in
Rwanda when the conflict began) as soon as a neutral military observer group was in place,120 and
2) Rwanda conferred an unprecedented level of recognition on the RPF. None of the declarations
or communiqués that had emerged from previous summits had even mentioned the RPF by name.
Here, though, was a document on official Republic of Zaire letterhead bearing the RPF’s name
and, further down, the signature of Paul Kagame, right alongside that of Habyarimana’s Foreign
Minister Bizimungu.121 To RPF leaders, it was as though the Rwandan government had conceded
that it was at war with fellow Rwandans rather than with Uganda.122
While the N’Sele cease-fire would fall apart “almost immediately,”123 Col. Galinié, who
as head of the Military Assistance Mission (MAM) in Kigali had supervisory authority over the
detachment,124 nonetheless urged Paris to confine the DAMI to a four-month deployment and to
end Operation Noroît.125 In a 4 April report, Galinié relayed his concern that maintaining the
increase in French military assistance beyond the pre-October 1990 level would empower
opponents of reform in Habyarimana’s regime, in particular the deputy chief of staff of the
Gendarmerie, Col. Pierre-Celestin Rwagafilita (who had shocked Gen. Varret with his plan to
liquidate Tutsi126) and the deputy chief of staff of the Army, Col. Laurent Serubuga.127 “It is
important, in this very unstable context,” Galinié wrote, “to evaluate our presence, especially with
the État-Major of the Rwandan Army, [the institution] where a good number of conservative
officers are grouped around Serubuga.”128 Galinié advocated a phased withdrawal in which the
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Noroît troops would leave first, followed by the DAMI in July 1991, allowing France to “gradually
return to the type of cooperation” it had provided Rwanda before the war.129
Galinié’s advice would be ignored. Both the DAMI and Noroît troops would remain in
Rwanda for two and a half more years, and the position of the senior FAR opponents of reform—
as Galinié foresaw—would strengthen.
In the meantime, DAMI personnel took a central role in the reinvention and guidance of
an often-ineffective military force. A massive wartime recruitment drive—the FAR now
outnumbered the RPF Army 10-1, according to estimates130—had bloated the FAR’s ranks with,
in the words of one author, “[a] vast pool of unemployed, uneducated young men [who] were
easily attracted to a job that gave them regular pay, clothing, food and two bottles of beer a day.”131
Once enlisted, they received barely any training.132 Some committed war crimes.133 In one
especially egregious case, French technical advisers working with the Rwandan Gendarmerie
learned that a recruit had killed three civilians with his service weapon and disappeared.134
The DAMI’s assessment of its first trainees—the FAR battalion based in Gitarama, in
central Rwanda—was bleak.135 Lieutenant Colonel Gilles Chollet, the DAMI commander,
reported that the officers “are not very good, nor very motivated, and above all do not lead by
example.”136 The soldiers were no better. Many did not know how to use their weapons and, in
fact, were too afraid of hurting themselves to be effective in close combat.137 They also disregarded
safety instructions during training exercises, nearly shooting three French instructors.138 Col.
Galinié, summarizing the findings in Lt. Col. Chollet’s report, described the general level of the
troops in that unit as “poor in all areas and at all levels.”139
French advisors were pivotal to FAR offensives in the spring of 1991. That April, Lt. Col.
Gilbert Canovas, the French officer advising the senior leadership of the FAR, and Captain
Christian Refalo, a MAM officer advising the FAR’s para-commando battalion, accompanied
Major Ephrem Rwabalinda, the FAR’s chief of operations, on a trip to Ruhengeri.140 (Rwabalinda
would meet with Gen. Jean-Pierre Huchon, Gen. Varret’s replacement as the head of France’s
Military Cooperation Mission with African allies, in Paris during the Genocide.141) The FAR, at
this point, had reportedly surrounded RPF military elements in the mountains that form the border
between northwestern Rwanda, Zaire, and Uganda.142 Rwabalinda’s field commanders told him
that the para-commando battalion would have to take up the mission, as FAR units closer to the
zone had been “traumatized” by past RPF Army’s ambushes.143 Rwabablinda urged Canovas and
Refalo to be on hand for the operation’s launch the next day.144 Whether or not they appeared, one
former FAR captain told French writers Benoît Collombat and David Servenay that in 1991 he
received training from DAMI soldiers that was “coupled with an ‘advice’ component, directly on
the front line” in the volcanos region (meaning the same area where Rwabalinda carried out his
mission) to instruct the FAR on troop placement: “This company, put yourself here rather than
there.”145 Such tactical advice had the potential to boost FAR performance and morale enormously,
offering yet another example of the ways in which France became a co-belligerent. The offensive
proved successful, with news outlets reporting that government forces drove the rebels “back into
Uganda” after several hours of fighting.146
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By late April, Admiral Lanxade reported to President Mitterrand, “The situation is calm
throughout the country except at the northwest border, where the zone near Uganda remains
subjected to harassment from Ugandan-Tutsi rebels.”147 Lanxade credited French “technical
assistance in training the Rwandan forces,” which he claimed was “starting to yield noticeable
results,” in particular near Ruhengeri, where, he said, it was “difficult to foresee another rebel
raid.”148 He also considered Kigali to be “out of danger,” and advised that “the maintenance of the
French [Noroît] company is no longer militarily justified. This maintenance could even appear
contrary to the provisions of the ceasefire, which stipulate the withdrawal of foreign troops.”149
Presidential adviser Gilles Vidal, briefing Mitterrand in advance of a 23 April 1991
meeting with President Habyarimana in Paris, made a similar point, noting that Noroît would have
to withdraw as soon as a neutral group of military observers was in place to monitor the ceasefire.150 The neutral observer group was still not operational, but Vidal suggested that Mitterrand
could prepare Habyarimana for Noroît’s withdrawal.151
Mitterrand, it seems, did not deliver this message to Habyarimana at their meeting in Paris.
A summary drafted by Rwandan Foreign Minister Casimir Bizimungu contains no direct reference
to a Noroît withdrawal.152 (It does mention, without elaboration, that Mitterrand wanted to know
from Habyarimana to which ethnic group Ugandan President Museveni and Zaire’s Mobutu
belonged.153) Instead, Mitterrand pledged to provide additional support to the Rwandan
military,154 acceding to virtually all of the requests Rwandan Army officials had put forward in a
meeting the previous week with Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Canovas, the French adviser to the
Rwandan Army état-major (general staff).155 Most notably, the French president assured
Habyarimana he would make the DAMI “permanent.”156 He also promised that France would
continue to provide an adviser to the Army état-major even after Canovas’ tour concluded.157
The Noroît troops did not leave Rwanda, as Col. Galinié and Admiral Lanxade had advised.
In a 20 June 1991 note to President Mitterrand, General Christian Quesnot—who replaced
Lanxade as Mitterrand’s top military adviser in April,158 after Lanxade was promoted to chief of
defense staff159—praised the DAMI, which, he said, was providing French nationals with “much
sought-after security,” and recommended keeping it in Rwanda “for some time to come.”160 But
General Quesnot’s view of Operation Noroît was similar to his predecessor’s. With the odds of a
successful RPF military offensive in the capital looking increasingly remote, “the permanent
presence of the French company in Kigali is no longer militarily justified,” he wrote.161 This was
not only his view, he said, but the view of the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry, and the
president’s Africa advisors.162 President Mitterrand’s position, however, remained the same. “No,”
he wrote. “Do not withdraw our troops yet. Discuss this with me.”163
A month later, when Ambassador Martres was asked whether the continued presence of
Operation Noroît troops was in violation of the N’Sele agreement, Martres did not cite ongoing
hostilities or difficulties in standing up the neutral military observer group as the reason French
troops were still in Rwanda. Rather, the ambassador said, “We did not sign the N’Sele Agreement,
and we cannot, therefore, go against it.”164 Martres may have been correct in a narrow literal sense,
but in terms of policy and ethics, the comment reflected a disregard for a peace agreement reached
by the conflict’s actual parties.
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Notes to Chapter III
1
MIP Tome I 135.
2
Duclert Commission Report 49 (quoting AN/PR-EMP, AG/5(4)/12456. Note from Admiral Lanxade to the President
of the Republic, 2 October 1990. Rwanda - Offensives by foreign armed forces); but see MIP Tome I 132-33
(indicating that French troops evacuated 313 French nationals between 5 and 12 October 1990, leaving 290 French
nationals in Rwanda).
3
MIP Tome I 133.
4
Envoi d’un deuxième détachement militaire français au Rwanda [Dispatch of a Second French Military Detachment
to Rwanda], AFP, 5 Oct. 1990 (“The spokesperson, Mr. Daniel Bernard, specified that no evacuation order of French
citizens had been given but that everything was done to allow the departure of those who wished it.”).
5
See Press Conference, François Mitterrand, Conférence de presse de M. François Mitterrand, Président de la
République, notamment sur les récents événements au Liban, le conflit dans le Golfe et la proposition d’une conférence
internationale pour régler les conflits au Proche et Moyen-Orient, Paris [Press Conference by Mr. François
Mitterrand, President of the Republic, Notably on the Recent Events in Lebanon, the Conflict in the Gulf and the
Proposition of an International Conference to Resolve the Conflicts in the Middle East, Paris] (15 Oct. 1990).
6
See Press Conference, François Mitterrand, Conférence de presse de M. François Mitterrand, Président de la
République, notamment sur les récents événements au Liban, le conflit dans le Golfe et la proposition d’une conférence
internationale pour régler les conflits au Proche et Moyen-Orient, Paris [Press Conference by Mr. François
Mitterrand, President of the Republic, Notably on the Recent Events in Lebanon, the Conflict in the Gulf and the
Proposition of an International Conference to Resolve the Conflicts in the Middle East, Paris] (15 Oct. 1990).
7
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Rwanda – Situation”).
8
See MIP Tome I 130, 133. The mission included the two companies of the 8th RPIMa, consisting of 137 soldiers
each, in addition to 40 tactical staff charged with facilitating the transmission of the commander’s orders.
9
MIP Audition of Jacques Pelletier, Tome III, Vol. 2, 94.
10
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (22 Oct. 1990); see also Memorandum from Claude
Arnaud to François Mitterrand (18 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Habyarimana Jeudi 18 Octobre
1990 à 18H30”). This memorandum by presidential advisor Claude Arnaud ends, “P.S.: One of our two companies
could be withdrawn after the acceptance of the cease-fire by both parties. The other would be withdrawn once the
situation is stabilized.”
11
Cable from Georges Martres to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et al. (25 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le
Président Habyarimana”).
12
Cable from Georges Martres to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et al. (25 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le
Président Habyarimana”).
13
Cable from Georges Martres to Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et al. (25 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le
Président Habyarimana”).
14
Press Release, RPF, Rwanda – Pourquoi la France prend-t-elle la place de la Belgique dans le “Bourbier” rwandais
(6 Nov. 1990).
15
See Duclert Commission Report 102.
16
Duclert Commission Report 104-05 (quoting ADIPLO 3711TOPO/239, Note by Jean-François Bayart, Centre
d’analyse et de prévision, 26 Oct. 1990, « Le détonateur rwandais »).
17
Duclert Commission Report 104-05 (quoting ADIPLO 3711TOPO/239, Note by Jean-François Bayart, Centre
d’analyse et de prévision, 26 Oct. 1990, « Le détonateur rwandais »).
18
Duclert Commission Report 72.
19
Duclert Commission Report 72 (quoting GR 1997 Z 1813 21, Msg n°78/DEF/CEMA/CAB/910 of 13 November
1990).
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November 1990 – June 1991
20
Duclert Commission Report 72 (quoting GR 1997 Z 1813 21, Msg n°78/DEF/CEMA/CAB/910 of 13 November
1990). By the time he wrote this cable, Col. Thomann had been in Rwanda long enough to recognize the risk of a
major “inter-ethnic conflagration.” Id. at 782 (quoting GR 1997 Z 1813 21, Fax for EMA-Armées Paris, 9 Nov. 1990.
“Orientations pour le devenir de Noroît”). He warned: “[T]he population is strongly encouraged to be ‘vigilant’ in
order to counter the rebellion and detect suspects. This vigilance is demonstrated in fairly aggressive reflexes in the
villages (roadblocks, local controls) which can degenerate into settling of scores under the guise of security, the main
victims being of course the minority Tutsis or the Hutus who are allegedly affiliated with them. It would probably not
take much to spark things off.” Id.
21
See Duclert Commission Report 74, 833-34.
22
See Duclert Commission Report 116.
23
MIP Audition of Ambassador Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1 140-41; see also Chapter 2, supra (referencing
Ambassador Martres’ acknowledgement to the MIP that he was aware of Rwandan government’s “worst excesses”
and that the Genocide was foreseeable as of October 1990).
24
MIP Tome I 134-35.
25
MIP Tome I 134-35.
26
Report from Jean Varret, Compte rendu de mission au Burundi et au Rwanda (19 Dec. 1990).
27
MIP Tome I 135.
28
MIP Tome I 135.
29
JEAN VARRET, GENERAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
30
See Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza); Memorandum from the Rwandan Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to the French Embassy in Rwanda (23 Nov. 1990).
31
Meeting Notes (30 Oct. 1990) (signed Jean-Bosco Ruhorahoza).
32
Meeting Notes (28 Dec. 1990) (signed G. Rutakamize and Ephrem Rwabalinda).
33
Meeting Notes (28 Dec. 1990) (signed G. Rutakamize and Ephrem Rwabalinda).
34
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (9 Apr. 1990) (Subject: “French Deploy 30 Military Trainers in
Ruhengeri”).
35
See Augustin Ndindiliyimana et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-00-56-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 248-50 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 11 Feb. 2014) (linking reconnaissance battalion soldiers to the killing of UN peacekeepers on
7 April 1994); Aloys Ntabakuze v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41A-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 165, 189, 218 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 8 May 2012) (holding that an international tribunal did not err in finding that soldiers in the
para-commando battalion killed Tutsi civilians in Kabeza, Nyanza, and the Remera area during the first week of the
Genocide).
36
Décret du 15 octobre 1990 portant admission par anticipation dans la 2e section, conférant les rang et appellation
de général de corps d’armée et affectation d’officiers généraux de l’armée de terre [Decree of 15 October 1990
granting early admission to the 2nd section, conferring the rank and designation of lieutenant general and assignment
of general officers of the army] (15 Oct. 1990); MIP Audition of Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol. 1, 2-3. With regard to his
appointment as head of the MCM, Varret explained that in the event of a crisis, he had to reconcile the directives of
his superior, the minister of cooperation, and that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and the
Africa Cell of the Élysée. He recognized that the volume of interlocutors posed a challenge.
37
Report from Jean Varret, Compte rendu de mission au Burundi et au Rwanda (19 Dec. 1990).
38
See Marcel Kabanda, Kangura: The Triumph of Propaganda Refined, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE
79 (Allan Thompson ed. 2007); Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Bayaragwiza, Hassan Ngeze, Case
No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 124 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003). Notably, this same
issue also included a full-page picture of François Mitterrand above the inscription, “His Excellence Mr. François
Mitterrand, President of the Republic of France. A true friend of Rwanda.” KANGURA 20 (Dec. 1990) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
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Chapter III
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39
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Bayaragwiza, Hassan Ngeze, Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement
and Sentence, ¶¶ 138-39 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003); Appel à la Conscience des Bahutu [Call to the
Bahutu Conscience], in KANGURA (Dec. 1990).
40
See Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Bayaragwiza, Hassan Ngeze, Case No. ICTR-99-52-T,
Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 122-25 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD
260 (2019) (“[Ngeze] had come to the notice of Z [Hutu-power ideologue Protais Zigiranyirazo—ed.], whose car
could often be seen parked up in front of the shop when the Akazu chief [Zigiranyirazo] dropped by for talks with the
ambitious proprietor. [Head of intelligence Col.] Anatole Nsengiyumva, [deputy chief of staff of the Army, Col.
Laurent] Serubuga and [Habyarimana’s personal secretary Col. Elie] Sagatwa approached Ngeze with a proposal to
launch his own journal that would fully support the Akazu political line . . . . [Kangura was funded] by, among others,
Ngeze’s close friends [state broadcasting agency director] Ferdinand Nahimana and Nsengiyumva.”); US Information
Service, Media Situation in Rwanda (17 July 1992).
41
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 155 (2019); see also US Information Service, Media Situation in Rwanda (17
July 1992) (noting that the sponsor of Kangura was “[r]umored to be Mr. Augustin Nduwayezu, ex-Secretary General
of Service Central des Renseignements”).
42
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Bayaragwiza, Hassan Ngeze, Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement
and Sentence, ¶¶ 126-28, 134 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
43
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 210, 260 (2019).
44
Duclert Commission Report 317 (quoting ADIPLO, 3711TOPO/326, Letter from Georges Martres to Roland
Dumas, 17 Jan. 1991) (brackets in the original).
45
Duclert Commission Report 121-22 (quoting ADIPLO, 3711 TOPO/239, Report of Ambassador Georges Martres
n°30/ DAM, 8 Jan. 1991, p. 35).
46
JEAN VARRET, GENERAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018).
47
JEAN VARRET, GENERAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018). In April 2019, “speaking
out for the first time on camera” about this, Varret added, “Whether [Rwagafilita] meant the RPF or the whole Tutsi
ethnic group I don’t know, but very often the Tutsi were assimilated with the RPF as being the enemy.” Rwanda, Story
of a Genocide Foretold, FRANCE 24, 5 Apr. 2019.
48
JEAN VARRET, GÉNÉRAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018); see also Cable from
Georges Martres (14 Dec. 1990) (Subject: “Rencontre du President Habyarimana avec le Général Varret”). Martres’
cable does not reflect Varret relaying his concern about Rwagafilita’s comments, nor do any of the documents the
French government has thus far declassified and made public on its involvement in Rwanda.
49
JEAN VARRET, GÉNÉRAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018); Genocide des Tutsi du
Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military Lobby at Work at the Elysée”],
AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret).
50
Genocide des Tutsi du Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military
Lobby at Work at the Elysée”], AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret).
51
JEAN VARRET, GENERAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018).
52
Genocide des Tutsi du Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military
Lobby at Work at the Elysée”], AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret).
53
Genocide des Tutsi du Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military
Lobby at Work at the Elysée”], AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret).
54
Genocide des Tutsi du Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military
Lobby at Work at the Elysée”], AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret).
55
MIP Audition of René Galinié, Tome III, Vol. 1, 10 (“[Galinié] stated that he had already mentioned in January
1990, in his defense attaché’s report, this risk of physical elimination and massacres, which he was all the more aware
of since, as soon as he arrived in the country on 23 August 1988, he had been brought by helicopter to the border and
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had been personally very disturbed by seeing for himself the massacres perpetrated in Burundi. This episode had given
him a clear understanding of a daily reality marked by violence.”).
56
Cable from Georges Martres (12 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Extrait du message de l’attaché de défense à Kigali, 12
octobre 1990, analyse de la situation politique”) (warning that “this conflict will deteriorate into an ethnic war”
(emphasis omitted)); Cable from Georges Martres (13 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Situation générale le 13 octobre 1990 à
12 heures locales”) (“[M]assacres are reported in the region of Kibilira, 20 kilometers northwest of Gitarama. The risk
of generalization of this confrontation, already reported, seems to be becoming concrete.”).
57
JEAN VARRET, GENERAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
58
Genocide des Tutsi du Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military
Lobby at Work at the Elysée”], AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret).
Dupaquier explained that even if these documents are someday declassified by the French government, that does not
meant they will be made public: “Effectively declassification does not necessarily mean opening to the public. They
could corroborate the alerts you’re talking about. Between one thousand and two thousand French diplomatic or
military documents, some classified as confidential or Defense secret are precisely known over the period 1990-1994,
including part of the ‘Mitterrand archives.’ It is surprising to note that after December 1990, in the French documents
revealed, there is only rarely any mention of the risk of genocide of the Tutsis.”
59
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 514-15 (2019).
60
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 514 (2019).
61
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 521 (2019); but see Report from Jean Varret,
Compte rendu de mission au Rwanda et au Burundi (27 May 1992). In this report, Varret states, “Military assistance
to RWANDA, under its ‘PERSONNEL’ and ‘DIRECT AID IN MATERIAL’ components, has almost tripled since
the start of the conflict on October 1, 1990. Indeed, its annual cost in 1991 reached 28.35 MF [$5.15M] against 11.5
MF [$2.09M], on average, in previous years.”
62
In his MIP hearing, Varret said that he only sent two gendarmes for the judicial police training. MIP Audition of
Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol. 1, 7. However, a November 1992 report by his deputy, Col. Philippe Capodanno, indicates
that four gendarmes were sent. Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa Mission au
Rwanda 7 (10 Nov. 1992).
63
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 521 (2019).
(“– And in this dozen or so meetings where you spoke of Rwanda, you said: there is going be a massacre.
...
– I don’t know if I said it, this is no verbatim. But I am well aware that I stalled every time that they said: we
need to send more guys, more weapons, every time, I said no!
– And did you say why?
– Of course. But I don’t remember going on a diatribe about the risk of genocide. I was reluctant to respond
to requests for reinforcing the Hutu Army. I remember the mood, and the mood was, it was Varret who was
reluctant.”).
64
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 514 (2019).
65
Meeting Notes (23 Jan. 1991).
66
Duclert Commission Report 129 (citing SHD, GR 1997 Z 1813/21, Msg n°3000, DEF/EMA/emp3, 2 Jan. 1991).
67
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (2 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de situation”).
68
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (2 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de situation”).
69
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (2 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de situation”).
70
Press Release, RPF (19 Jan. 1991) (listing the representatives from Zaire, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, the OAU,
the UNHCR, and Rwanda who participated in the conference on refugees; noting that no representatives from the RPF
were included). A Rwandan Government representative at the conference noted in a report to President Habyarimana
about the conference that the RPF sought political recognition as a precondition for cease-fire and expressed the
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November 1990 – June 1991
difficulty of marginalizing the RPF while opening Rwandan politics to opposition parties. See Memorandum from
Joseph Nsengiyumva to Juvénal Habyarimana (23 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Conférence régionale sur le problème des
réfugiés rwandais”). The same government representative revealed his true feelings in the same report: “Wherever
Tutsis are, they consider themselves superior to other races, they monopolize the best command positions to the
detriment of nationals and provoke rejection. It will obviously not be easy to dislodge them without international
condemnation or even war. In other words, the return of refugees will not have put an end to our suffering.” See
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana 1 (23 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Conférence Régionale
sur les Réfugiés, niveaux Experts et Ministériel) (“It should be recognized, however, that it is thanks to your
approaches to President Mobutu that the representatives of the Rwandan Patriotic Front were not invited to the
meeting.”).
71
Interview by LFM with Joseph Karemara; see also Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga; Interview by LFM
with James Kabarebe.
72
Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera.
73
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
74
Liberation Diary: The Attack on Ruhengeri and Release of Political and Other Prisoners, THE NEW TIMES, 27 Aug.
2015. See also Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
75
STEPHEN KINZER, A THOUSAND HILLS 87-88 (2008).
76
Cable from Georges Martres (23 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
77
Meeting Notes (23 Jan. 1991) (“[Mitterrand]: We are authorized to intervene to liberate them.”).
78
Cable from Georges Martres (24 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
79
Meeting Notes (23 Jan. 1991).
80
Meeting Notes (23 Jan. 1991).
81
Cable from Georges Martres (24 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le President Habyarimana”).
82
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (30 Jan. 1991).
83
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (30 Jan. 1991).
84
FIDH Report 19-20 (1993).
85
Des centaines de civils massacrés [Hundreds of Civilians Massacred], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 21 June 1991.
86
Letter from Amnesty International to Sylvestre Nsanzimana (28 May 1991); FIDH Report 19.
87
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 138-145 (2006).
88
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “War or peace in Rwanda”).
89
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech before the CND (4 Feb. 1991).
90
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Jan. 1991) (Subject: “War or peace in Rwanda”); Cable from
Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (6 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Habyarimana Accuses Uganda of Complicity in RPF
Attack, Calls for an End to Ethnic Violence”).
91
Genocide des Tutsi du Rwanda: “un lobby militaire a l’oeuvre a l’Élysée” [Genocide of the Tutsi: “A Military
Lobby at Work at the Elysée”], AFRIKARABIA, 5 Nov. 2018 (interview by Jean-François Dupaquier with Jean Varret)
(“[Galinié] had interlocutors everywhere, including members of religious communities.”).
92
Agnes Gorissen, Le Front patriotique rwandais accuse: des Tutsis massacrés par Kigali? [The Rwandan Patriotic
Front Accuses: Tutsis Massacred by Kigali?], LE SOIR, 14 Aug. 1991 (“Between 500 and 1,000 people were allegedly
killed by armed winged militias, formed by local authorities at the request of the region’s military command and local
politicians in retaliation for the 22 January attack on the town of Ruhengeri by the RPF.”); L’Ambassadeur rwandais
en Belgique reconnait le massacre de civils Tutsi [The Rwandan Ambassador in Belgium Acknowledges the Massacre
of Tutsi Civilians], AFP, 14 Aug. 1991; Natacha David, Massacre de Tutsis occulté au Rwanda? [Occult Massacre of
Tutsis in Rwanda?], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 16 Aug. 1991; Version de l’ambassadeur du Rwanda [The Rwandan
Ambassador’s Version], LE SOIR, 16 Aug. 1991; Rwanda eerbiedigt bestand [Rwanda Respects the Truce], DE
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STANDAARD, 16 Aug. 1991; Rwanda wil toezicht neutrale waarnemers [Rwanda Wants Neutral Observers], GAZET
VAN ANTWERPEN, 16 Aug. 1991; RFI broadcast (27 June 1991).
93
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”) (reporting a “new Ugandan-Tutsi offensive attempted on 2 February to conquer the city of
Ruhengeri” that was repelled by FAR counterattacks and stating the planned 15 February withdrawal of the Noroît
company in Kigali was “difficult to envision”).
94
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
95
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
96
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
97
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
98
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
99
MIP Tome I 152.
100
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (19 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “PV de réunion DAO Rwanda du 18
février 1991”).
101
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
102
MIP Tome I 144.
103
MIP Tome I 144. The memorandum was quoted in the MIP Report but not made public by the MIP. See also Cable
from Jean-Paul Taix (15 Mar. 1991) (Subject: “Mise en place d’un détachement d’assistance militaire et d’instruction
(DAMI) au Rwanda”) (directing Martres to notify Habyarimana that the decision to deploy the DAMI was a response
to Habyarimana’s and the Rwandan foreign minister’s pleas for assistance).
104
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
105
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
106
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (3 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nouvelle offensive
ougando-tutsie”).
107
MIP Tome I 147; Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Point de situation”).
108
Cable from Maurice Schmitt (26 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “Operation Noroît”).
109
MIP Tome I 146-47. Directive 3146 of 20 March 1991 is referred to in the MIP Report, but the document is not
made public by MIP.
110
Duclert Commission Report 146-47 (quoting SDH, GR 2004 Z 169/1, Fiche n°3145/DEF/EMA/EMP3, Paris 20
Mar. 1991).
111
MIP Tome I 29. Martres “noticed in 1992 that the military cooperation intended for the Rwandan Army lacked a
legal basis since the agreement effective at that time only mentioned cooperation with the Gendarmerie.”
112
Special Agreement of Military Assistance, Fr.-Rw, 18 July 1975 (emphasis added). A 1983 amendment removed
a provision that expressly prohibited French cooperants from participating “in the preparation and execution of war
operations, of maintenance or reestablishment of order or the law.” Id.; see also Signed letter from François Breton to
the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs (27 Apr. 1983) (“I have the honor of informing you that the proposals made
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November 1990 – June 1991
in your letter meet the approval of the government of the French Republic and constitute an agreement between our
two governments as of today’s date.”).
113
See, e.g., Memorandum Relatif au Programme de Cooperation Militaire Franco-Rwandaise 1989/1990
[Memorandum Concerning the French-Rwandan Military Cooperation Program 1989/1990].
114
President Habyarimana pressed the French government in 1983 to agree to expand the agreement to authorize
cooperation with the armed forces more broadly. France did not agree to the change. See Memorandum from Léonidas
Rusatira (22 Nov. 1983) (Subject: “Accord particulier d’Assistance Militaire entre le Rwanda et la France”).
115
See MIP Tome I 29; Memorandum from François Nicoullaud to Roland Dumas (6 Aug. 1992) (Subject:
“Application de l’accord de cessez-le-feu au Rwanda”).
116
Cable from Jean-Paul Taix (15 Mar. 1991) (Subject: “Mise en place d’un détachement d’assistance militaire et
d’instruction (DAMI) au Rwanda”).
117
MIP Tome I 152.
118
Cable from Jean-Paul Taix (15 Mar. 1991) (Subject: “Mise en place d’un détachement d’assistance militaire et
d’instruction (DAMI) au Rwanda”).
119
The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, Rw. – RPF, 29 Mar. 1991.
120
The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, Rw. – RPF, 29 Mar. 1991. The neutral military observer group became
operational later in the spring of 1991. See Cable from Georges Martres (21 May 1991) (Subject: “Situation Militaire
et Renseignements Divers”). Led by General Hashim M’Bita, the group proved satisfactory to no one. RPF leaders
accused the Rwandan government of impeding the group’s work, see, e.g., Press Release, RPF (5 Aug. 1991) (signed
Shaban Ruta), while the government complained that the group had a pro-RPF bias, see Memorandum from Casimir
Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Recontre tripartite à Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
Foreign Minister Bizimungu would argue, in August 1991, that the group’s continued ineffectiveness was among the
reasons why France should not withdraw the remaining Noroît troops. See id.
121
The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, Rw. – RPF, 29 Mar. 1991.
122
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni.
123
US Department of State, Chronology of Significant Events: Rwandan Conflict 1990-1992.
124
The DAMI was ostensibly under the authority of the Ministry of Cooperation, which provided its funding. See MIP
Audition of Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol. 1, 217. A 19 February 1991 planning document specified that the DAMI
would be “separate from Operation Noroît” and would take orders from the head of the MAM, an agency within the
Ministry of Cooperation. See Meeting Notes (19 Feb. 1991) (Subject: “PV de réunion DAO Rwanda du 18 février
1991). As a practical matter, though, the line that purported to separate Noroît from the DAMI was not all that stark.
One reason this was so was that the chains of command for both entities shared a common link: Col. Galinié—who,
as head of the MAM, had supervisory authority over the DAMI, and, as a seasoned military officer, held command
over Noroît. See MIP Audition of René Galinié, Tome III, Vol. 1, 227. The line would become even blurrier with
time, as the Ministry of Defense gradually usurped operational control of the DAMI from the Ministry of Cooperation.
See Jacques Isnard, La France a mené une opération secrète, avant 1994, auprès des Forces armées rwandaises
[France Led a Secret Operation, Before 1994, with the Rwandan Armed Forces], LE MONDE, 21 May 1998.
125
Report from René Galinié, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement (4 Apr. 1991).
126
See JEAN VARRET, GÉNÉRAL, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018).
127
Report from René Galinié, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement (4 Apr. 1991). In an 18 November 1990
cable, Col. Galinié wrote, “Thus, the FAR whose cohesion is more asserted today than ever, thanks to the ties created
by the offensives carried out against the adversary, see their political and popular influence considerably increased, to
the point that their leaders like Colonel Serubuga appear threatening.” MIP Tome I 139. It is unclear what Galinié
meant by his comments that “leaders like Colonel Serubuga appear threatening” without more context—although the
MIP included excerpts from the cable in its report, it did not make the full cable public.
128
Report from René Galinié, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement (4 Apr. 1991).
129
Report from René Galinié, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement (4 Apr. 1991).
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November 1990 – June 1991
130
The MIP states that, by January 1991, the FAR had doubled in size to 20,000. MIP, Tome I 138. In contrast, Prunier
estimates that the FAR had swelled to 15,000 by mid-1991. GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 113 (1995).
Prunier also estimates that, by early 1991, the RPF consisted of approximately 5,000. Id. at 117.
131
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 250 (2019).
132
Meeting Notes (31 May 1991) (signed G. Rutakamize and G. Hategekimana).
133
Memorandum from Ruelle to Rwandan Gendarmerie (6 May 1991) (Subject: “Visite du groupement de Butare”).
134
Memorandum from Ruelle to Rwandan Gendarmerie (6 May 1991) (Subject: “Visite du groupement de Butare”).
135
Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du bataillon Gitarama (15 Apr. 1991).
136
Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du bataillon Gitarama (15 Apr. 1991).
137
Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du bataillon Gitarama (15 Apr. 1991).
138
Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du bataillon Gitarama (15 Apr. 1991).
139
Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du bataillon Gitarama (15 Apr. 1991). Units that followed
generally fared better, in Lt. Col. Chollet’s estimation. See Report from Ruelle, Evaluation et propositions concernant
la Gendarmerie Rwandaise (11 June 1991) (assessing a large FAR battalion following its training in May 1991);
Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du 64 bataillon (2 July 1991) (assessing the 64th battalion following
its training in June 1991); Report from Giles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du 32 bataillon (22 July 1991) (assessing
the 32nd battalion following its training in July 1991).
140
Meeting Notes (12 Apr. 1991) (signed F. Xavier Nzuwonemeye).
141
See, e.g., Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de
mission”). This meeting is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 9 of this Report.
142
Rwanda Says 50 Rebels Killed in Fighting in Northwest, REUTERS, 10 May 1991; Rwanda Troops Clash
with Rebels Days Ahead of Peace Talks, REUTERS, 14 Apr. 1991; Logan Ndahiro, Recalling the Fierce Battles of
Ruhengeri, THE NEW TIMES, 8 Jan. 2016. Ndahiro describes the encirclement and Kagame’s operation to escape from
the mountains.
143
Meeting Notes (12 Apr. 1991) (signed F. Xavier Nzuwonemeye).
144
Meeting Notes (12 Apr. 1991) (signed F. Xavier Nzuwonemeye).
145
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT AND DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE
NAME OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 219 (2014) (citing the authors’ interview with Martin Ndamage).
146
Rwanda Troops Clash with Rebels Days Ahead of Peace Talks, REUTERS, 14 Apr. 1991.
147
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (22 Apr. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Point de
situation”).
148
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (22 Apr. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Point de
situation”).
149
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (22 Apr. 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda. Point de
situation”).
150
Memorandum from Gilles Vidal to François Mitterrand (22 Apr. 1991) (Subject: “Entretien avec M. Juvénal
Habyarimana, Président de la République du Rwanda”).
151
Memorandum from Gilles Vidal to François Mitterrand (22 Apr. 1991) (Subject: “Entretien avec M. Juvénal
Habyarimana, Président de la République du Rwanda”).
152
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
153
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
154
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
155
Meeting Notes (18 Apr. 1991) (signed F. Xavier Nzuwonemeye).
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Chapter III
156
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
157
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
November 1990 – June 1991
158
Arrêté du 16 avril 1991 portant nomination du chef de l’état-major particulier du Président de la République (16
Apr. 1991).
159
Décret du 8 avril 1991 portant élévation dans la 1re section, promotion et nomination dans la 1re section et dans la
2e section et affectation d’officiers généraux (10 Apr. 1991).
160
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de
situation”).
161
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de
situation”).
162
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de
situation”).
163
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1991) (Subject: “Rwanda – Point de
situation”).
164
French Ambassador’s Interview, in RWANDA RUSHYA (Aug. 1991) (interview by Andereya Kameya with Georges
Martres).
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CHAPTER IV
July – December 1991
A. The French Government Claimed Neutrality at the Negotiating Table As It Worked to Keep
Habyarimana in Power and Attempted to Intimidate RPF Representatives into Surrendering
Their Demands.
The French approach is unbiased and aims only to help bring peace to the
Rwandan-Ugandan border. 1
– Paul Dijoud, Director of African and Malagasy Affairs in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1991 – 1992)
On military matters, the authorities in Kigali should know that they can
continue to count on the support of France. . . . As for the diplomatic support
of France, … President Habyarimana knows that we have persistently acted
as his country’s advocate, in international bodies and with its immediate
neighbors. 2
– Gilles Vidal, Presidential Advisor to President Mitterrand, Élysée
Africa Advisor (1989 – 1993)
France kept up its assistance to the Rwandan Armed Forces throughout the latter half of
1991. When the new school year started in the fall, the DAMI Panda instructors decamped from
the University of Nyakinama campus, their home since March 1991, and took up residence a few
miles away at Camp Mukamira, where they would share space with a FAR unit.3 The DAMI
continued to train the FAR.4 Looking back on the DAMI’s first six months in Rwanda, Colonel
Bernard Cussac—who in July 1991 had taken over for Col. René Galinié as the French defense
attaché, head of the Military Assistance Mission (MAM), and commander of Operation Noroît5—
did not hesitate to assign it a measure of credit for the FAR’s battlefield successes (without
pinpointing any successes in particular).6 “The partners readily acknowledge this and would like
the MAM to intervene more and more widely and massively,” he wrote in October 1991.7 Not
long afterward, the DAMI spent a month helping the FAR select a team of elite snipers and trained
them to join the battalions fighting in Ruhengeri, Byumba, and Mutara.8
There was no mistaking where France stood: in mid-to-late 1991, and throughout the war,
France was a partisan, working to improve the FAR’s fighting capabilities and to deter the RPF
military’s advance. And yet, at the same time that French military cooperants were training the
FAR, and French Noroît troops were working to deter the RPF Army, France was representing
itself as a neutral mediator of the conflict.9 Between August 1991 and January 1992, France
mediated three sets of talks meant to resolve the Rwandan civil war. Paul Dijoud, the new Director
of African Affairs at the French Foreign Ministry,10 was France’s chief “mediator” at the summits.
Opening the August 1991 plenary meeting in the presence of the three delegations, Dijoud declared
that “the French approach is unbiased and aims only to help bring peace to the Rwandan-Ugandan
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border.”11 If President Mitterrand’s military support for the Rwandan government were not enough
to discredit this claim, Dijoud made sure to tell the participants—which included only the Rwandan
and Ugandan governments, and not the RPF—that French officials had met separately with the
RPF and tried to impress upon them that France’s “military presence in Rwanda prohibit[ed] [an
RPF] military victory.”12 “It has been made clear to [the RPF],” Dijoud continued, according to
Rwandan Foreign Minister Casimir Bizimungu’s report to President Habyarimana summarizing
the August talks, “that [the RPF’s] military adventure is doomed to failure. . . . That is why France
has asked them to follow the path of democracy and national reconciliation.”13
But Dijoud did not expect the RPF to gain any more from the democratic process than from
the battlefield, since—as dictated by the narrow, essentialist logic so many French officials had
adopted, from President Mitterrand down—the RPF represented only the Tutsi minority, and Tutsi
voters would always be overwhelmed at the polls. “France [had] made [the RPF] understand,”
Bizimungu continued in his report, “that they cannot, of course, win the elections since they
constitute a small minority.”14
“For [Dijoud], Africans were the most unintelligent human beings,” senior RPF official
Protais Musoni recalled.15 “This perspective was typical of France at the time. For the French, it
was not about political ideas, but ethnicity. It is true that, historically, the resistance started with
refugees, who happened to be mostly Tutsi. But the RPF [welcomed] Hutu.”16 Indeed, as RPF
soldiers sat around campfires in Virunga listening to Radio Rwanda—and later RTLM—
mischaracterize the RPF as a “Tutsi” organization and the RPA as a “Tutsi” army, they would ask
themselves, “What am I? What are you?”17 “The RPA had people who didn’t know if they were
Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa,” in the words of Richard Sezibera, then an RPF medical officer. “It was
genuinely difficult to grasp how a political movement could be built around tribalism or
ethnicity.”18 The main identity these soldiers had in common was that they were Rwandans.
But where the RPF envisioned an ethnically integrated Rwanda, French officials were
committed to the status quo. Dijoud had made clear that France wanted Habyarimana to triumph
over both the RPF and the political opposition that had been forming since the previous year, when
Habyarimana, spurred by Mitterrand’s speech at La Baule, put into motion political reforms meant
to transition Rwanda away from single party rule by his party, the MRND.19 “Mr. Dijoud,” Casimir
Bizimungu recounted to Habyarimana, “insisted on the need to anticipate the events in order for
you to be the real pilot of the democratic process in Rwanda. You should not let yourself be
overtaken by the opposition parties.”20
Dijoud and Bizimungu also discussed ways to rationalize the presence of French troops in
Rwanda—which both Habyarimana and Mitterrand wanted “to remain on the spot”21—in case of
a cease-fire requiring foreign troops to withdraw. They could, for example, bestow “military
cooperant” status on all French soldiers in Rwanda, including the Noroît forces that comprised the
majority of French troops in Rwanda.22 As Bizimungu summed up, “Mr. Dijoud wanted to meet
me after the departure of the Ugandan delegation to reiterate France’s unconditional support of
Rwanda,” adding that the diplomatic talks in Paris had “greatly enlightened us as
to France’s determination, which sees itself as a friend and an ally.”23 And he believed Dijoud’s
sincerity, understanding the geopolitics behind French support:
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The Paris meeting finally convinced me of France’s sympathy for us. This
sympathy, which is not linked to any economic, financial or other interest, could
perhaps be explained by France’s concern to protect the French-speaking area
stretching from Senegal to Rwanda and Burundi to other countries of Frenchspeaking Central Africa. Although we are not a former colony of France, we have
belonged . . . to its sphere of influence.24
Soon after the August 1991 summit, Paul Kagame, the RPF’s military commander, traveled
to Paris to meet with Dijoud.25 Dijoud’s objective, as he reported at the time, was similar to those
he had claimed to have expressed in his meetings with the RPF in early August: to “demonstrate
that we are the friends of all Rwandans without exception,” to “involve [Kagame] in our
reconciliatory approach” by showing him the downsides of a military solution, and to “dissipate
any potential misunderstanding about the mandate of French soldiers currently stationed in
Rwanda.”26 What actually transpired, however, made clear that France was “reconciliatory”
toward only one side of the Rwandan conflict.
After his meeting with Kagame, Dijoud reported to Ambassador Martres that he was happy
with the outcome, describing Kagame as “pleased” to have been received at the Ministry. Due to
Kagame’s “feeling that the French policy in Rwanda had been, until [then], characterized by a
certain imbalance,” Dijoud wrote that Kagame “welcomed this opportunity to give us a different
perspective on the Rwandan crisis.”27 According to Dijoud, Kagame declared himself favorable to
any French initiative to facilitate a negotiated resolution to the conflict.28
Kagame had a very different recollection:
[Dijoud] insisted we must stop fighting. I took time and explained that there’s a
reason why the fighting was happening, which we needed to address . . . . There
was a back and forth. . . . It was a heated discussion but before we finished the
meeting, he got upset. And by the answers I was giving, he perceived me as an
arrogant person and someone not treating with importance what he was instructing
me to do. “We hear you are good fighters, I hear you think you will march to Kigali
but even if you are to reach there, you will not find your people.” He repeated and
clarified, “All these relatives of yours, you won’t find them.”29
Other members of the RPF delegation confirmed Kagame’s account.30 Dijoud’s comment has a
familiar ring: For the duration of the conflict, French officials would refer to ethnic massacres
conducted and condoned by the Habyarimana regime as regrettable, but perhaps understandable
retaliations by a citizenry affronted by the RPF’s attack.
But this was the lesser part of the ordeal Paul Kagame would go on to experience during
his visit to Paris. Early one morning during Kagame’s visit,31 plainclothes police roused him, along
with members of his delegation, from their beds in the Hilton Hotel, on Avenue Suffren, in the
shadow of the Eiffel Tower.32 According to Kagame, “They had guns pointed at me and were
shouting, “get up! get up!”33 Kagame explained that they were in Paris by official invitation and
named his host, but the officers accused the RPF representatives of being a “group of terrorists,”
placed Kagame and an RPF representative named Emmanuel Ndahiro under arrest, and took them
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to a prison located, according to one account, at the headquarters for the Direction de la
Surveillance du Territoire (DST),34 the French domestic intelligence unit responsible for
counterterrorism and counterespionage.35 Dijoud later testified to the MIP that the RPF delegation
had been spotted with suitcases full of cash and arrested without advance warning of the Quai
d’Orsay.36 The police kept the RPF delegates behind bars until around 8 o’clock in the evening,
when they were freed without explanation or apology.37 Neither Dijoud nor Jean-Christophe
Mitterrand ever discussed the incident with Kagame. When asked by Le Figaro if perhaps his
French hosts had not been informed, Kagame responded, “They were informed.”38
B. Habyarimana’s Feigned Embrace of Democratic Reforms Succeeded in Placating His
Benefactors in the French Government, Who Worked behind the Scenes to Keep
Habyarimana in Power.
The current regime in Rwanda has firmly laid the country on the path to
democracy!39
– Paul Dijoud, Director of African and Malagasy Affairs in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1991 – 1992)
As has been demonstrated, there is no democratic process in Rwanda. The
regime which is at the moment assassinating even innocent civilians in
Bigogwe, Kibilira, etc. . . . cannot claim to be democratic.40
– RPF
Paul Dijoud would describe the next set of negotiations, which took place at the Quai
d’Orsay in Paris, between 23 and 25 October 1991, as “three days of tempestuous and brutal
debates” with both sides “hating and manipulating one another.”41 He did not reflect on how he
may have contributed to that outcome. Dijoud announced during the proceedings that he
considered France “a disinterested friend.”42 The RPF, which now had a seat at the negotiating
table, heard something else in his opening statement, which began by pressuring the RPF to accept
a junior role:
A movement like the RPF can carry on negotiations with the state, but remember
that you are not on an equal footing, since the Rwandan government exists, it is
legal; recognized internationally and carries out all the responsibilities of a State.
You are not a State.
Using the same neo-colonial electoral logic he had in August—i.e., because Rwandans
would only vote their ethnicity, the RPF had little clout—Dijoud reiterated that the RPF had no
place in an interim government because “your resolutions would never be adopted.”43
For the RPF, Dijoud had “simply restated the Rwandan government’s point of view.”44 The
RPF delegation sought to respond to Dijoud’s remarks, but “he refused, saying he already knew
the RPF’s point of view[],” and that he did not appreciate having his objectivity questioned.45
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July – December 1991
During the talks, Dijoud had made clear that his faith was with Habyarimana. “The current
regime in Rwanda has firmly laid the country on the path to democracy!” Dijoud reportedly told
the participants.46 He then admonished the RPF to appreciate the regime’s magnanimity in dealing
with the RPF at all.47
The RPF urged Dijoud to recognize that “democracy” in Habyarimana’s Rwanda was a
thin veneer laid over an authoritarian ethno-state.48 Dijoud’s position was representative of the
French government’s: Habyarimana’s superficial democratization was enough, both because
something more substantive would threaten his hold on power, and because French officials
expected no more in this African nation. When asked in 2018 by French journalist Laurent Larcher
if he believed that Mitterrand was truly committed to promoting democracy in Africa, Admiral
Lanxade replied: “Absolutely. He knew Africa very well, and he knew very well the limits of what
we could and could not do.”49 When asked to clarify these limits, Lanxade answered
uncomfortably: “What I mean to say is that he knew very well. . . . You can’t change things all of
a sudden. You can’t promote democratic leaders. . . . In Africa, it is still not possible today. . . .
You have to look at . . . the lesser of two evils.”50
Mitterrand’s neocolonial approach to democracy—requiring only so much as he thought,
paternalistically, a lesser developed African nation could offer—translated into a push for
multipartyism alone, without the mechanisms necessary to ensure a free and fair society (such as
free and fair elections, free speech, and respect for human rights). For the RPF, any authorization
of nominal political competition without a consideration of the structural ills of the Habyarimana
regime—the inequality and disrespect for human rights that had produced the refugee crisis—was
window dressing. In a submission to the March 1991 Conference on Human Rights in Africa, the
RPF had pointed out the hypocrisy of claiming democratic progress while ethnic demonization
continued on state media:
As anyone who listens to Radio Rwanda will know, incitement to ethnic hatred has
gathered pace since the civil war. . . . The state radio and most of the country’s
media continue to lead the population into believing that the RPF is either a Uganda
force or [Tutsi] coming to reclaim the land and the position they lost.51
The document went on to describe the consequences of the radio’s incitement, which would
continue to play a tragically effective role all the way through the Genocide: “Hundreds have been
murdered,” including teachers and students.52 “It is clear to the least casual observer,” the
document summed up, “that these so-called changes have been no more than a misguided attempt
to pull the wool over the International Community’s eyes.”53
Indeed, Habyarimana’s reforms often coincided with President Mitterrand’s authorizations
of Rwandan requests for military support. For instance, Lt. Col. Gilbert Canovas, the French
advisor to the FAR’s general staff, held an 18 April 1991 meeting with the FAR’s representatives,
which included Col. Laurent Serubuga (the anti-Tutsi extremist who headed the Army).54 During
that meeting, the FAR representatives submitted a series of requests: (a) two helicopters, requiring
the training of six pilots for two years, (b) the permanent presence of the DAMI, and (c) personnel
and material for the supervision of a battalion of para-commandos.55 Three days later, on 21 April
1991, President Habyarimana announced the deadline for opposition parties to “register,” a
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precondition for official party recognition.56 A few days after that, when the Rwandan and French
presidents met in Paris, President Mitterrand agreed to most of the requests that the FAR
representatives had drawn up during their 18 April meeting with Canovas.57 In a press conference
following the meeting, Habyarimana confirmed that “multipartyism would be instituted in
Rwanda.”58 (He also claimed that he had made no requests of Mitterrand for material assistance.59)
“If [Habyarimana] didn’t do a certain number of things, we [would have] left” Rwanda, as
Admiral Jacques Lanxade told the French journalist Laurent Larcher in 2019.60 In speaking of
“lessons that… we gave to Habyarimana,”61 Lanxade did not reflect on how sincerely one could
have expected Habyarimana to hew to those lessons, if he was “learning” them only because he
feared losing military support.
The MRND soon showed that it had no intention of forfeiting its monopoly on power:62 At
local meetings, bourgmestres and prefects threatened residents to support the MRND. The MRND
had other advantages it could exploit. It enjoyed unique access to state-run Radio Rwanda, the
country’s most wide-reaching and influential medium, and exemption from the restrictions on
freedom of movement that prevailed in the country (most Rwandans were required to obtain
written authorization to travel from one commune to another), ostensibly for security reasons in
view of the war.63 In the opposition’s estimation, the MRND was playing a “rigged game” to
ensure its victory in any elections.64
US diplomatic correspondence shared the RPF’s and the opposition’s concerns, with the
US ambassador to Rwanda, Robert Flaten, writing frankly to the US State Department’s director
of Central African affairs, Robert Pringle, in August 1991: “While we are trying to promote
democracy as an answer to both the domestic ethnic problem and the RPF violence, those close to
the President appear to be promoting a Hutu supremacy game.”65 Flaten named some of the
extremists “close to the President,” including Col. Laurent Serubuga and Col. Elie Sagatwa,
Habyarimana’s personal secretary, relative of Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana,66 and Serubuga’s
equal in corruption and abuse of power.
Flaten referred to “[t]he almost daily exposure of the evils of Serubuga, Sagatwa, and
others in the tight little circle.”67 Habyarimana was caught between his extremist inner circle and
pressure to make peace with the RPF and democratize:
[T]he President talks a good game of democracy[,] and many take him seriously. .
. . Under normal circumstances I would say that the [democratic process] is
essentially irreversible, that the cost of reversing it would be too high for any
politician to pay. But these are not normal circumstances, and it is because of that
that the opposition fears that the government is manipulating the continuation of
the war in order to have an excuse to stomp on the opposition if it looks like a real
threat to the President and [his] family. . . . The problem is that the things that he
must do internally in order to have a chance of negotiating the end of the war, are
being undercut by his loyal followers with a Hutu supremacy vision. And he either
can’t or won’t bring them under control.68
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While French officials, several of whom had voiced internal concerns about Rwandan extremism
and how continued French aid could enable it (see discussion in Chapter 3), were undoubtedly
aware of this dynamic, they did not precondition French military support on a rejection of
extremism. “It was clear that the French were solidly on the side of the Rwandans and their Hutu
dictator, Habyarimana,” Pringle would tell an oral-history project in 2015.69 “They saw the
invading Tutsi rebels, coming out of Uganda and speaking English, as a threat to their Frenchlanguage hegemony.”70
Now, at the October 1991 negotiations, the RPF once again invoked the reality of statesponsored killings in Rwanda: “As has been demonstrated, there is no democratic process in
Rwanda. The regime which is at the moment assassinating even innocent civilians in Bigogwe,
Kibilira, etc. . . cannot claim to be democratic.”71 The RPF military would “not lay down its arms
for two main reasons”: the MRND government would not lay down its arms, and the “RPF [was]
fighting for political change in Rwanda, namely that social injustices cease. . . . [I]t is well known
that being suspected of being an RPF sympathizer is reason enough to be arrested or killed. This
is the excuse given out . . . for the killings in Kibilira and those of Bagogwe.”72
The Rwandan government responded that “the raids and the killings belonged to the past,”
and that “today democracy has changed everything.”73 One did not have to wait long for evidence
of the contrary.
At 6:30 a.m. on 25 October,74 the last day of the proceedings, in the outskirts of Kigali, a
Rwandan soldier and three accomplices carrying hand grenades entered the home of David Gatera,
whose brother Justin Mugenzi headed the Liberal Party (PL),75 a party that the MRND regularly
singled out for opprobrium and attacks because of the PL’s large Tutsi following. The soldier shot
Gatera point-blank and fled with the others.76 In reporting the murder to Paris in a cable also signed
by Ambassador Martres, Col. Cussac—the new French defense attaché, MAM chief, and
commander of Operation Noroît—relayed the official explanation of the Rwandan authorities
(“personal vengeance”) without commenting on the likelihood that this was an act of government
retaliation against its political opponents.77 (Cussac and Martres did find it relevant to point out
that the opposition might exploit the murder.78) Many put no stock in this explanation. As a
Rwandan human-rights organization reported, “Many observers saw in this assassination . . . a
concrete expression of intimidation attempts of well-known opposition parties.”79
On 27 October 1991, Jacques Bihozagara, one of the RPF representatives at the recent Paris
talks, wrote a letter to Paul Dijoud bringing the murder to his attention as “an illustration of the
Rwandan government’s present practices.”80 Dijoud’s deputy, Catherine Boivineau, however,
assured Rwanda’s ambassador to France that “France knew the true version of the facts,” likely
meaning that France accepted the official explanation that the murder had been motivated by
personal vengeance.81 Nonetheless, Boivineau told the ambassador that France “considered this
assassination to be troublesome.”82
Gatera’s murder was not an isolated incident. The following week, the RPF sent Dijoud
another letter naming 18 people, ten of whom had been tortured and eight of whom had been
reported missing after arrest, all between 20 and 30 October 1991 in the Bugesera region, in the
south.83 Details of these killings would reach the world in 1993, with the “Report of the
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International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda Since October
1, 1990” (“FIDH Report”) (The FIDH Report set the total number of victims at 28, exceeding the
eighteen victims that the RPF had named a year and a half earlier in its letter to Dijoud.):
In October 1991, Burgomaster of Kanzenze [a settlement in the Bugesera region,
about a half-hour’s drive south of Kigali] Fidele Rwambuka ordered the arrests of
a number of Tutsi youths, who were accused of planning to join the RPF and of
having recruited others for that purpose. Twenty-eight were seized over a period of
two weeks, and, after a brief detention at the communal offices, they were
transferred to the Gako military camp, where they were all severely beaten. Eight
were killed or disappeared.84
We have uncovered no evidence that Dijoud replied to the RPF, or that the French government
urged Habyarimana to address these allegations. Exactly five months after the RPF’s letter to
Dijoud, anti-Tutsi massacres in Bugesera, facilitated by the same Bourgmestre Rwambuka, would
kill nearly 300 by gruesome means.85
The RPF was not alone in sounding the alarm. In November 1991, frustrated by the slow
pace of political change, the main opposition parties—the MDR (the restored Hutu party of the
center and south, with both moderate and extremist elements), the PL (Liberal Party; center-right,
urban, business-oriented), and the PSD (Social Democratic Party; center-left, middle-class
professionals)—petitioned Habyarimana with a long list of areas in urgent need of reform.86
Prominent among them, according to Col. Cussac, who summed up the letter’s contents for Paris,
was “a major overhaul of the administrative apparatus currently controlled by a single party and
the militancy of whose public officials forbids the organization of free and democratic elections.”87
The letter condemned “the monopolization of the National Radio by the . . . MRND for use
in propaganda” and “the persecution of members of parties other than MRND.”88 It went on:
-
The regional authorities “behave as propagandists for MRND and hamper the campaigning
activities of other parties . . . [,]” for example, by “preventing the local population from
attending the meetings organised by the opposition parties . . . .”89
-
“The militants of the . . . MRND with the support of the local administrative authorities,
carry out acts o[f] intimidation and practice physical violence on members of the
opposition.”90
-
“On 20th October 1991 . . . a band of MRND militants . . . attacked some MDR members
who were returning from a meeting. About ten members of them were wounded, one of
whom had his hand chopped off.”91
-
“ . . . [T]he explosion of new political parties. . . has completely upset the Rwandese
political scene to a point whereby the former single party no longer boasts the highest
number of members in the country.”92
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“. . . [T]he [o]fficial image of the country, as represented by the current regime, no longer
corresponds to the true picture of Rwanda which [is] today turning toward the opposition
parties.”93
The petition’s summation was blunt: “[T]he country is running a serious risk of falling
apart.” It concluded by re-iterating the coalition’s earlier calls for a national conference, the
organized repatriation of refugees, liberalization of the press, a “complete reshuffle” of
administrative and diplomatic bodies, and the reorganization of the security services.95
94
Ernestine Mudahogora96
Ernestine was born in Bugesera, in Ntarama district. She was the only one in her family of
seven who survived. She was 18 at the time of the Genocide.
In Nyamata, things were getting worse as the days went by. There were
horrible shootings and killings in the church. The survivors fled back to where they
had come from. All the Tutsis in Nyamata and other areas had been killed. That
was when they started attacking the remaining areas.
My uncles and aunts were living across the valley, so they came and lived in
the neighbouring houses. Sometimes it was OK for one or two days, then things got
bad again. One day, after about two weeks, the Interahamwe . . . had killed all the
people in Nyamata—all those in Kayumba forest and everyone in the church. They
had killed everywhere else, and the next place was my home village. I remember
some people saying, “The attackers have come through the coffee plantation.” That
was just below our home and I wondered what was going to happen. I couldn’t
imagine what killings were like. I thought they were impossible. People were
screaming, “They’ve come.” And then they fled through the forest to Ntarama
church. Those who could still defend themselves with bows and spears fought off
the attackers, but they started to lose courage when they saw about ten or twenty
of their number being killed. They started to scatter. The strong fighters fled
towards Gitarama and Kabwayi; a few helpless people were left behind.
My brother was among those who managed to flee. He came home and told
us, “We can’t defend ourselves; they’ve killed most of us. They’ve killed the
strongest men we had. We should all find our own way now.” “Where are you
going?” I asked him. He told me, “We’re going to look for a safer place to take
refuge.” “Won’t you be killed there?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But
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goodbye for now. If I survive, we shall meet again.” Those were the last words we
heard from him, as he walked away and left us.
...
We ran away and reached a small forest just below our home. We heard the
perpetrators amongst the cattle we had left behind. They hacked the cattle and then
killed the elderly people who had stayed in their homes. We hid in a bush near our
house because the attackers were coming close.
Then we ran to the sector offices at Ntarama church. Even as we were
running, we could hear some Interahamwe behind us saying, “They went through
here. There they are.” Others came into the bushes searching for us, but luckily they
found property—suitcases, bags and so on—that people had hidden there. We
heard them saying, “Hey! I’ve found some treasures here.” So while they
concentrated on what they had found, we fled. That’s how we managed to survive
that day. We ran to Ntarama church.
...
Just after we left [from Ntarama church], they threw grenades at Ntarama
church. They killed almost everybody—there are just a few handicapped survivors.
Anyway, we continued and went to the school. It was the only safe hiding place
then for those who had managed to survive Nyamata or the other massacres
throughout Bugesera. We spent the nights in the school and during the day we
would loiter in the swamps. We never slept in the swamps because the
Interahamwe went home around four o’clock. Then we could go back to the school.
...
It was 15 April 1994. They came in many buses. They had come to kill us.
The buses came straight to the school building where we were hiding. The attackers
killed many people and only a few were left. We were near the swamp at the time
and that’s where they found us. Some old people committed suicide. They said they
had survived the machetes of 1959, and the machetes of 1994 would not kill them.
They dived into the water and were carried away.
I ran away and hid in the bush near the swamp. The Interahamwe
immediately ran after me. It hadn’t rained that day. It was around midday, and the
sun was shining brightly. That’s when the Interahamwe came and killed many
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people—including my cousin who was slightly older than me. Later I discovered
that they had hacked me. I didn’t know when it happened, but I guess it was around
midday. I touched myself and saw blood. I wondered if it was possible that they
had cut me, and I was still alive. I always used to imagine how one day they would
bring a machete and hack me. I didn’t know how I would react. I wasn’t sure then
whether I should hide in a sorghum plantation, but I just kept on running.
At some point, I penetrated another area of bush where the perpetrators
found me and started hacking me again. I collapsed. I finally managed to leave that
place around six o’clock in the evening when the killers left to go home. Perhaps it
was the wind that brought me back to consciousness. I heard people moving
around and started calling. But maybe those people thought I was with the
perpetrators. Instead of coming close to see, they ran away. And then someone
came and said, “Oh no, Mudahogora has been hacked. Look how badly she’s hurt!”
You can imagine what I looked like, considering the scars I have now. I
looked like a dead body with blood all over my face. I heard someone say, “She’s
taking her last breath; there’s no life in her.” I was with my sister’s three‐year‐old
boy; we had hidden together in the bush. When I opened my eyes, I saw him seated
beside me; he wasn’t hurt at all then. He died later. I was the only one left with him,
but I couldn’t help him get food and later he developed anemia and died. He was
sitting there with his eyes wide open just beside me. By chance, a kind woman who
lived nearby came and carried him away on her back.
I was left alone there; everyone had gone. No one bothered to carry me away
from there. I tried both my legs and found I had a little strength left in them even
though I was injured. I knew that when the wounds are still fresh, it’s still possible
to move around. The risk was that I might suddenly fall over because of losing too
much blood. So I tried walking, and I managed it. The pain hadn’t started by then,
so I started running after the people. I didn’t want to be left in the Bush alone.
Everybody was running, and I was left behind. I remember that when the
Interahamwe came back and found you still alive, they had to finish you off. I
survived that day. I pulled myself up to the school buildings, but by then all my
brothers had fled to Gitarama. I was left with my sister, the second eldest in our
family; the rest had been killed, including my third brother. There were still some
survivors at the school. They had seen that the killing had become very intense and
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said we should start sleeping in the swamp. Otherwise, the Interahamwe would
find us and kill us at the school.
In advance of the fourth biennial summit of Francophone states at Chaillot Palace, in Paris,
on 19-21 November 1991, Jean Carbonare, the President of the French Committee for the Defense
of Human Rights and Democracy in Rwanda, made an impassioned plea directly to President
Mitterrand to stop supporting a regime that committed the abuses itemized by the RPF and the
opposition:
Numerous testimonies from international organizations . . . have . . . reported
serious and multiple violations of human rights in Rwanda (arbitrary arrests,
massacres of civilians and disappearances, torture, prolonged preventive detention
under inhumane conditions, trials and convictions without any legal procedure,
racist propaganda [, etc.]).
These violations increased considerably with the start of the civil war. . . . Since
that date, France is present militarily in Rwanda, officially to protect our nationals.
Several testimonies have brought to light the active participation of French military
. . . particularly with regard to the control of strategic points and the interrogation
of prisoners.97
In the name of the human rights with which France has always wanted to identify
itself, in the name of the democracy to which you yourself have called countries at
. . . La Baule . . . our committee can only reiterate its indignation—its shame—and
vigorously protest against France’s political and military support to a dictatorship
with no respect for human beings or their rights. Withdrawing French troops in
Rwanda would be, in our view[,] a first step in bringing our values in line with our
actions.
In a 14 November 1991 memo to President Mitterrand meant to prepare him for a meeting
with President Habyarimana on the sidelines of the summit, Dijoud’s deputy Catherine Boivineau
mentioned none of these concerns. Her focus was on the “many important developments” in
Rwandan democratization that President Habyarimana had steered since he last met with President
Habyarimana.98 She noted that Habyarimana would expect Mitterrand to reassure him that “Kigali
authorities could continue to count on French [military] support.”99
It is unclear whether the two presidents met during the Chaillot summit. At the summit
itself, President Habyarimana gave a speech touting his country’s so-called democratic progress.100
Its main obstacle, he said in a speech to the assembled, was “partisans nostalgic for the monarchy
in the interior [meaning Tutsi in Rwanda—ed.] with aid from their allies on the exterior [meaning
Uganda—ed.]” intent on “smothering this nascent democracy.”101
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The signals of uncritical support sent by France had consequences, namely that
Habyarimana’s administration felt emboldened to resist the opposition’s demands. When, on 30
December 1991, the MRND Justice Minister Sylvestre Nsanzimana, who had been appointed
prime minister by Habyarimana in October,102 was finally sworn in after two and a half months of
stalled negotiations to form a coalition, he named a cabinet that included only one non-MRND
official.103 Otherwise, the MRND continued to dominate, with the top ministries in the same hands
that they had been in February. The opposition was livid. An opposition march in Kigali on 8
January 1992 drew 50,000, with thousands more marching in the center and south of the country.104
Another march was planned for a week later but was stifled by the authorities.105
Despite Habaryimana’s political violence and repressive tactics, France’s principal
mediator did not change his approach. Paul Dijoud began a second round of negotiations between
the RPF and the Rwandan government, on 14 and 15 January 1992, in Paris,106 by lecturing the
Rwandans: “The difference between dictatorship and democracy is that the first is based on force
while the second is based on consensus. . . . It is democracy that will solve your problems.”107
Then Dijoud advised both parties to “preserve the established order” and “gradually learn to govern
together.”108 After suggesting once more that the RPF represented Ugandan interests,109 Dijoud
insisted that the Noroît troops were part of the military cooperation between France and Rwanda—
an inaccurate spin developed in conjunction with the Rwandan delegation to the August
negotiations110—and therefore not subject to the March 1991 N’Sele cease-fire agreement’s
requirement that foreign troops depart Rwanda.111 Then he reiterated that the main problem was
refugees rather than the wholesale rot of the Habyarimana regime.112 None of the arguments the
RPF had repeatedly made in response to these points had found an interested audience in Dijoud,
and none of Dijoud’s arguments inspired confidence in the RPF that France was serious about
modifying either its approach to peace talks or the authoritarian system in Rwanda.113
According to the Rwandan government’s delegate, on 20 January 1992, Paul Dijoud left
the negotiations displeased and “disheartened by the RPF’s delaying tactics and its negativistic
and unconstructive attitude.”114 Dijoud seems to not have countenanced that the intransigence
might be France’s, and that its effect would be to encourage Habyarimana to make merely
superficial reforms. France did not expect more. Paul Dijoud had said it himself: it was not the
goal to “transform Rwanda into an advanced democracy.”115 President Habyarimana was the
“lesser evil,”116 and that was good enough.
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Notes to Chapter IV
1
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
2
Note from Gilles Vidal, Chargé de mission for African and Malagasy Affairs at the Élysée, to President François
Mitterrand 6 (22 Apr. 1991).
3
Memorandum from Jean Varret (20 Sept. 1991) (Subject: “Nouvelle implantation du DAMI”).
4
See, e.g., Report from Gilles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction du 63 bataillon (12 Nov. 1991); Report from Gilles
Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction des tireurs d’élite (26 Dec. 1991).
5
MIP Tome II, Annex 1.1 (“Liste des Personnalités Entendues par la Mission d’Information”).
6
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestriel de fonctionnement (8 Oct. 1991).
7
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestriel de fonctionnement (8 Oct. 1991).
8
Report from Gilles Chollet, Bilan de l’instruction des tireurs d’élite (26 Dec. 1991).
9
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
10
Dijoud took over the position in March 1991. See Paul Dijoud, POLITIQUEMANIA; MIP Audition of Paul Dijoud,
Tome III, Vol. 1, 146.
11
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
12
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
13
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
14
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
15
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni.
16
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni; see also Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; Interview by
LFM with Charles Karamba.
17
Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera; see also Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
18
Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera; see also Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; Interview
by LFM with Charles Karamba.
19
RAPPORT DE LA COMMISSION NATIONALE DE SYNTHÈSE SUR LES REFORMES POLITIQUES AU RWANDA [REPORT OF
THE NATIONAL SYNTHESIS COMMISSION ON POLITICAL REFORMS IN RWANDA] 8-9 (Mar. 1991); see also Frances
Kerry, Rwanda Sets Date for Multi-Party Politics, REUTERS, 22 Apr. 1991 (“Rwandan embassy officials in Nairobi
said on Monday that parties have been allowed to organise themselves since last November, but until now have not
been registered.”).
20
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
21
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
22
The term “cooperant” applied to the AMTs serving under the French Ministry of Cooperation. At the time of this
meeting in the summer of 1991, there were less than 50 cooperants in Rwanda. See MIP Tome I 151 (Évolution des
effectifs de l’assistance militaire technique française au Rwanda de 1990 a 1994 [Evolution of French Military
Technical Assistance to Rwanda from 1990 to 1994]). Bestowing the status of “military cooperant” to the hundreds
of French soldiers who cycled through Rwanda as DAMI or in the Noroît operation would have been well over a
tenfold increase in the number of military cooperants.
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23
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
24
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
25
Cable from Paul Dijoud (27 Sept. 1991) (Subject: “Visite à Paris du Major Kagame”); MIP Audition of Edwige
Avice, Tome III, Vol. 2, 47 (According to Avice, “On 21 September 1991 a meeting was held in Paris between Major
Kagame and Mr. Paul Dijoud, Director of African and Malagasy Affairs.”); JEAN-FRANCOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES,
MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS AU RWANDA [FRENCH POLITICS, SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA]
160 (2014); Renaud Girard, Quand la France jetait Kagamé en prison . . . [When France Threw Kagame into Prison
. . .], LE FIGARO, 23 Nov. 1997.
26
Cable from Paul Dijoud (27 Sept. 1991) (Subject: “Visite à Paris du Major Kagame”).
27
Cable from Paul Dijoud (27 Sept. 1991) (Subject: “Visite à Paris du Major Kagame”). The recipient is not explicitly
mentioned. It can be inferred from Dijoud’s request that the recipient met with Rwandan Foreign Minister Casimir
Bizimungu, while the French Embassy in Kampala met with representatives of the other side.
28
Cable from Paul Dijoud (27 Sept. 1991) (Subject: “Visite à Paris du Major Kagame”).
29
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
30
Mucyo Report Section 8.2 (2008); see also Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Dar Es
Salaam (10 July 1992) (Subject: “Preliminary ceasefire talks with the RPF”) (reporting on a meeting between RPF,
US, French, and Belgian officials during which the RPF delegation recounted being “particularly bothered” by what
they perceived as a clear statement by Dijoud during the September 1991 meeting that French troops were in Rwanda
to protect the regime).
31
Renaud Girard, Quand la France jetait Kagamé en prison . . . [When France Threw Kagame into Prison . . .], LE
FIGARO, 23 Nov. 1997; Mucyo Report Section 8.2 (2008). The Mucyo Report, however, said that the arrest preceded
the meeting.
32
Renaud Girard, Quand la France jetait Kagamé en prison . . . [When France Threw Kagame into Prison . . .], LE
FIGARO, 23 Nov. 1997. The author of this article placed the timing of Kagame’s arrest in January 1992, which may
then have been adopted by the Mucyo Report as fact. See Mucyo Report Section 8.2 (2008). However, Kagame told
the reporter that this was his first trip to Paris, and it is known that he was in Paris in September 1991. In addition,
evidence suggests that the delegation to the January 1992 talks in Paris with Paul Dijoud did not include Paul Kagame.
See Memorandum from Claver Kanyarushoki to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “Pourparlers avec le
FPR”) (naming the delegates to the January 1992 talks and stating that Kagame was not at the talks).
33
FRANÇOIS SOUDAN, KAGAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE PRESIDENT OF RWANDA 51 (2015).
34
Renaud Girard, Quand la France jetait Kagamé en prison . . . [When France Threw Kagame into Prison . . .], LE
FIGARO, 23 Nov. 1997; Mucyo Report Section 8.2 (2008). The Mucyo report states that only Kagame and Emmanuel
Ndahiro were arrested and detained in prison.
35
PAUL BARRIL, PAROLES D’HONNEUR [WORDS OF HONOR] 38 (2014).
36
MIP Audition of Paul Dijoud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 146 (20 May 1998).
37
Renaud Girard, Quand la France jetait Kagamé en prison . . . [When France threw Kagame into Prison . . .], LE
FIGARO, 23 Nov. 1997; Mucyo Report Section 8.2 (2008). The Mucyo report states that the French delegation
apologized, but it does not cite a source for that statement.
38
Renaud Girard, Quand la France jetait Kagamé en prison . . . [When France threw Kagame into Prison . . .], LE
FIGARO, 23 Nov. 1997.
39
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 3 (25 Oct.
1991).
40
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 9 (25 Oct.
1991).
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41
July – December 1991
MIP Audition of Paul Dijoud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 146.
42
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (5 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Pourparlers avec la
delegation du FPR du 23 au 25 octobre 1991”).
43
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 3-4 (25 Oct.
1991).
44
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 3-4 (25 Oct.
1991).
45
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 4 (25 Oct.
1991).
46
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 3 (25 Oct.
1991).
47
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 3, 8 (25 Oct.
1991).
48
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 8 (25 Oct.
1991). “What had just been dubbed a democratic process,” the RPF delegation warned, “was the very denial of
democracy. There is just one person who calls the shots—today just as in 1973—Mr. Habyarimana. He authorized the
amendments of the Constitution, the formation of parties, etc. . . . He installed in reality a democracy made to
measure.”
49
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 178 (2019).
50
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 178 (2019).
51
RPF, A CONTRIBUTION BY THE RWANDESE PATRIOTIC FRONT (RPF) TO THE CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN
AFRICA IN MARCH 1991 (Mar. 1991).
52
RPF, A CONTRIBUTION BY THE RWANDESE PATRIOTIC FRONT (RPF) TO THE CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN
AFRICA IN MARCH 1991 (Mar. 1991).
53
RPF, A CONTRIBUTION BY THE RWANDESE PATRIOTIC FRONT (RPF) TO THE CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN
AFRICA IN MARCH 1991 (Mar. 1991).
54
Meeting Notes (18 Apr. 1991) (signed F. Xavier Nzuwonemeye).
55
Meeting Notes (18 Apr. 1991) (signed F. Xavier Nzuwonemeye).
56
Frances Kerry, Rwanda Sets Date for Multi-Party Politics, REUTERS, 22 Apr. 1991.
57
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
58
Report from Boniface Karani Kalinijabo, Compte rendu de la conference du Président de la République Rwandaise
à Paris 13 (7 May 1991).
59
Report from Boniface Karani Kalinijabo, Compte rendu de la conference du Président de la République Rwandaise
à Paris 13 (7 May 1991).
60
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 210 (2019).
61
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 210 (2019).
62
Memorandum to Juvénal Habyarimana (13 June 1991) (Subject: “Note à Son Excellence Monsieur le Président de
la République Rwandaise”).
63
Actualités Nationales: Première conférence de presse tenue par les fondateurs des partis [National News: First
Press Conference Held by Party Founders], AGENCE RWANDAISE DE PRESSE, 11 June 1991.
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Chapter IV
July – December 1991
64
Memorandum to Juvénal Habyarimana (13 June 1991) (Subject: “Note à Son Excellence Monsieur le Président de
la République Rwandaise”) (summarizing the criticism levied by opposition parties).
65
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (9 Aug. 1991).
66
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 54 (2019).
67
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (9 Aug. 1991).
68
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (9 Aug. 1991).
69
Interview by Kenneth L. Brown with Robert Pringle (10 Mar. 2015) in Association for Diplomatic Studies and
Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project 70.
70
Interview by Kenneth L. Brown with Robert Pringle (10 Mar. 2015) in Association for Diplomatic Studies and
Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project 70.
71
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 9 (25 Oct.
1991).
72
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 9 (25 Oct.
1991).
73
Report from Pasteur Bizimungu, Negotiations between the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandese
Government (GR) under the auspices of the French Government (France) from 23rd to 25th October 1991 9 (25 Oct.
1991).
74
Cable from Georges Martres (25 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “Situation militaire et renseignements divers”); Letter from
Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Casimir Bizimungu (30 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “rencontreavec FPR prévue A Paris
début novembre 1991”).
75
Cable from Georges Martres (25 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “Situation militaire et renseignements divers”); Letter from
Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Casimir Bizimungu (30 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “rencontreavec FPR prévue A Paris
début novembre 1991”).
76
Press Release, the Comité Pour le Respect des Droits de l’Homme et la Démocratie au Rwanda, Rwanda: Nouveaux
massacres, attentats politiques, disparitions, et menaces de morts contre des opposants (18 Nov. 1991).
77
Cable from Georges Martres (25 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “Situation militaire et renseignements divers”); Letter from
Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Casimir Bizimungu (30 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “rencontreavec FPR prévue A Paris
début novembre 1991”).
78
Cable from Georges Martres (25 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “Situation militaire et renseignements divers”); Letter from
Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Casimir Bizimungu (30 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “rencontreavec FPR prévue A Paris
début novembre 1991”).
79
Press Release, the Comité Pour le Respect des Droits de l’Homme et la Démocratie au Rwanda, Rwanda: Nouveaux
massacres, attentats politiques, disparitions, et menaces de morts contre des opposants (18 Nov. 1991).
80
Letter from Jacques Bihozagara to Paul Dijoud (27 Oct. 1991).
81
Letter from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Casimir Bizimungu (30 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “rencontreavec FPR
prévue A Paris début novembre 1991”).
82
Letter from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Casimir Bizimungu (30 Oct. 1991) (Subject: “rencontreavec FPR
prévue A Paris début novembre 1991”).
83
Letter from RPF to Paul Dijoud (4 Nov. 1991); see also Letter from Jacques Bihozagara to Paul Dijoud (16 Dec.
1991) (Subject: “Répression de la presse libre au Rwanda”). The 16 December 1991 letter informed Dijoud of the
arrest of three journalists and the harassment of two others by Rwandan soldiers, forcing the reporters to flee.
Bihozagara noted that Reporters Without Borders had confirmed these events and stated, “The Rwandan Patriotic
Front would like to draw your attention to the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional behavior of the Kigali regime,
which does nothing but hinder the process of a genuine democratic change to which the Rwandan people aspire.”
84
FIDH Report 26 (1993).
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Chapter IV
85
July – December 1991
MIP Audition of Edwige Avice, Tome III, Vol. 2, 47.
86
Cable from Georges Martres (15 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Lettre adressée au Président de la République Rwandaise
par les partis d’opposition”).
87
Cable from Georges Martres (15 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Lettre adressée au Président de la République Rwandaise
par les partis d’opposition”). The letter also called for the following:
- the redress of injustices and the restoration of respect for human rights and public Freedoms…
- introduction of a deposit to limit pre-trial detention . . .
- a tax reform abolishing ‘extra-legal collections by the municipal authorities’ . . .
- a national and sovereign conference… to ‘turn the page of this part of history . . . , to analyze
without . . . spirit of revenge the cause of the important events and to do somehow (his) selfcriticism.’
- the return of refugees.
88
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
89
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
90
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
91
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
92
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
93
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
94
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
95
Letter from Faustin Twagiramungu et al. to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Petition to His
Excellency the President of the Republic by the M.D.R, P.L., and P.S.D. Political Parties to Protest Against the Serious
Attempts to Oppose the Process of Democratization Currently Taking Place in Rwanda”).
96
This account is taken from WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 74 – 80 (2006).
97
Letter from Jean Carbonare to François Mitterrand (16 Nov. 1991).
98
Memorandum from Catherine Boivineau (14 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République avec
le President Habyarimana en marge du Sommet de Chaillot (19-21 novembre 1991)”).
99
Memorandum from Catherine Boivineau (14 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République avec
le President Habyarimana en marge du Sommet de Chaillot (19-21 novembre 1991)”).
100
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech at the Francophone Summit at Chaillot, France (20 Nov. 1991).
101
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech at the Francophone Summit at Chaillot, France (20 Nov. 1991).
102
Memorandum from Catherine Boivineau (14 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République avec
le President Habyarimana en marge du Sommet de Chaillot (19-21 novembre 1991)”).
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Chapter IV
July – December 1991
103
US Department of State, Chronology of Significant Events: Rwandan Conflict 1990-1992.
104
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 135 (1995).
105
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 135 (1995).
106
Memorandum from Claver Kanyarushoki to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “Pourparlers avec le
FPR”).
107
Report from RPF, Rencontre entre le FPR et le G.R (Paris 14-15 Janvier 1992): Mot d’ouverture par M. Dijoud.
108
Report from RPF, Rencontre entre le FPR et le G.R (Paris 14-15 Janvier 1992): Mot d’ouverture par M. Dijoud.
109
Report from RPF, Mot de clôture de la réunion entre le FPR et le G.R par M. Dijoud (14-15/janvier 1992).
110
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (19 Aug. 1991) (Subject: “Rencontre tripartite a
Paris: France-Rwanda-Uganda”).
111
Report from RPF, Mot de clôture de la réunion entre le FPR et le G.R par M. Dijoud (14-15/janvier 1992).
112
Report from RPF, Mot de clôture de la réunion entre le FPR et le G.R par M. Dijoud (14-15/janvier 1992).
113
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni; Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
114
Memorandum from Claver Kanyarushoki to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “Pourparlers avec le
FPR”).
115
MIP Audition of Paul Dijoud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 368.
116
MIP Audition of Paul Dijoud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 386.
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CHAPTER V
1992
A. French Officials Watched As Akazu-Backed Militias Perpetuated Rwanda’s Ethnic
Divisions.
Before 6 April 1994, political parties in concert with the Rwanda Armed
Forces organized and began the military training of the youth wings of the
MRND and CDR political parties (Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi,
respectively) with the intent to use them in the massacres that ensued.1
– Jean Kambanda, Prime Minister of the Interim Rwanda
Government (9 April – 17 July 1994)
On 22 January 1992, Col. Bernard Cussac, France’s defense attaché in Rwanda, sent a
cable to Paris, signed by French Ambassador George Martres.2 In it, Cussac reported that “after
the most recent massacres of civilians,” the Rwandan minister of the interior “decided to arm the
population of the border area.”3 Nearly 400 arms, mainly French MAS-36 military rifles, would
be distributed in the Ruhengeri, Byumba, and Mutara regions near Rwanda’s border with Uganda.4
FAR personnel would recommend the civilians who would make up these armed groups—termed
“self-defense militias,” in Cussac’s report—and local leaders would designate which militia
members would carry the weapons.5 The rifles would be “distributed in the evening and returned
in the morning,” a rate of “one weapon per three people.”6
Col. Cussac showed concern. He contacted Colonel Pierre-Célestin Rwagafilita, the chief
of staff of the Gendarmerie and one of the corrupt, unaccountable authorities who made up the
Akazu, to “emphasiz[e] that this mission… should have been incumbent upon the Gendarmerie”
and not the FAR.7 Unsurprisingly, Rwagafilita demurred: “If he agreed,” Cussac wrote, he “hid
behind the argument of insufficient numbers of personnel and their lack of training.”8
Col. Cussac wrote in his cable, “Will the weapons only be used against the R.P.F.? Aren’t
they in danger of being used to execute personal, ethnic, or political vengeances?”9 He also
questioned whether “the local leaders who will designate the weapon bearers, and who all come
from the administration set up by the M.R.N.D. (the former single party),” would distribute the
weapons primarily to “members of this party.”10
Cussac’s concerns were well placed. With the war now stretching into its second year, there
were growing indications that hardliners in the Rwandan government were waging an effort to
militarize civil society and stoke ethnic hatred. It was not just the arming of civilian “self-defense
militias” in the north. As French officials would discover,11 major political parties, including
Habyarimana’s party, the MRND, had begun, in the second half of 1991, to create their own youth
militias.12 The Akazu and accomplice figures, in and outside government, were pivotal in the
development of the MRND’s militia, known as the Interahamwe, which would play a primary role
in the mounting anti-Tutsi violence of the years to come.
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As lead patron of the Habyarimana regime, the French government had ample opportunity
to discredit and disenfranchise the extremists behind these initiatives. It never did. There has been
no evidence that any senior French officials did anything to forestall the distribution of arms to
civilians or to pressure the government or political parties to disband the militias. Rather, as will
soon be discussed in greater detail, first-hand accounts indicate that, as the MRND and Akazu
professionalized the Interahamwe into a paramilitary organization trained by the FAR, French
military personnel participated in the training.13
The Interahamwe (meaning “those who come together,” in Kinyarwanda14) was among the
youth militias that sprung into being in the months after Rwanda’s June 1991 constitutional
amendments, which formalized Rwanda’s transition from single-party rule to (nominal)
multipartyism.15 As the historian and human rights activist Alison Des Forges would later write,
the newly created parties instituted the militias “to provide security at their meetings and, in some
areas, to attack members of rival parties.”16 James Gasana, the MRND defense minister from April
1992 to July 1993, who analyzed the Interahamwe for the 1998 French parliamentary inquiry into
the Genocide (MIP), said the MRND’s aims for the Interahamwe were both to counter aggression
from the youth militias of rival parties, such as the Inkuba, the militia of the Democratic
Republican Movement party (Mouvement Démocratique Républicain, or MDR), and to frustrate
opposition parties—for example, by blocking roads to keep opposition party members from
gathering in Kigali.17
According to Des Forges, the Interahamwe’s function evolved over time, becoming, in
1992, “a real paramilitary force, trained and sometimes armed by the [Rwandan] military.”18
Anastase Gasana (no known relation to James Gasana), a former member of the MRND who left
to join the MDR, wrote in a May 1992 analysis of the Interahamwe that, in addition to “carry[ing]
out criminal and terrorist acts against opposition political parties,”19 its mission was:
‐
‐
‐
‐
To carry out criminal acts, commit crimes and assassinations in order to terrorize
the people and divert them from their democratic ideal by making them helpless
and confused;
To create a general and widespread sense of insecurity in the country in order to
psychologically prepare the Rwandan public opinion for the acts of murder planned
for the future;
To cut bridges, sever the roots of the nascent democratic ideas;
To unconditionally protect the MRND regime.20
As 1992 progressed, the Interahamwe would murder its opponents and “create[] a climate of terror
by looting and destroying the homes of adherents of other parties,”21 according to a report released
by a consortium of human rights groups in early 1993.
The Interahamwe benefited from the support of the Akazu,22 who not only financed the
militia but played a role in recruiting its members.23 In his May 1992 analysis, Anastase Gasana
wrote that some of the militia’s earliest recruiters, who selected civilians to join its ranks,24
included President Habyarimana’s notorious brother-in-law Protais Zigiranyirazo, as well as such
other prominent figures as MRND Secretary General Mathieu Ngirumpatse and the head of the
state broadcasting agency, Ferdinand Nahimana.25 Gasana cited several other Akazu members and
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1992
high-ranking regime officials—including Habyarimana’s private secretary, Colonel Elie Sagatwa;
Colonel Laurent Serubuga, the deputy chief of staff of the FAR; Lieutenant Colonel Anatole
Nsengiyumva, Rwanda’s head of military intelligence; and Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who
would serve as director of the Cabinet for the Ministry of Defense from June 1992 to July 1994
and would go on to play a leading role in orchestrating the Genocide.26 By May 1992, Gasana said,
Interahamwe members included former soldiers and gendarmes, plainclothes Presidential Guard
members, and members of the Service Central de Renseignements (SCR), the Rwandan
intelligence service.27
The rise of the Interahamwe coincided with the formation of another powerful force for
anti-Tutsi extremism. Formed by Hutu hardliners in early 1992,28 the Coalition for the Defense of
the Republic (la Coalition pour la Défense de la République, or CDR) sought, as Des Forges would
later put it, to “rally all Hutu in a common front against the Tutsi.”29 At the CDR’s inaugural
meeting, the party’s most influential figure, Jean Bosco Barayagwiza—a Rwandan Foreign
Ministry official who, as it happens, had participated in the negotiations with the RPF in Paris in
October 1991—argued that the Tutsi had created political parties to address their grievances, so it
was only right for the Hutu to do likewise.30 The extremist newspaper Kangura (discussed in
Chapter 3) would soon devote an issue to celebrating the CDR’s formation, calling on its readers
to join the party.31 “The island is none other than the CDR,” Kangura proclaimed in the May 1992
issue, equating the CDR party to a refuge of safety. “So now grab your oars, Hutus.”32 Kangura
went on to denigrate the Tutsi, “who,” it said, “has a desiccated heart where the Nazi worm nibbles
in tranquility.”33
The CDR had its own youth militia: the Impuzamugambi (Kinyarwanda for “those with a
single purpose”).34 The Impuzamugambi’s purpose almost always aligned with the Interahamwe’s.
As Jean Kambanda, the prime minister of the genocidal interim Rwandan government (8 April to
17 July 1994),35 would admit in 1998 upon pleading guilty to genocide, conspiracy to commit
genocide, and other crimes: “Before 6 April 1994, political parties in concert with the Rwanda
Armed Forces organized and began the military training of the youth wings of the MRND and
CDR political parties (Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, respectively) with the intent to use them
in the massacres that ensued.”36 The two militias would become all but indistinguishable during
the Genocide.37
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1992
B. French Officials Reacted to Rwandan State-Led Terrorism against Tutsi Civilians and
Political Opponents in Bugesera by Refusing to Protect Victims and Increasing Support to
the Perpetrators.
MONIQUE MAS (RFI Journalist): French troops are present in Rwanda,
and you yourself, I met you recently, had put forward the humanitarian
argument to justify the presence of these French troops. How is it that they
do not intervene, how is it that this massacre can unfold before the eyes of
France?
GEORGES MARTRES (French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)):
Indeed, French troops are present in Rwanda. . . . Their mission has not
changed for over a year. It is the protection of French nationals. To assign
them another objective, to make them perform a humanitarian task for the
benefit of the entire Rwandan population, and in particular with regard to
the events that are taking place at this time, they would have to receive
further instructions, which they do not have for the moment.38
On 3 March 1992, a warning came over the airwaves of Radio Rwanda, the national radio
station of the Rwandan government. “There are reports of foreign terrorists recruited to destabilize
the country,” Jean-Baptiste Bamwanga, the announcer, declared, citing a missive from a
“committee of sympathizers of nonviolence.”39 This “committee” claimed to have discovered a
letter detailing a joint plot by the RPF and its political allies in the Parti Libéral to murder 22
prominent Hutus.40 “These murders would call for revenge on both sides,” Bamwanga announced
ominously. “We ask everyone to remain vigilant.”41
In case the intended message was not clear, the station’s announcers read out an
explanatory editorial that carried the headline, “Rwandan aggressors are reported to be prepared
to engage in acts of terrorism and destabilization,” and opined, “We cannot as a public press remain
inactive. We need to inform you of the information in our possession. You will then be able to
adopt the necessary attitudes to annihilate these Machiavellian plans of the enemy.”42
The letter that included details of this alleged assassination plot was a fake.43 Lower-level
Radio Rwanda editorial employees, fearing the public was being tricked, had urged Ferdinand
Nahimana—the head of Rwanda’s government broadcasting agency,44 and, as such, the editorial
director of the station—not to run it.45 Nahimana ignored them.46 He later admitted—while on trial
for inciting genocide as the principal force behind Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines
(RTLM), the hate radio station created in 1993 in the face of a coming peace agreement that
exhorted its listeners to eliminate the Tutsi during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda—that he had
made no effort to establish the provenance of the letter.47 Radio Rwanda broadcast inflammatory
reports about the letter four more times over the next two days.48
The broadcasts instigated terrible violence in Bugesera, a region stretching from south of
Kigali to the Burundi border. When the broadcasts aired, the Bugesera region was already ripe for
upheaval, on account of its history and ethnic makeup. Following anti-Tutsi violence during the
transition to majority rule after independence from Belgium in 1962, the Rwandan government, in
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1992
conjunction with Belgian officials, had forced Tutsi from their homes around the country to the
arid, less desirable land in Bugesera.49 Three decades later, the region retained a sizeable Tutsi
population.50
Government planners had begun laying the groundwork for the massacres there as early as
October 1991, when Fidèle Rwambuka, the bourgmestre (mayor) of Kanzenze, a Bugesera
settlement a half-hour’s drive south of Kigali, ordered the arrest of 28 Tutsi youths he claimed
were planning to steal across the Burundi border to join the RPF, which was then steadily gaining
territory after having crossed into Rwanda a year before.51 During the ensuing months, Rwandan
government officials engaged in repeated extra-legal provocations in response to the appearance
of a majority-Tutsi Rwandan political party, the Parti Liberal, in the region.52 (On 12 February
1992, the MDR warned its members that the Interahamwe had seriously injured three people in
the Remera neighborhood of Kigali, while carrying swords and wearing ropes around their
waists.53 Two weeks later, the MDR updated that notice, notifying its members that the
Interahamwe was now armed with grenades.54) Bourgmestre Rwambuka—who, in May 1992,
would be named among a number of Rwandan government officials on a list of “MRND regime
hardliners” affiliated with the Interahamwe55—did not temper his words. On 1 March 1992, two
days before the fateful radio broadcasts, Rwambuka or one of his supporters issued a pamphlet
that called for violence against local Tutsi in the strongest terms since tensions had started rising
the previous fall: “THEY MUST NOT ESCAPE US!”56
The riots began on 4 March 1992, less than 24 hours after the first broadcast on Radio
Rwanda.57 “They came in a great crowd, shouting like crazy people,” a survivor said, “They killed
four of my children and my wife.”58 “They threw my wife’s body into the latrine. It was a man
from the north who is my friend who told me that. He was among the attackers.”59
The assailants moved systematically from one neighborhood to the next, another witness
reported.60 “They said they were supposed to kill the Tutsi,” she said. One old man said attackers
had burned both of his houses, that he had been so badly struck on the ears that he could no longer
hear, and that he had been nearly blinded by a beating that also left him with a massive scar on his
chest from a spear wound.61 His child only managed to survive with the help of a Hutu neighbor
to whom he had loaned a field for cultivation.62
In a week, there were nearly 300 killings63 and as many as 13,000 displaced persons.64 The
killings would come to be seen as a milestone in the lead-up to the Genocide: the first time
Habyarimana’s allies and authorities used the Interahamwe to slaughter Tutsi. “The militia knew
how to take the lead, making it possible for government officials to play a less public part in the
slaughter,” a 1999 Human Rights Watch report would observe.65 This gruesome collaboration
would become a regular feature of ethnic killings that followed.66 Indeed, Emmanuel Karenzi
Karake, an officer in the RPF’s Army at the time, has called the Bugesera massacres “a test run
for the Genocide.”67 (Others have described them, similarly, as a “dress rehearsal” for the
Genocide.68)
The French ambassador, Georges Martres, knew within days of the inciting broadcasts
what the government-run radio station had done.69 “The Rwandan broadcast ignited the fire,” he
wrote in a 9 March 1992 cable, “when it broadcast this letter with no critical analysis and leaving
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1992
no doubt about its authenticity and the soundness of its allegations.”70 Martres spoke with
Rwandan Minister of the Interior Faustin Munyazesa on 7 March 1992 about the station’s actions,
shortly after reports of the slaughter first reached the community of Western diplomats in Kigali.71
“The minister,” he wrote afterward, “did not hide his embarrassment concerning this act of
misinformation by the official services.”72 In an interview on RFI two days later, Martres would
call the manner in which the fateful letter was broadcast “unfortunate.”73
Minister Munyazesa assured Martres on 7 March 1992 that the situation was “under
control.”74 News reports in the Western press on 8 March suggested otherwise.75 AFP and Reuters
highlighted the barbarity of the slayings—how the killers had set homes ablaze and burned people
alive.76 Rwandan security forces, they said, had responded too slowly to stop the killing and, in
some cases, had encouraged those fleeing the violence to return home.77 Martres’ own reporting
on 9 March noted that Rwandan soldiers “appear to have made little effort to disarm the
population.”78 Clashes, he noted, continued throughout the day on 8 March,79 leading more and
more local Tutsi—women and children, mostly—to seek shelter at the Catholic parish in Nyamata,
home of the Belgian White Fathers.80
Labeling the killings in Bugesera a “pogrom,”81 a French cable on 9 March appeared to
recognize both that the massacres were organized, and that the victims were targeted because of
their ethnicity. The cable asserted, unequivocally, that local authorities—namely, the sub-prefect
and the bourgmestre—bore responsibility for inciting the massacres.82
RFI reporter Monique Mas put Martres on the spot in a 9 March 1992 interview, asking
him why the Noroît forces in Kigali, just an hour’s drive from Nyamata at that time, had done
nothing to stop the bloodshed.83 “How is it that this massacre can unfold before the eyes of
France?” she asked.84 Martres insisted that the Noroît troops had one and only one mission: “the
protection of French nationals.”85 “To assign them another objective, to make them perform a
humanitarian task for the benefit of the entire Rwandan population . . . , they would have to receive
further instructions, which they do not have for the moment,” he said.86
One French military cooperant would later claim, more than a decade after his service in
Rwanda, that he took it upon himself to go to Bugesera to verify if the reports coming out of the
region were true. Lieutenant Colonel Michel Robardey, who, since October 1990, had been
working to reorganize Rwanda’s Gendarmerie (i.e., national police), said he and his wife drove
out from Kigali to Bugesera on 8 March, “as soon as he had heard the news of this ethnic violence
on the radio.”87 As the author Pierre Péan recounted in a 2005 book, Robardey—after passing,
with difficulty, through FAR-manned roadblocks—arrived to find that “everything was
burning.”88 An Italian missionary told Robardey she had been making calls all day, pleading to
anyone and everyone “to do something to stop the violence.”89 Robardey, according to Péan’s
book, promised her he would come back.90 He returned to Kigali, where he briefed the French
ambassador and defense attaché on what he had seen.91
A French cable indicates that, on 10 March 1992, France’s embassy in Kigali sent two
diplomats to scout out the situation in Bugesera.92 In Ngenda, where the violence uprooted as many
as 1,500 locals, among the poorest in Rwanda, the burnt remains of the villagers’ homes were still
smoking.93 Parish priests had counted 10 dead over the preceding two days.94 The priests, one of
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whom was French, told the diplomats that “the Parti Libéral maintains an anti-French propaganda
that is starting to spread among the refugees: [that] France supports the Habyarimana regime held
responsible for the massacres and the passiveness of the French Army allows these massacres to
continue.”95 In a cable the next day, the French embassy requested that the Quai d’Orsay consider
sending an aid package—however small—of food, medicine, and blankets for the Noroît soldiers
to distribute.96 “In these conditions,” wrote “W.B.” (likely William Bunel, an embassy counselor
to Martres) in this cable, “a humanitarian gesture, even if symbolic, toward displaced persons
would certainly be well perceived.”97 The French embassy wanted, first and foremost, to burnish
France’s image. Helping refugees was a secondary concern. (A few days after this cable, Rwandan
authorities issued an appeal for foreign donations in response to several ongoing crises, including
the displacement of Bugesera residents.98 According to a US Department of State cable, France
promptly pledged to donate “90 tons of flour mixed with powdered milk” to Bugesera, a
contribution valued at 3.3 million Rwandan francs, or roughly $23,000)99
Martres’ Belgian counterpart, Ambassador Johan Swinnen, was by all appearances far
more alarmed by the massacres in Bugesera. Swinnen spoke to Col. Serubuga, the Rwandan Army
chief of staff, no less than four times on the evening of 6 March, urging him to send soldiers to
stop the carnage.100 (To that point, he wrote, Rwandan gendarmes in Nyamata had done nothing
other than steer fleeing Tutsi back to their homes, effectively driving them back “into the arms of
raging Hutus.”101) Swinnen personally raced down to Nyamata on 7 March,102 counting corpses
along the roadside as he traveled to meet with refugees.103 Most of the dead he saw were old men
who had been unable to flee.104 He saw, as well, the bodies of two women and a child who looked
to be about eight years old.105 Swinnen guessed there were probably dozens more out there,
scattered in the hills.106 It was a full three days before two members of the French diplomatic staff
travelled to the northeast to investigate the situation.107
Swinnen kept up a furious pace over next 24 hours, beginning with a call he placed to the
Rwandan prime minister,108 and concluding with a meeting with Justin Mugenzi, the president of
the Parti Liberal, who characterized the violence as an “obvious destabilization scenario” cooked
up in Kigali and executed by Interahamwe youths affiliated with the MRND.109 In between those
discussions, Swinnen convened an emergency meeting of Western diplomats (including
Ambassador Martres), who, at Swinnen’s urging, agreed to sign onto a joint demarche prodding
the Rwandan government to take necessary measures to stop the slaughter.110 The demarche, which
also counted representatives from the US, Canadian, German, and Swiss embassies among its
signatories, further demanded “an impartial investigation to determine who is responsible for the
outbreak of violence” and called on the national radio and other media to “exercise moderation
and avoid the use of language which could be considered to incite violence.”111 It closed with what
the US ambassador characterized as a “hint” that further inaction “could jeopardize the future of
cooperative programs.”112 Similarly, a Belgian Foreign Ministry official, meeting with the
Rwandan ambassador in Brussels, suggested that if conditions in Rwanda continued to worsen,
Belgium would have no choice but to “freeze foreign relations” with Rwanda.113
Swinnen, Martres, and the other Western embassy officials delivered the demarche to
President Habyarimana on 11 March 1992.114 The Rwandan president offered rote assurances
during the nearly two-hour meeting by insisting he “understood how grave the problem is” and
vowing “to do everything possible to bring peace to the country.”115 He also promised to “punish
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those found responsible for stimulating the violence.”116 There was a sense, though, that
Habyarimana was not as distressed about the goings-on in Bugesera as his guests felt he ought to
have been. When, for example, the diplomats pressed him to “discipline” Radio Rwanda for its
role in the killings,117 he defended the station by claiming “not to understand the nefarious intent”
behind the inciting broadcasts, US Ambassador Robert Flaten wrote in a cable.118 The president
went on to say that he had heard that Parti Liberal President Mugenzi, during a rally a few days
before the broadcasts, had called for the assassination of the local bourgmestre.119 The Rwandan
interior minister, who was present for the 11 March meeting with the diplomats, gently “corrected”
the president, explaining that Mugenzi’s words had been misconstrued.120
French diplomats in Kigali were inclined to credit Habyarimana’s claims that his
government was operating in good faith; an 11 March cable informed Paris that Rwandan
authorities wanted to regain control in Bugesera, but that local government officials were simply
“overwhelmed.”121 The embassy’s own reporting, though, had already established that elements
of Habyarimana’s government had been complicit in the killings, and the regime’s responsibility
was, if anything, only becoming clearer. A 13 March report by France’s military intelligence
agency, the DRM, suggested the decision to air the inflammatory radio broadcasts might have been
politically motivated, the goal being, in all likelihood, to delay the formation of a new coalition
government,122 in which opposition parties would wield greater power. The DRM reasoned that,
in pursuing this aim, Radio Rwanda had probably not acted alone: “If the government authorities
seem embarrassed by the role of the national radio, the broadcasting of the notice can only have
been authorized by one of them.”123
Others in the Western diplomatic community soon began to receive reports affirming the
Rwandan government’s complicity in the massacres. One such report came from Prime Minister
Sylvestre Nsanzimana, who told US Ambassador Flaten in a 13 March meeting that he was
“convinced that people close to the President were responsible for helping to incite the violence”
in Bugesera.124 Swinnen, the Belgian ambassador, had other sources. On 12 March, the day after
the meeting with Habyarimana, Ambassador Swinnen alerted officials in Brussels that he had
received a note from Jean Birara,125 director of Rwandex (a company responsible for the sale of
Rwandan coffee126), and former governor of the National Bank of Rwanda who had sounded the
alarm about the Akazu in an open letter in 1979.127 Birara’s note alleged that Habyarimana had put
together a team of eight high-ranking Rwandan military officers or members of his inner circle to
“organize terror and massacres in the country.”128 The team purportedly included two powerful
members of the Akazu: the president’s brother-in-law, Protais Zigiranyirazo; and his personal
secretary, a relative by marriage, Elie Sagatwa.129 The other members were as follows: Captain
Pascal Simbikangwa of the Central Intelligence Service; François Karera, sub-prefect of Kigali
(whose son had married a niece of Zigiranyirazo); Commandant Jean Pierre Karangwa, the head
of intelligence in the Ministry of National Defense; Captain Justin Gacinya, head of the communal
police in Kigali; Lieutenant-Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, the head of intelligence in the Army
état-major; and Lieutenant-Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho, prefect of Kigali.130
Swinnen received an all-but-identical list from a second source, one he described as
“reliable,” a few weeks later.131 These men, Swinnen wrote in a cable marked, “very important,”
were said to be “members of [a] secret état-major charged with the extermination of Tutsi in
Rwanda in order to definitively resolve . . . the ethnic problem in Rwanda and to crush the internal
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Hutu opposition.”132 The “group [was] directly linked to the President of the Republic, who often
preside[d] over the group either at the Office of the President or at the headquarters of the MRND
political party.”133 The source also asserted that two government entities played a role in the
Bugesera massacres: the Interahamwe militia and “commando recruited from among the pupils”
of the training academy of the Gendarmerie.134 (Reports would emerge later in the course of the
war that the perpetrators of the massacre in Bugesera had included soldiers from the Presidential
Guard,135 the arm of the military responsible for protecting the president and his family, guarding
certain government buildings, and providing escorts for VIPs.136 This, as it happens, was a part of
the military France knew well, as French military cooperants had been laboring to improve the
Presidential Guard’s capabilities since mid-1991.137)
Whether the US and Belgian embassies shared what they were hearing with their French
colleagues, or whether the same sources also approached the French, is unclear. In any event, the
French government’s commitment to supporting Habyarimana and the FAR remained unshaken.
Indeed, the killings in Bugesera were still ongoing when, on 10 March 1992, Paul Dijoud, the Quai
d’Orsay’s director of African affairs, wrote a note expounding on the “[n]eed to reaffirm and
clarify French policy” in Rwanda.138 The note began by calling for “[a] reinforcement of French
support to the Rwandan Army” to help it counter the RPF’s growing “intransigence.”139 “It
would,” he wrote, “be useful, in particular, to give the Rwandan Army the ability to operate at
night.”140 Thus, a self-proclaimed neutral French diplomat requested specific military equipment
for one side of the conflict. Less than two months later, the French electronics and defense
contractor, Thomson-CSF, fulfilled its contract (signed in September 1991) with the Government
of Rwanda delivering “equipment for encrypted communications . . . hundreds of transceivers . . .
and four high-security digital telephone sets.”141 The French government also committed to
sending another 1.7 million French francs’ ($304,898) worth of military equipment in the back
half of 1992, including an Alouette II helicopter engine, radar units, paratrooper equipment, and
three Peugeot sedans.142
The increased assistance to the FAR would, Dijoud wrote, be “discreet but significant.”143
In exchange, France would expect the administration in Kigali “to encourage . . . all Rwandan
political parties to support the efforts of President Habyarimana to broaden his government and
find a prime minister in agreement with the opposition.”144
Dijoud’s note made no mention of Bugesera,145 though the violence, at that point, had been
going on for close to a week.146 That day, as it happens, the news services reported that Italian
missionary Antonia Locatelli—the same missionary Lt. Col. Robardey, the French cooperant
working with the Rwandan Gendarmerie, has said he encountered during his visit to Bugesera on
8 March—had been shot dead overnight at a mission near Nyamata.147 Locatelli, a resident of the
area for more than two decades, had given interviews to RFI contradicting Rwandan authorities’
claims that the killings in Bugesera were unplanned—that they represented nothing other than the
convulsions of angry locals.148 Locatelli asserted in these interviews that the killers were strangers
to the area who arrived by government vehicles intending to commit political crimes.149 Locatelli’s
killer was a Rwandan gendarme.150 A “diplomatic source” told AFP that she “was shot at close
range, making it unlikely it was a mistake.”151
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Monique Mas, in her 9 March 1992 interview with Ambassador Martres, asked whether
France’s attitude would change after the slaughter in Bugesera.152 Martres’ answer was elliptical.
There was still hope, he said, that Rwanda would soon have a transitional government, and France,
among other Western countries, “intends to continue its pressure on the Rwandan government” to
see that process through.153 “So,” Mas said, “pressure on the Rwandan government, but also
support to the Rwandan Army?”154 “Support to the Rwandan Army,” Martres repeated. He
continued, “I already explained to you how we conceived it. Support to the Rwandan Army is
technical support, a support of trainers and instructors, as we bring to other armies of Africa.”155
With killings of Tutsi orchestrated by government and government-affiliated forces continuing in
Bugesera, Martres defended his country’s decision to continue supporting the military—to finance
it, to train its soldiers, to supply them with gear and weapons—as perfectly routine. Would France
reconsider its support for the Rwandan military? The short answer was no.
Bugesera would be, in every way except one, a turning point in the 18-month conflict in
Rwanda. Despite everything it indicated—about government sponsorship of ethnic violence; the
deployment and effectiveness of state media in particular to incite this violence; the rise of Hutu
extremism; and the patterns that the contest between reform and backlash in Rwanda would now
take—it would do nothing to alter French support for the Habyarimana regime. Despite
comprehensive understanding of what transpired in Bugesera, France would not press the
Habyarimana regime for explanation, let alone suppression of extremists within its ranks, and in
fact would send more weapons, money, and advisors than it had in the past.
Immaculée Songa156
Immaculée was born on December 3, 1954. She was 39 at the time of the invasion.
After the invasion in October 1990, and for several years, the presence of the
French soldiers grew, and they were in a position to witness the constant
discrimination and harassment taking place. During this time, the radio was
constantly filled with anti‐Tutsi hatred. It would speak about the Ten
Commandments of the Hutus and demonize Tutsi.
I lived in Gikondo, on the road which goes from Kigali City to Kanombe,
where the airport is. From my home, I observed trucks full of militia members who
were singing about Hutu power and killing Tutsi. I learned they were going to a
place called Gako in Bugesera because I had a member of the Interahamwe at my
office, a business called Office des Cafés. He would tell us what the Interahamwe
were going to do, including saying that “We are killing you tomorrow! We have
guns! We will kill you tomorrow!”
Roadblocks were used throughout the country to check identification. I saw
French soldiers at roadblocks supporting militias as they checked IDs. The
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roadblocks were a problem for the Tutsi. We would learn that people were beaten
at them. I recall seeing my friend Claudine after she was beaten at a roadblock as
she was on her way to work passing through Nyamirambo.
The practice of putting Tutsis in prison and denying them basic rights
became more frequent after the RPF invasion, as Hutus then became more hostile
towards Tutsis. Many people were put in prison and many died there. Everyday
life for all Tutsis became more difficult, as we were viewed as second‐class citizens.
People would be telling us “move Tutsi, go get out of here.” On the radio, Tutsis
were called “snakes,” “cockroaches,” and other such words that would say Tutsis
were sub‐human. Such messages were heard on the radio and were constantly
being played to spread hatred.
The night of the plane crash, we were told that the President had died, and
that the military was saying no Tutsis would survive. My husband and I went to
hide in a neighbor’s house, stowing away in the kitchen storage area when militia
members would come searching. The militia members went away twice after
receiving bribes. I knew we would not survive a third time, so we decided to leave.
We had placed our children with Hutu friends in the Southern Province for
fear of violence. Our two daughters were killed with those friends in Gisenyi. The
last time we saw our daughters was when they were in hiding at our friends’ house.
Our Hutu friends kept them because the adults all agreed that it would be worse
for our children to be seized at a roadblock and killed in front of me and my
husband.
My husband and I went to Butare with my one‐year‐old son and stayed with
other families in a friend’s house. When militia members attacked the house for the
third time, my husband and I were put in a line in a forest with the other families
from the house. As they started killing my friends, the soldiers were coming up to
us to make sure we didn’t escape. One soldier approached me, I gave him the
money I had with me and told him we had money in the house. He pushed me
aside, and I saw him going to the other people as I moved backward into the forest.
I heard the militia members killing everyone and saying they needed tools to get
rid of the bodies. A heavy rain made them leave the forest along with the people at
the closest roadblock. I had survived there with my son, but my husband was killed
with all the families we were with. Afterwards, I went from house to house and
survived in Sahera, Butare with my son.
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After Operation Turquoise began, I was still in a village near Butare. A
militia member in front of the house where I was hiding stated proudly that he had
killed many and was counting the Tutsi remaining in that village. The man of the
house I was staying in was a member of the Interahamwe, and he would bring
news. A neighbor told me that I was going to be killed next. So, I went to hide in
the bushes with another girl from the house. I would hide there during the night
while the neighbor woman kept my one‐year‐old, then return to the house during
the day.
The neighbor woman eventually helped me get a Hutu identity card because
our brothers were good friends before mine was killed on April 7th. Meanwhile,
the RPF was making its way towards Butare, making Hutu militia members flee the
surrounding villages and head for Burundi. The militias used this as an opportunity
to kill any Tutsi who were flushed out of hiding. The other Tutsi girl and I moved
to another house where the lady of the house was Tutsi. Hutu extremists returned
to the village to kill any remaining Tutsis and were coming into the house where I
was, when we heard heavy gunfire nearby. The extremists left in a hurry. We were
in total despair, until the RPF Inkotanyi found us in that house and rescued us.
I believe that we survived for a reason. It is to remind the world that
genocide must never happen again. It is to tell the truth about the Genocide Against
the Tutsi.
C. Despite Ferdinand Nahimana’s Pivotal Role in the Bugesera Massacres, French Officials
Welcomed Him and Pledged Additional Aid to the Government-Run Media That Had Incited
the Violence.
Martres’ reporting about the Bugesera massacres had been unequivocal in one critical
respect: it was, he wrote, the government-run national radio that had “ignited the fire” with its
broadcasts of the alleged plot to murder prominent Hutu.157 The man responsible for those
broadcasts—and, more pointedly, for the thinly veiled calls to murder in response to reports of a
conspiracy he almost certainly knew to be false—was Ferdinand Nahimana.158
Nahimana, who would later receive a lengthy prison sentence for inciting genocide and
other genocide-related crimes,159 was the director of l’Office Rwandais d’Information
(ORINFOR), the government broadcasting arm and Radio Rwanda’s parent agency. He owed the
position to President Habyarimana, who had personally selected him for the directorship in late
1990.160 It was a powerful perch, as radio was a leading source of information for Rwandans, and
Radio Rwanda was then the only station in the country.161
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It is difficult to overstate the influence of the state-run radio in early 1990s Rwanda. In a
country more than half of whose people could not read,162 the radio had unequaled reach.
“Inexpensive radios are assembled locally and available everywhere,” the US State Department
reported in 1992.163 MRND, the ruling party—and the only party until political reforms began in
1991164—subsidized radio production, sold discounted radios, and gave radios away.165
The French government had been supporting Radio Rwanda since 1962, a year after the
station began broadcasting,166 by providing technical and professional training for the station’s
staff, as well as experts and advice through France’s Radio Cooperation Office.167 This aid
constituted one of the earliest forms of French governmental support for the Government of
Rwanda.168 It helped make Radio Rwanda the most authoritative and widespread source of
information in Rwanda, even as the MRND leaned on the station to pump out what a January 1992
US State Department report would describe as “sel[f]-serving propaganda.”169
Nahimana had begun his career not in broadcasting, but in academia, earning his doctorate
in history at Paris Diderot University.170 His dissertation, entitled, “From Lineages to Kingdoms
and from Kingdoms to Chiefdoms,” had argued that the Tutsi were not native to Rwanda.171 The
imprimatur it had received from Paris Diderot, one of the leading academic institutions in France,
had turned him into a revered intellectual at home.
Nahimana “was someone who was ready to do everything in order to be rich or to get
appointments,” recalled Christophe Mfizi, head of ORINFOR from 1976 to 1990, who had taught
Nahimana at the National University of Rwanda.172 According to Mfizi, Nahimana, as a young
academic, ingratiated himself with Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana’s fearsome brother, Protais
Zigiranyirazo, the Akazu power-broker.173 Zigiranyirazo, according to Mfizi, became an important
patron for Nahimana, who, in turn, showed his fealty by faithfully promoting what Mfizi termed
the “politique zédienne”—the systematized corruption that served primarily to funnel money to
Zigiranyirazo and his close associates in the Akazu (or “Network Zero,” as Mfizi called it).174
Mfizi said it was Zigiranyirazo and his cronies who, in 1990, encouraged President Habyarimana
to tap Nahimana to replace Mfizi as director of ORINFOR, where Nahimana proceeded to stoke
ethnic tensions.175
It was Nahimana’s decision, on 3 March 1992, to broadcast the false allegations that the
Parti Libéral was an arm of the RPF and was planning to assassinate prominent Hutus.176 His
employees suspected that the letter giving rise to those allegations was false and urged him not to
air reports about it, let alone refer to it in such inflammatory language.177 Nahimana went ahead
with the broadcasts anyway.
By the time of Nahimana’s visit to Paris later in March 1992, Nahimana’s responsibility
for the violence in Bugesera had, to some extent, become public knowledge. On 10 March 1992,
a group of five Rwandan human rights groups issued a statement condemning the national radio
and demanding that authorities dismiss Nahimana “for his obvious complicity in the fascist and
partisan media campaign that triggered the violence at Bugesera.”178 The MDR echoed this
demand in an 11 March press release.179 Whether French officials were aware of these statements
is unclear. What is certain is that they knew, as Ambassador Martres had reported, that Radio
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Rwanda’s broadcasts sparked the violence, and that Nahimana was the director of the agency
responsible for Radio Rwanda.
Nahimana nevertheless appears to have encountered no resistance during his March 1992
visit to France. In fact, the opposite occurred. After returning to Rwanda, Nahimana wrote to
President Habyarimana that he had met with a French Ministry of Cooperation official, who had
“reaffirmed that France is always ready to help us set up a national television. To this end, a
Rwandan television dossier will be submitted for approval to the [French Ministry of
Cooperation’s] Assistance and Cooperation Fund . . . which will meet at the beginning of June
1992.”180
France made good on its offer, in the end. In December 1992, a Rwandan government
delegation once again met with Ministry of Cooperation officials,181 who told the delegation that
France was ready to step up its support in the form of close to 1.2 million French francs,
approximately $225,000 at the time.182
“It is not a surprise to me that Nahimana went to France in March 1992 even though French
officials knew that he was behind the massacres in Bugesera,” Mfizi said.183 “The French
Ambassador to Rwanda, Mr. Martres, seemed very close to extremists; once, in 1992, Martres
received a delegation of CDR members in the embassy. I wrote him a letter saying I was shocked
by that visit.”184
D. The French Government Overlooked the Habyarimana Administration’s Complicity in
Massacres and Contended That Incremental Steps Toward Multi-Party Democracy Had
Justified France’s Continued Support for the Regime.
Following the Bugesera massacres, the opposition parties and Western diplomats, led by
Belgian Ambassador Swinnen, argued it was more necessary than ever for President Habyarimana
to relax the MRND’s grip on power and install a true “coalition government.”185 They had a hard
time persuading Habyarimana.186 He maintained that the current cabinet was sufficiently
pluralistic, even though the MRND controlled 15 seats, and the opposition held only two seats.187
The pressure, though, ultimately proved too much for Habyarimana. On 2 April 1992, he agreed
to replace MRND Prime Minister Nsanzimana with the opposition parties’ preferred candidate,
Dismas Nsengiyaremye of the MDR.188 The ensuing cabinet reshuffle in mid-April left the
president’s party with just nine out of 19 cabinet seats.189
The ministers of this new coalition government lost no time pursuing some long-sought
reforms. For example, Education Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate affiliated with the
MDR, did away with the “policy of equilibrium” that had allowed the government to consider a
candidate’s ethnicity and regional origin in awarding educational opportunities, and replaced it
with an exam.190 Soon, too, new préfets (regional governors) drawn from the opposition supplanted
the MRND faithful who had abused their power.191
Pluralism, though, brought neither peace nor stability. On the contrary, the weeks after the
April 1992 cabinet reshuffle saw a marked uptick in violence—in Kigali especially, but not
exclusively.192 On 25 April, for example, a bomb exploded in front of a newspaper counter at the
bus station in the center of Kigali, seriously injuring six people, two of whom had to have their
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legs amputated.193 On 1 May, a landmine blew up a van outside of a crowded shopping center in
Ruhango, reportedly killing 17 people and wounding 13 more.194 A few days later, a bomb blew
apart a restaurant in a Butare hotel, tearing off the roof and injuring 30 people.195
Uwilingiyimana, the new education minister and a member of the MDR party, would
herself become a victim of the country’s deteriorating security situation on 7 May 1992, when, not
long after sundown, a band of roughly two dozen thugs stormed into her house in Kigali.196 The
men, armed with machetes and grenades, forced her to hand over whatever cash she had, then
clubbed her in the head.197 After just a few minutes, they ran off with the money, some clothes
they snatched from her wardrobe, and an assortment of blankets and bedsheets.198
Uwilingiyimana would suffer far worse before the war’s end. Two years later, in April
1994, just hours after President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, a group of Rwandan
Presidential Guard soldiers would track down and murder her and her husband, cementing her
legacy as one of the first casualties of the Genocide.199 Though, of course, she could not have
known in May 1992 what was to come, she understood immediately that the perpetrators behind
the armed robbery at her Kigali home had targeted her for political reasons.200 “Unless my memory
is not good, I think that so far we have never seen such an attack on an individual from the MRND
party,” she remarked to a reporter after the attack.201 In the interview, she recalled that the
neighbors who rushed over to the house just after the mob left had wanted to know why none of
the gendarmes who had been patrolling the neighborhood that night had come to her aid.202
There was general agreement that many of the attacks in the interior of the country, outside
of the combat zone, in mid-1992 constituted a form of terrorism, but little agreement as to who
bore responsibility for them. The RPF blamed the Interahamwe,203 while, according to the Belgian
paper Le Soir, the Rwandan people felt the Army was to blame:
The Rwandan Army has indeed gone from 5,000 fairly professional soldiers to
35,000 hastily trained men, attracted by the pay and the prospect of receiving
weapons. Already today, these makeshift soldiers represent, like their Zairian
counterparts, a great source of insecurity: The population blames them for the
attacks, acts of terrorism and banditry that have multiplied in recent weeks.204
French officials, perhaps unsurprisingly, attributed the surge in violence, in large part, to
the RPF and its sympathizers.205 A confidential French defense memo indicated that the FAR had
shared with French officers a number of messages it had purportedly intercepted from the RPF,
which, according to the memo, confirmed suspicions that “the RPF has used terrorist methods for
several months at the expense of civilian populations neighboring the combat zone in the north of
the country.”206 To the French officers’ apparent surprise, though, the messages also indicated that
Rwandans on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum—anti-Tutsi extremists with the newly
formed Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR) party—were using those same methods
in a parallel campaign to “destabilize” the Habyarimana government, which, in the CDR’s view,
had become too sympathetic to Tutsi.207 In one message, the RPF supposedly called off a plan to
stir up ethnic tensions in a girls’ school in Gisenyi after learning that CDR members had already
concocted an identical scheme involving the same school.208 “[O]nce again,” the French memo
concluded, “we run into the feeling—incomprehensible to our Western sensibilities—that there is
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collusion, or at the very least a coincidence of interests, between the inner circle surrounding the
president, the ‘Akazu,’ and those from Uganda who have sworn to achieve [the regime’s]
undoing.”209
When General Varret, the head of the French Military Cooperation Mission, met with
Rwandan authorities in Kigali in May 1992, he spoke of the country’s deepening instability as if
it were a problem the Habyarimana administration was making a good-faith effort to mitigate, as
opposed to a crisis the regime was actively making worse.210 Varret, according to a Rwandan
Defense Ministry memo, spoke approvingly of the government’s transition toward multi-party
democracy: “He added that it is this reason that justifies their support for our country. He also
added that France will not let us down in these difficult times that our country is going through.”211
Col. Rene Galinié, who accompanied Varret on the trip, offered congratulations of his own
while chatting with a Defense Ministry official at a cocktail hour reception at the Méridien hotel
on 9 May.212 Galinié, who, less than a year earlier, had been France’s defense attaché in Kigali,
said Rwanda was lucky—it was the first country in the region to “succeed” at multiparty
democracy.213 As such, he said, it could count on European countries and international
organizations to offer “a lot of help.”214 This assistance, though, would not be unconditional, he
warned: “[I]f certain persons manage to torpedo this democracy, as is happening in Togo [where
forces loyal to the sitting dictator were undermining democratic transition—ed.] the French will
leave.”215
The French government, however, would remain committed to supporting the Rwandan
military all through the turbulent season that followed Varret’s visit. Notably, the DAMI Panda,
which, as of May 1992, had trained nine of the Rwandan Army’s 29 active battalions,216 saw its
ranks increased from 30 to 45 officers.217 In the months ahead, the DAMI officers would train
many of the FAR platoons leading the charge at the front, prompting one Rwandan military official
to write: “For the time being, the DAMI remains of paramount importance to us as long as the war
persists in our country.”218
Extremists, meanwhile, including those with connections to the Rwandan government,
continued to showcase their opposition to peace and democracy. Between May 28 and May 30,
members of the MRND and Interahamwe massed in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in
Kigali.219 Their protest, led by Interahamwe president Robert Kajuga, was meant to condemn
alleged attacks against the Interahamwe by members of the Parti Libéral, one of the opposition
parties.220 In a speech, Kajuga warned that the MRND would have to “use all means possible to
defend themselves,” if its complaints were ignored.221 A slew of MRND ministers seconded his
remarks and rained calumny on the opposition.222 A subsequent MRND press release called for
the dissolution of the PL and the arrest of its leader, Justin Mugenzi.223
The MRND/Interahamwe protest may have had another target: a new round of peace talks
taking place at that same moment in Brussels between the RPF and representatives from three
opposition political parties (MDR, PL, PSD) who were not formally representing the Rwandan
government. The late May 1992 talks in Brussels may have represented a unique opportunity for
peace in Rwanda because, as a Belgian newspaper observed, they enabled the warring parties to
make concessions without losing face: the RPF could argue that it was making concessions to the
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opposition, not the Habyarimana regime, and the Habyarimana regime could protect itself by
claiming the inverse, namely that it did not bear responsibility for the concessions from its side.224
“[P]eace without humiliation, where there would be no winners or losers,” was how the delegation
from the opposition parties put it.225 According to MDR Chairman Faustin Twagiramungu, the
two sides at the talks shared the goal of removing the “dictator,”226 but they differed on the means
of achieving that goal, with PL Chairman Mugenzi speaking for the delegation in saying that it
“condemn[s] the use of violence.”227
Habyarimana was later reported to have condemned the talks in Brussels and “those who
fell into the enemy’s trap” by agreeing to them.228 Meanwhile, the Interahamwe, who were on the
streets of Kigali protesting the new multiparty government, attacked Charles Karemera, a highranking PSD member,229 provoking clashes between the Interahamwe and supporters of the former
opposition parties,230 leaving seven dead and 20 injured.231
Elements of the Rwandan Army rioted, too, attacking civilians and pillaging stores in
Gisenyi, Ruhengeri, and elsewhere.232 The chaos ultimately left about 30 people dead.233 News
reports indicated the riots began after MDR Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye announced that “peace
[was] to come,” and so was the demobilization of many FAR members.234 However, Le Soir, the
Belgian newspaper, noted there was speculation that some unspecified party (presumably,
Habyarimana’s supporters in the military) had orchestrated the violence to delegitimize the
coalition government and its negotiations with the RPF.235
E. The French Government Responded to a June 1992 RPF Military Offensive in Byumba with
a Swift Increase in Military Assistance to the Rwandan Government.
Whatever the nature and scale of this attack, which the post has not been
able to evaluate yet, it appears to me in any event necessary to reinforce the
Noroît detachment.236
– Georges Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
Amid the tumult, the RPF launched a major offensive—its largest since the January 1991
attack on Ruhengeri. In the early morning of 5 June 1992, RPF forces pushed into Byumba
province, briefly taking Byumba town, the logistical base for government forces in the area,
located approximately 19 miles from the border and only 25 miles north of Kigali along a main
road.237 The goal, as RPF army officers have since explained, was not to capture Byumba, but to
attack it and retreat—which, in fact, is what the RPF forces did.238 “We had moved into a phase of
a propaganda war, and the objective was not to seize territory,” Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, then
an intelligence officer in the RPF’s Army, has said. “We were trying to seize equipment and break
morale, which would help create leverage for the RPF at the negotiations table.”239
The attack highlighted how the two sides’ fortunes had changed since the start of the
conflict.240 While the RPF military had increased its numbers and had a solidified leadership and
chain of command,241 the FAR was showing signs of stress. The FAR had tried and failed several
times in April 1992 to reconquer sections of Mutara where the RPF was firmly ensconced.242
Rwandan authorities had been quick to blame these failures on a lack of firepower and claimed to
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need more mortars.243 Colonel Cussac, though, said the FAR lacked courage and drive.244 He also
said its commanders were employing the wrong tactics and ignoring the advice of their French
military cooperants.245
In Cussac’s view, the FAR at that moment—and its elite para-commando battalion, in
particular—was worn out.246 The para-commando battalion had been deployed in virtually every
major battle since the start of the war—“too often,” in Cussac’s opinion.247 As of May 1992, he
noted, no more than 120 of the battalion’s 500 soldiers were fit and available for combat.248 “The
rest,” he wrote, “are sick or . . . absent.”249 (Ambassador Martres would later describe the FAR,
more generally, as “increasingly demoralized,” and he would even go so far as to question whether
Rwandan soldiers might pose a greater threat to the security of French expatriates than the RPF
did.250)
Almost as soon as the RPF launched its 5 June offensive in Byumba, President
Habyarimana called Ambassador Martres to report the attack and to request that France send “a
second company . . . immediately to Kigali to cover the town and the airport.”251 Martres was
apparently of the opinion that France should send more troops regardless of the situation, writing
a cable to Paris that “[w]hatever the nature and scale of this attack, which the post has not been
able to evaluate yet, it appears to me in any event necessary to reinforce the Noroît detachment.”252
Martres’ suggestion had immediate effect: France deployed a second Noroît company of 150
troops to Rwanda in the evening of 5 June/morning of 6 June, increasing the Noroît presence once
more to two companies. (As a reminder, France had withdrawn one of the two Noroît companies
in December 1990 because it was needed in the Persian Gulf.253)
By the time French troops arrived in Byumba town on the afternoon of 6 June, the RPF
forces had already withdrawn.254 In a 7 June cable to Paris, Martres appeared to question whether
Habyarimana had misled him:
As with the taking of Ruhengeri in January 1991, that of Byumba showed . . .
exaggerations more or less calculated to raise the concern and support of Western
countries [that are] friends of Rwanda. There was no massive attack by the Ugandan
Army, as President Habyarimana had told me . . . nor a massive invasion as the
Minister of Defense had suggested.255
The Byumba offensive precipitated a major shake-up in the Rwandan armed forces. Among
the officers axed on 9 June, just four days after the offensive, were the heads of the Army and
national Gendarmerie, both Akazu members and notorious anti-Tutsi hardliners: Col. Laurent
Serubuga, who had succeeded Habyarimana as head of the Army in December 1991,256 and who,
Martres would tell the MIP, had welcomed the RPF military offensive in 1990 because it provided
a pretext for carrying out anti-Tutsi violence;257 and Col. Pierre-Célestin Rwagafilita, the chief of
staff of the Gendarmerie, who had alarmed Jean Varret with his talk of “liquidat[ing]” the Tutsi in
December 1990.258 (Also significant, Théoneste Bagosora, who would go on to become one of the
primary architects of the Genocide,259 was pulled from his role as head of Camp Kanombe and
assigned to a position as the Cabinet director in the Ministry of Defense, essentially the second in
command in the department.260) Martres and Cussac, in a cable to Paris, noted that the official
reason for the replacement of Serubuga and Rwagafilita was a forced retirement on account of
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age,261 although other observers would claim that claim Habyarimana had dismissed the officers
for incompetence or because they could not be trusted.262
US Ambassador Robert Flaten was pleased with the reorganization: “This was a very
important step,” he wrote in a cable the day after the announcement.263 “As long as I have been
here I have heard the names of Rwagafilita, Serubuga and [Elie] Sagatwa [President
Habyarimana’s private secretary—ed.] as the eminence grises behind all of the evils of this
Habyarimana administration. The removal of two of them will prove to many Rwandans that this
government of transition is now functioning.”264 Flaten had high hopes for Rwagafilita’s
successor, Col. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, who, he said, was “well respected in and out of the
armed forces, and generally considered to not have used his positions of power to enrich
himself.”265 He was less sure about Serubuga’s replacement, Col. Deogratias Nsabimana. The
FAR’s new chief of staff, Flaten wrote, was known to be “effective and [have] earned the respect
of his soldiers,” but also “known as a man who gives no quarter, believed to have tortured prisoners
to death and instituted summary executions on the battlefield.”266
Indeed, Nsabimana would prove before long that he was no reformer. In September 1992,
he ordered Rwandan Army commanders to circulate among their troops an explosive document—
one that defined the FAR’s “main enemy” not as the RPF military, but as “the Tutsi.”267
F. Despite Press Criticism Aimed at French Military Engagement in Rwanda, Following the
Byumba Offensive, French Leaders Provided New Weaponry and Training to the FAR and,
by Several Accounts, Engaged Directly in the Fight.
[A] commanding officer cannot avoid responsibility because he did not
shoot a bullet. There is training, there is preparation, mentoring, advising
people—the actual battle is the last aspect.268
– Charles Kayonga, RPF Battalion Commander
Publicly, throughout 1992, France continued to claim its troops were in Rwanda for
humanitarian purposes and for the security of expatriates. A spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay
said that France’s sole goal was “to help the country [Rwanda] move towards democracy.”269 The
RPF presented a different take in a 9 June 1992 press release, “The French Military Guarantor of
the MRND Regime,” that began, “The humanitarian justification for the French military presence
in Rwanda has increasingly proven to be a decoy.”270 Two days later, in an article in the French
paper Libération, reporter Stephen Smith offered reasons to believe the RPF was right. Smith
observed that the recent deployment of additional French troops had taken place in the “utmost
secrecy.”271 He also reported on several ammunition deliveries to Rwanda from Châteauroux
airport in central France, and he added that the French military had proven willing to “deduct”
ammunition from its own stock when French arms supplier Thomson-Brandt could not fill an order
for Rwanda.272
Smith was not the only French journalist to criticize France’s intervention in Rwanda. In
the last week of June 1992, Jean-François Dupaquier published a scathing article in the French
weekly magazine L’Événement du Jeudi titled, “France at the Bedside of African Fascism.”273
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Dupaquier’s article ticked off the history and resurgence in Rwanda of anti-Tutsi repression and
slaughter: “exterminat[ion of] some two hundred and fifty thousand Tutsi between 1960 and 1973,
pushing half a million others to the roads of exile”; the renewal of widespread killings in a
“Cambodian-style scenario”; the racist rants in Kangura, reminiscent of Nazi newspapers, that
appealed to “Hutu fanatics of the ‘final solution’”; the failure of Habyarimana (referred to as a
good friend of President Mitterrand and his son) to “punish the fanatical groups who have sworn
to bring about the total extermination of the 14% of Tutsi ‘remaining’”; government use of torture
during interrogations; and the role of Radio Rwanda in inciting the massacres in Bugesera.274 On
this last point, Dupaquier reported that French soldiers protected Radio Rwanda, and that
ORINFOR director Ferdinand Nahimana had not explained or apologized for the radio’s role in
provoking the Bugesera violence.275
Dupaquier then turned his analysis to French support of the regime:
Most astonishing is the role of the French military in Rwanda. . . . François
Mitterrand wants above all to prevent the fall of his old friend, Juvénal
Habyarimana . . . . [T]he French intervention corps of about two hundred men has
thus gone from having a “humanitarian” role to that of a second Presidential Guard.
The French soldiers have been instructed to show themselves as much as possible
in the streets of Kigali and to police the high places of power: the presidency, the
airport, [and] the French embassy.276
Among the allegations that made their way into both Dupaquier’s and Smith’s reports was
one—previously the subject of some conjecture in Rwanda—that a French officer had secretly
been leading the FAR’s war against the RPF Army. A substantially similar claim had arisen in
February 1992, when press outlets obtained from the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs a
letter277 purportedly informing French embassy officials that Lieutenant-Colonel Gilles Chollet,
then the commander of DAMI Panda, had been named a military adviser to both President
Habyarimana and Col. Serubuga, the then-chief of staff of the Rwandan Army.278 Rwandan
opposition political parties pounced on the letter, with the People’s Union Party calling Chollet
the new “strong man of the regime,”279 and the MDR wailing in a press release: “It’s serious. . . .
Very serious! . . . Today our troops are under the command of a Frenchman.”280 An editorial in
Kanguka, a prominent opposition newspaper, drew parallels to Rwanda’s colonial past—save that
this time, the colonial power exercising control over Rwanda was France, rather than Belgium.281
The Quai d’Orsay had promptly denied the reports of Chollet’s advisory position,282
without ever mentioning that another French officer, Colonel Gilbert Canovas, had served as an
advisor to senior leaders of the FAR for the first nine months of the war.283 (The MIP would later
echo the Quai d’Orsay’s denial: Chollet, it wrote, “had never, unlike Colonel Gilbert Canovas,
been instructed to act in an advisory role to the Rwandan Head of State or to the chief of staff to
the Rwandan Army.”284) It would not be long, though, before the French government did, in fact,
assign an officer to advise the FAR chief of staff. A new deputy defense attaché, Lieutenant
Colonel Jean-Jacques Maurin, took on this role in mid-April 1992.285 Maurin’s orders were to
advise Colonel Serubuga, then the top official in the Rwandan army, “on everything concerning
the conduct of operations,” as well as on “the preparation and training of the Rwandan armed
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forces.”286 A draft letter of assignment instructed him to approach his task with “great
discretion.”287
Smith, in his June 1992 article in Libération, wrote that Lt. Col. Maurin was no mere
advisor—rather, he wrote, Maurin now “decides, de facto, on the Rwandan Army’s war
strategies.”288 Similarly, Dupaquier asked, “How far can the involvement of the French Army in
Rwanda go? Very far, if we observe that Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Jacques Maurin, officially
deputy to the military attaché, is in reality the head of the état-major of the Rwandan Army, in
charge of supervising a war [that is] less and less military, and increasingly uncivil.”289
General Varret, the head of the French Military Cooperation Mission, had opposed
Maurin’s appointment. “Do we need to get more involved in this conflict when our military
presence is already misunderstood and misinterpreted?” Varret wrote in an April 1992 note. Varret
thought not. His note argued it was inadvisable “to assign a military cooperant to an army
commanded by a chief of staff [i.e., Colonel Serubuga] whose methods we cannot endorse.”290
While, officially, Maurin’s role consisted of “discreetly advising the Chief of Staff of the
FAR on everything concerning the conduct of operations, but also the preparation and training of
the Rwandan armed forces (FAR),” the full scope of Lt. Col. Maurin’s work with the FAR, in
practice, remains unclear.291 (Maurin’s testimony to the MIP is unavailable to the public.) The
French government, in any event, paid no heed to Smith’s and Dupaquier’s criticisms. The French
government’s response to the Byumba offensive was to fortify its military assistance to the FAR,
which was then trying to push back the RPF forces that continued to hold much of the area north
of Byumba.292 According to ex-FAR officer and current Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) Brigadier
General Evariste Murenzi, “it was after the RPF assault on Byumba in June 1992, when they [the
RPF] showed their military superiority over the Rwandan Armed Forces, that the French became
resolutely engaged.”293 France promptly integrated the DAMI and Noroît forces into a single unit
under the authority of a commander of operations, Colonel Jacques Rosier, who would lead French
efforts to help the FAR counter the RPF military’s Byumba offensive.294
Col. Rosier was a decorated officer—a 1985 recipient of the Legion of Honor, France’s
highest order of merit—with decades of military experience, much of it in Africa.295 He had, in
that time, participated in several military interventions on the continent, including in Chad, where
from 1969 to 1972 France helped Chadian dictator François Tombalbaye fend off an insurgency.296
Rosier later led a detachment in the Central African Republic during a controversial 1979 French
intervention that led to the ouster of the country’s self-proclaimed emperor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa.297
Described years later as “legend in the French Army,”298 Rosier would go on to play a significant
role in Rwanda, including as a French special forces commander during Operation Turquoise,299
the ostensibly “humanitarian” operation France launched more than two months into the Genocide.
Between 11 and 16 June 1992, Col. Rosier and Col. Dominique Delort conducted a French
military mission to evaluate the FAR’s capabilities.300 (Delort, like Rosier, had served in Chad
against the insurgency there.301) According to an interview given by Col. Rosier, “[i]t emerged,
above all, from this mission that the FAR did not have sufficient firepower to stop the RPA
offensives, sufficient reserves of maneuver to counter-attack in the various sectors and a
management team that was equal to the situation.”302 To address the first of these issues, Col.
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Cussac, the French military attaché, informed the new head of the FAR, Déogratias Nsabimana,
on 20 June 1992 that the French would deliver five 105 mm cannons, along with 2,400 shells, to
Kigali on 24 June (with another 300 shells authorized to be delivered).303 The RPF soldiers would
nickname these powerful new weapons “dimba hasi” (Kinyarwanda for “earth shaker”).304
Cussac told Nsabimana that France intended to train FAR soldiers on the 105 mm howitzer
“in the Byumba region so as to deal with real targets on the field.”305 It appears, though, that French
officials soon had second thoughts about this plan. On 22 June, the FAR was informed that the
decision to allow the French to train them in the combat zone was “amended by a message from
Paris, which prohibits the use of these 105 mm cannons in the combat zone for the time
being.”306 Displeased, Col. Nsabimana asked Defense Minister Gasana to intervene with the
French, “so that training can take place in the combat zone where . . . [it] will positively impact
the morale of our men.”307 Nsabimana was clear about his intentions, explaining to French officers
on 25 June that he wanted to put the battery to use soon, “within the context of the current fighting
in the BYUMBA OPS sector.”308
Colonels Rosier and Delort promptly returned to Rwanda, where, as Rosier would later
say, their top priority “was to set up in the shortest possible time a battery of 105s given by France
and operated by the FAR.”309 To help him accomplish this objective, France sent 28 artillery
specialists from the 35th Artillery Parachute Regiment to train Rwandan troops to use the new
weapons, some of the time at an “artillery school” at Kanombe Camp.310
The pressure to expedite the cannons’ deployment on the battlefield spurred Col. Delort to
propose a new concept—what he termed “semi-direct” aid to the FAR.311 Acknowledging that it
would take some time before FAR soldiers would be ready to fire the new weapons, Delort wrote
to Paris on 26 June: “In a restricted circle, we are studying the possibility of semi-direct actions,
i.e. FR/RW [French/Rwandan] battery, with the FR personnel being the least visible but
present.”312 The Duclert Commission discussed documents indicating that such “semi-direct
actions” did, in fact, occur in the weeks that followed.313
Rosier has said that, on 8 July 1992, “doubled by the French cadres, the Rwandan battery
carried out its first firing in the Byumba sector. We were only at the shooting-exercise stage, but
the level was progressing rapidly because every day the battery was in one of the three operational
sectors.”314 He said the French cooperants—who, at one point, would set up a second battery of
122 mm howitzers provided by Egypt—continued to train the Rwandan troops in the field until 1
August 1992, by which time the Rwandan soldiers were “completely autonomous.”315
The 105 mm cannons—weapons never used before by the Rwandan Army—surprised and
alarmed RPF troops, who soon had to contend with new types of injuries, in addition to the
psychological impact of realizing that the FAR had new and substantial reinforcement.316 “The
deployment of the 105 mm guns had a demoralizing effect because they were much bigger than
what we had,” Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, then an intelligence officer in the RPF’s Army, said.
“They were fired from long range, they pinned us down in the trenches. You didn’t know when
you were going to get out.”317 Charles Kayonga (who was a commander in the RPF’s Army in
1992) said he knew it was French soldiers directing the use of these weapons because
communication equipment captured by RPF forces revealed French soldiers expressing
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disappointment that the FAR was not taking advantage of the French artillery support. “Ils sont
faible [they are weak],” the French were saying over the radio, comprehensible to the RPF troops
thanks to its Francophone soldiers who had joined from exile in Burundi and Congo.318
The dimba hasi made a similar impression on James Kabarebe, then the commander of the
101 battalion based in Mukarange (about 15 kilometers north of Byumba). According to his
account, a few weeks after the start of fighting in Byumba, RPF troops learned that the French had
returned to the field with enough 105 mm artillery ammunition to bomb them all day and night for
two or three weeks.319 “The noise alone from the 105 mm was terrible,” he said.320 The FAR
opened fire on the 105 mm around 6 a.m., and at around 4 p.m. French soldiers could be heard
over the radio commanding the FAR to “avance [advance].”321 But because RPF forces had dug
trenches, its forces were not incapacitated by the shelling.322 When the FAR advanced their attack
on foot, the RPF soldiers waited until the FAR troops were about 20 meters away from their
trenches to defend their positions.323 The French could be heard on the radio calling the FAR
“cowards,” “useless,” saying they would not win this war if they could not defeat the RPF troops
after such heavy shelling.324
st
One French officer who served in Rwanda that summer has since written that, while French
troops managed throughout the war to avoid direct combat with the RPF, “we were hitting them
copiously with 105 mm shells (and even 122 mm [shells] from Egypt).”325 A number of ex-FAR
soldiers have attested that it was French soldiers who manned the 105 mm cannons at Byumba.326
In contrast, former French ambassador to Rwanda George Martres testified in front of the French
Senate that “French forces of the Noroît detachment had not taken part in any engagement,” and
further that “[o]ur technical assistants have not taken part in combat in the sense that they have not
directly fought.”327 Whether or not French troops were firing the cannons, they trained and advised
the FAR soldiers operating the artillery in the field. As Kayonga observed recently, a
“commanding officer cannot avoid responsibility because he did not shoot a bullet. There is
training, there is preparation, mentoring, advising people—the actual battle is the last aspect.”328
There were no contemporaneous news reports in France on this intervention. It did not even
appear in a 14 July 1992 article in Libération written by Stephen Smith, who one month earlier, in
a separate article, had revealed the 5 June Noroît deployment (see discussion above). Apparently
unaware that France had supplied the 105 mm howitzers to Rwanda, Smith nevertheless wrote in
his 14 July piece, “Officially, the purpose of French military presence is only ‘the protection and
security of foreigners.’ However, the constant support of Paris, since the beginning of the Rwandan
civil war, makes the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana seem like a ‘protectorate’ of the Élysée.”329
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G. Following a July 1992 Ceasefire Agreement, French Authorities Supplied More Weapons
to the FAR and Took Measures to Ensure the DAMI “Panda” Advisors Would Not Be
Forced to Leave Rwanda.
In keeping with your orders, the Army chief of staff continues its logistical
aid in order to avoid a brutal destabilization of the Rwandan Army.330
– Christian Quesnot, Chief Military Advisor (1991 – 1995)
With talks between the RPF and the Rwandan government set to commence in Arusha,
Tanzania in July 1992, President Mitterrand’s top military advisor, General Christian Quesnot,
warned the president that “the RPF will probably try to reach a maximal territorial guarantee
before” the negotiations.331 Quesnot, by this time, had been advising Mitterrand on Rwanda
matters for a little more than a year. Where, once, in June 1991, he had advised Mitterrand to
withdraw Noroît troops, Quesnot had begun, in time, to favor more aggressive action in support
of the Rwandan government, and his antipathy toward the RPF was becoming more and more
evident.332
Quesnot was a leading voice in the Élysée’s internal debates over Rwanda policy.
According to Françoise Carle, an aide to Mitterrand who worked at the Élysée during the Rwanda
conflict to archive the French president’s files,333 Quesnot was more involved in Rwanda than
either Mitterrand or his chief advisor, Élysée Secretary-General Hubert Védrine.334 Quesnot’s
outspokenness had defined him as far back as the 1970s, when, as a relatively junior army
commander, he had been part of a group of reformers who openly criticized senior officers for
focusing on personal advancement while under-investing in the Army.335 (This made it necessary
for Quesnot to rely on political figures for future career advancement.336) Quesnot would later
distinguish himself for his ingenuity and daring,337 as well as his readiness to work outside the
lines. Reflecting, years later, on his service in anti-terrorism operations in Chad and Lebanon in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, he acknowledged: “I defended French interests . . . using methods
that morality condemns, but efficiency recommends.”338
Quesnot’s recommendation to Mitterrand on 1 July 1992, while the FAR was still reeling
from the surprise attack in Byumba, was to offer “temporary operational assistance of a few
advisers to the staffs as well as to the units recently equipped with the new equipment”—subject
“to the utmost discretion and with the prior agreement, on a case by case basis, of the [French]
état-major des Armées.”339 He noted that existing directives “exclude[d] all direct French
participation in the confrontations,” but questioned whether Mitterrand might reconsider that
position in light of recent events: “The previous strict directives could also be confirmed, but then
there would be no guarantee that the Rwandan forces, though experienced, would hold under RPF
pressure until 10 July [when peace talks were due to start in Arusha—ed.]. Could you let me know
your decision?”340
At the top of Quesnot’s 1 July 1992 note, Mitterrand replied in handwriting: “I saw Mr.
Joxe [Minister of Defense].”341 What Mitterrand decided or communicated to the minister of
defense is unknown, but the lack of public information on this topic would be in keeping with the
“utmost discretion” advised by Quesnot.
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The FAR, in any case, did manage to hold its ground until representatives from the two
sides met for talks later that month in Arusha. Those talks culminated on 12 July 1992 with the
adoption of a cease-fire agreement, which called for the two sides to stop fighting one week later,
on 19 July, and to recommit themselves to the terms of an earlier cease-fire agreement they had
signed in March 1991 in N’Sele, Zaire.342 In so doing, the government and the RPF promised, once
again, to suspend the delivery of “supplies of ammunition and . . . weaponry to the field.”343 They
further agreed, as they had at N’Sele, that that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) would
deploy observers to Rwanda to monitor the cease-fire, and that this deployment would trigger “the
withdrawal of all foreign troops . . . except for Military Officers serving in Rwanda under bilateral
Cooperation Agreements.”344 The agreement did not mention France by name, but the implications
for French troops were clear: if, as envisioned, the OAU were to dispatch observers to Rwanda,
only a small number of French military cooperants—essentially, the 20 or so advisors and technical
assistants working with Rwandan armed forces through the French Military Assistance Mission
(MAM)—would be permitted to stay. Other French troops, including the Noroît detachment and
DAMI Panda advisors, would be expected to leave.345
Quesnot wrote to Mitterrand that he saw the 12 July 1992 cease-fire agreement as no more
than a delaying tactic by “Ugandan-RPF forces . . . to reinforce and develop their offensive.”346
He conceded that even “French aid cannot reverse the balance of power between the powerful
Ugandan Army and what remains of the Rwandan army after 21 months of fighting. Only an
exceptional and rapid diplomatic pressure on the Ugandan president Museveni would be likely to
stop the ongoing offensive against Rwanda.”347
Quesnot doubted Museveni’s commitment to the peace process. “[G]iven the
psychological profile of the Ugandan president,” Quesnot wrote, “it’s feared that . . . perceiving
the rise in international hostility against his operation, he may be tempted to abruptly accelerate
his offensive in order to outpace the peace process expected in Arusha.”348 As a result, Quesnot
concluded, “In keeping with your orders, the Army chief of staff continues its logistical aid in
order to avoid a brutal destabilization of the Rwandan Army.”349
France’s policy during this period may have been best summarized by a Rwandan
Gendarmerie officer, who, after sitting through a September 1992 meeting between a French Army
intelligence officer, was put in mind of a Latin adage: “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—if you want
peace, prepare for war.350 The French intelligence officer, speaking for himself, if not necessarily
for the whole of the French government, said he had no doubt of the Rwandan government’s
commitment to the peace process, “but he castigated the maximalist position of the RPF delegation
during the Arusha negotiations.”351 What France wanted, the Gendarmerie officer’s memo
suggested, was to help the FAR mount enough of a defense on the battlefield to convince RPF
leaders to pin their hopes on the Arusha process, and to settle for less than they were currently
demanding: “At the moment when the Inkotanyi realize that our Army has regained its power and
fury, the Negotiations will succeed.”352
The French government did not let the July 1992 cease-fire agreement imperil its support
for the Rwandan military. Though the agreement had expressly precluded the delivery of “supplies
of ammunition and . . . weaponry to the field,”353 France continued to ship weapons to the FAR.
On 6 August 1992, a French Defense Ministry official sent the French Foreign Ministry a note
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seeking guidance on what to do about a planned transfer of “2,000 shells of 105 mm and 20
machine guns of 12.7 mm, with 32,400 cartridges.”354 One week later, the Defense Ministry—
with the blessing of the Foreign Ministry—authorized the military to transfer those munitions.355
According to the MIP, the French government provided 23.4 million French francs (roughly $4.3
million) in weapons and ammunition to Rwanda in 1992.356 Of this, substantially more than half
was provided free of charge.357 These figures represented a substantial increase from 1990 and
1991.358 In addition, the French government authorized arms sales by French companies to the
Rwandan government.359
Rwandan authorities, meanwhile, proved determined to find a work-around for another of
the July 1992 cease-fire agreement’s provisions: the one requiring the withdrawal of foreign troops
upon the deployment of an OAU observer force to monitor the cease-fire.360 The agreement, as
Rwandan officials were well aware, had made an exception for “military cooperants” who “are in
Rwanda as a result of bilateral Cooperation Agreements,” which promised to shield a limited
number of French military personnel—specifically, the roughly 20 MAM advisors and technical
assistants whose presence in Rwanda was authorized under the 1975 Franco-Rwandan Military
Technical Assistance Agreement (MTAA).361 These cooperants would be allowed to stay. It was
understood, though, that the exception did not cover the Noroît detachment and the DAMI “Panda”
advisors, because the MTAA—which, strictly speaking, authorized French assistance only to the
Rwandan Gendarmerie—did not apply to them.362
The Rwandan authorities’ solution to this problem was to ask the French government to
amend the MTAA.363 France agreed. On 26 August 1992, the two countries amended the MTAA
to authorize French assistance not only to the Gendarmerie, but to the “Rwandan Armed Forces,”
more broadly.364 The amendment was made with DAMI “Panda” particularly in mind, with a
French Ministry of Cooperation official explaining: “The uncertainty weighing on the evolution
of the Rwandan situation inclines the Army general staff to consider the continued presence of the
DAMI as desirable and could justify granting them the status of military cooperant in order to
make it legally possible.”365 Though the official plainly saw the value in reclassifying the DAMI
advisors as technical cooperants so they could remain in Rwanda consistent with the MTAA, he
cautioned that this should be done in a way that would “not appear to observers as a maneuver
intended to maintain, at all costs, a total French military presence that they will not fail to note as
significant.”366
H. French Officers Worked Alongside Rwandan Gendarmes at the Kigali-Based Criminal
Investigations Center, Despite Allegations That Gendarmes Abused Prisoners There.
In July 1992, France sent four technical advisers to help Rwandan gendarmes conduct
criminal investigations at the Centre de recherche criminelle et de documentation (Center for
Criminal Research and Documentation, or CRCD), in Kigali.367 Their arrival had been in the works
since May 1992, when General Varret, the head of the French Military Cooperation Mission,
agreed to support a plan to help Gendarmerie leaders combat the growing threat of terrorism in
Rwanda.368
Controversy had stalked the center that summer, as Amnesty International aired allegations
that gendarmes had beaten and tortured prisoners at the center, then known as the Fichier Central
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(“Central File”).369 Letter writers, spurred on by the organization’s report, urged Rwandan political
leaders to stop the abusive treatment of prisoners at the “notorious” facility.370 One letter told the
story of two detainees, both Tutsi, who “were subjected to severe beatings while in Gendarmerie
custody in an effort to force them into making false statements meant to incriminate themselves
and others.”371
The allegations, broadly speaking, were true, according to Liberata Mukagasana, a
seasoned judicial police officer who managed to survive the Genocide by keeping her head down
in Gendarmerie barracks in Kigali.372 Mukagasana said that, after the war started in October 1990,
the Fichier Central became the scene of many interrogations of suspected “accomplices,” a term
that usually just meant the person was Tutsi, or perhaps a journalist from an opposition
newspaper.373 Rwandan gendarmes, Mukagasana said, would tie the person’s hands behind his
back and lash his chest with an electric cable.374 Some were tortured to death.375
It was the French, she said, who first proposed changing the center’s name, a bit of public
relations legerdemain after the torture allegations became public.376 Some French officials had
pressured the Habyarimana regime to reform its treatment of prisoners. French defense attaché
Col. René Galinié, for example, before his departure from Rwanda in June 1991, had urged
President Habyarimana to stop the summary execution of prisoners.377 According to Mukagasana,
however, the approach taken by cooperants in the CRCD was more laissez-faire. The French
officers knew the Rwandan gendarmes were torturing suspects, but they did not tell the gendarmes
to stop it—just to do it somewhere else, when the French advisers were not around to see it.378
Gerard Nshimyumuremyi379
Gerard was born December 28, 1967. Beginning in 1990, he was a resident of the Kicukiro
Commune.
After the invasion, I became increasingly aware of anti‐Tutsi racism. It was
always there but became much worse. Beginning in primary school, students were
asked to identify themselves as Tutsi or Hutu. For high school entrance exams, Tutsi
were “not supposed to pass,” and even those possessing high marks were often not
allowed to progress. The identification card had both ethnicity and region of birth,
and those cards were to be displayed any time one sought official services. Soldiers
at roadblocks would also ask for these identification cards. And if you were Tutsi
you would have problems, mostly at roadblocks.
From 1990 to 1994, every day you could hear and see the hatred. The French
were aware, they could watch people be mistreated at roadblocks, hear the
messages on the hate radio about Tutsi being cockroaches and snakes.
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I recall seeing French soldiers at roadblocks on my way back into Kigali from
Nyanza, now the Southern Province. They had distinctive hats, uniforms, and
tricolor badges, and the Rwandan soldiers at the roadblocks spoke French to them.
The roadblocks were a fixture of life, dispersed roughly every 20 miles and were
mobile, sometimes being a piece of wood, or string, or even a horse. The typical
procedure was to have everyone leave the bus, line up single file, and present their
IDs. It seemed I had to stop at roadblocks every day from 1992‐1993. Not all the
roadblocks had French people present, but they were often at the main entrances to
Kigali.
Besides being at the roadblocks, the French assisted the Rwandan police. At
the end of 1992, I was brought in for questioning after a car bombing at my
workplace, PetroRwanda. I was the Transportation Officer at the time, and my
coworkers had told the gendarmes to start with me. They suspected I was an RPF
collaborator because I was a Tutsi. The gendarmes were accompanied by French
officers who were in uniform and speaking French, though I do not know if they
were French Gendarmerie officers or soldiers. They took me to the Gendarmerie’s
criminology department. I believe that the French officers were there to lend their
expertise with police work, as they did in my case. They seemed to be permanently
assigned there since they had a desk filled with paperwork. It was clear that the
Rwandan gendarmes had a lot of confidence because of the French presence
working with them and supporting what they did.
The French could also see the growing presence of the Interahamwe. The
Interahamwe were all over Kigali, when you were driving or walking, every day.
They could stop you and take your car with impunity. They were harassing, hurting
people, and doing all the bad things you could imagine. They would have been
visible to the French because they were visible to everyone.
You could tell who was with the Interahamwe because they had their
uniforms and weapons. They would have been visible to the French because they
were visible to everyone, and present throughout the country. The French were
supporting the Habyarimana government even while the Interahamwe were
threatening and hurting civilians like me.
I was at home asleep when the plane was shot down. The next day, the
Interahamwe started trying to break through the gate to my house. I thought it was
my last day. I took my infant son out of the back door and handed him over the
fence to my neighbor because I did not want him to die with me. I eventually
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escaped, but most of my family were killed by machetes – my mom, my brother,
my grandparents.
One day, when I was hiding, the Interahamwe came to find me. At the house
where I was, they had chickens. An Interahamwe took one of the chickens, cut it on
the neck, and showed me the blood on the blade to show me how sharp the machete
was and what it would do to me. Then, they said “let’s go.” Two of them went in
front of me with machetes and the one behind had the grenade. As we left, they
said to me, “You think you’re hiding? Everyone knows where you are.” They were
escorting me to kill me elsewhere. As we walked, I saw people lying dead and
naked everywhere on the streets, hacked apart. Eventually, as we were walking,
one of them convinced the others to take my car and leave me. That was how they
would do it: in the beginning, they would take stuff and then a few days later they
would come to kill you. I managed to stay in hiding and ultimately, I was able to
reach the RPF. I then lived in a refugee camp in Byumba for two months.
Even today [February 2021] as I drive by some places, I can still see those
bodies in my mind, lying hacked apart and in heaps. Other people who do not know
the story cannot see them, but they are still clear to me.
The DAMI officers’ presence at the CRCD was a source of comfort for some Rwandan
opposition party members, who assumed that, left to its own devices, the regime would corrupt
and exploit investigations for political gain.380 François Nsanzuwera, a prosecutor in Kigali in the
early 1990s—and later an Appeals Counsel in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s
(ICTR’s) Office of the Prosecutor—said he worked on cases with the French cooperants in CRCD,
and they were “judicious” and did “their job well.”381 Mukagasana, though, said the French officers
delayed or undermined some investigations to protect France’s partners in the Rwandan
government.382 One tactic, she recounted, was for the French officers to question witnesses
themselves, then have a young Rwandan gendarme sign the witness statements; the questioning
would be quick and perfunctory, but if anyone questioned why the investigation had not been more
thorough, the officers could always point a finger at the young gendarme.383 Documents drafted
by the cooperants themselves while serving in Rwanda might resolve questions about their
activities. The Government of Rwanda requested such documents from the Government of France
in connection with this investigation but received no response.
The CRCD kept lists of the many “accomplices” it arrested.384 Before the DAMI’s arrival,
the list was little more than a scroll of names. According to Mukagasana, the French officers
professionalized the operation, advising the gendarmes to collect and compile far more, from
fingerprints to addresses to photos.385 It does not appear that anyone stopped to consider how such
a list of people, most of them Tutsi, might, in the wrong hands, be put to grievous misuse.
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Mukagasana, who worked in the same office space as the French technical advisors, said that one
French officer in particular was unmoved by the suffering many Rwandans had endured during
the war.386 When, for instance, a colleague remarked, with sadness, on a report that 10 Tutsi had
been slaughtered in Gisenyi, the French officer was unfazed. “Rwandans kill each other,” he said.
“That’s what they do.”387
I. Recurring Allegations Have Been Made That French Soldiers Oversaw the Training of
Rwandan Militias in 1992 and 1993.
Mukagasana has suggested that her French colleagues engaged in activities even more
nefarious than hamstringing criminal investigations. According to her, on Sundays during 1992
and 1993, three of the four French advisors stationed in the CRCD (one of the four always stayed
behind in the office)388 would climb into a Rwandan military land rover to drive from Kigali in the
direction of Mutara, the eastern province that was home to both the Akagera nature reserve, with
its lions and elephants, and the FAR military camp at Gabiro, where French soldiers trained the
FAR,389 and where the FAR trained Interahamwe between 1992 and 1994.390 Not coincidentally,
on Sundays a white minibus full of Interahamwe leaders traveled in the same direction. According
to Mukagasana, her colleagues told her the French soldiers and the Interahamwe were both headed
to Mutara with the same mission: to oversee militia training.
The French gendarmes always returned the day they left, and they would later show off
safari pictures—week after week, for months, similar pictures of animals. When asked why they
went to see the same animals every weekend, the French advisors provided “nonsense”
explanations, according to Mukagasana. She recalled that a Rwandan gendarme colleague once
refused to provide the French advisors with fuel for their trip to Mutara, presumably to undermine
what he perceived to be an ill-advised mission; he soon found himself transferred out of the CRCD.
If Mukagasana’s French colleagues were headed to Mutara, their destination was likely in
or near the Gabiro military camp, where numerous witnesses—Rwandan, French, and other
nationalities—have testified that French soldiers trained not only FAR soldiers, but also recruits
for civilian militias. For example, a Rwandan Army private testified confidentially under the
initials “DA” at the ICTR’s Military II trial that toward the end of 1992 he observed French soldiers
training Interahamwe in survival techniques near Gabiro.391 Similarly, Emmanuel Mwumvaneza,
a communal councilor in Muvumba commune, witnessed a 1992 meeting between the bourgmestre
of Muvumba (Onesphore Rwabukombe, who in 2015 would be sentenced by a German court to
life in prison for his role in the Genocide)392 and four French soldiers with black berets dressed in
uniforms similar to the FAR.393 Three of the four French soldiers had their faces coated in what
looked like shoe polish or coal, and the one without a darkened face appeared to be their
commander, who went by the name Captain Jacques.394 After the meeting, the bourgmestre
informed Mwumvaneza and the other councilors that French and Rwandan soldiers were to train
select civilians in self-defense, and it was up to the councilors to provide civilians to train.395
Mwumvaneza gathered a group of sixteen, himself included, who boarded buses to Gabiro, where
they spent about a month in tents just outside the camp and received firearms training in a valley
roughly five kilometers from the camp.396 According to Mwumvaneza, French soldiers
occasionally supervised the trainings delivered by FAR soldiers, with the French supervisors
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drawing circles on paper targets and inspecting the targets to see if the trainees were hitting their
marks.397
Paul Rwarakabije, the Rwandan operational commander of the Gendarmerie, explained
that militia training took place outside the camps, including Gabiro, to conceal it from rank-andfile FAR soldiers, some of whom were moderate and would have objected to civilian training.398
Only certain solders, presumably those known to hold reliably extremist views, were trusted
enough to train militia.399 Rwarakabije emphasized that as operational commander of the
Gendarmerie, he received written reports every day about operational units, including from
gendarmes stationed in Mutara at Ngarama, who had access to Gabiro camp.400 It was, he said,
“his job to know what was going on,” and in 1992 and 1993, he received reports of French soldiers
participating in militia trainings.401
Consistent with the testimonies of Rwarakabije and Mwumvaneza, human rights
researchers Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke have cited interviews with diplomats serving in
Kigali during this period who reported seeing French officers with Interahamwe in Gabiro.402 Also
consistent is an account from Thierry Prungnaud, who in 1992 was a GIGN, a so-called “supercop,” in Rwanda with the French Military Assistance Mission training members of the Presidential
Guard.403 In a 2012 book recounting his experiences in Rwanda, Prungnaud recalled passing a
group of French soldiers training one hundred armed Rwandan civilians as he and another GIGN
accompanied two other officers (and one officer’s wife) on a drive to Akagera for a weekend
trip.404 “There, in Akagera,” the game park which, Prungnaud explained, had been closed to the
public to use as a FAR training ground, “the trainers were French soldiers. They must have
belonged to the 1st RPIMa or the Legion, which were the only units present in Rwanda at that
time.”405
French academic Gérard Prunier speculated before the MIP that the French military had
trained militia “without having realized—through stupidity and naivety.”406 But Prungnaud
dismissed this hypothesis:
In my opinion, it was neither an error nor a careless mistake. No soldier in the world
can mistake a beginner for a man who is already trained and toughened! When you
put a rifle in someone’s hands, you can see right away if he knows how to take the
rifle apart and put it back together, and then support it. So you necessarily know
whether you’re training a civilian or perfecting a soldier. And it’s not the same
thing!407
Another French witness, Sylvain Germain, an accountant at the French Cultural Center in
Kigali from 1987 to 1994, was at a café bordering a street near work when, around 8 p.m., he saw
a group of young Interahamwe disembark from a bush taxi excitedly discussing two weeks of
training in a French Army camp.408 Germain did not date the account or say where the training
may have occurred, but accounts of French soldiers training militias have included sites and
timeframes beyond Gabiro in 1992. For example, Paul Rwarakabije, the Gendarmerie operational
commander, has said that he received reports from Gendarmerie stationed in Gisenyi about training
of militias in nearby Bigogwe camp, in 1992 and 1993.409 Other witnesses have described militia
training closer to Kigali.410
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Did French officials know the purpose of the militia they reportedly trained? Col. Cussac’s
expression of concern in January 1992 over a program to arm “self-defense militias” in northern
Rwanda (as described above)411 suggests that French officials were well aware of the dangers
posed by armed civilians—and that was before militias had massacred Tutsi in Bugesera in March
1992.412 Paul Rwarakabije summed up his view on the French government’s understanding of the
purpose behind training militias: “The French knew everything. From 1993, they had their people
in the Presidency, in the Army, in the Gendarmerie. I can confirm that they knew what was going
on. The French will deny it now, but they knew.”413
French officials have vehemently denied training militias. The MIP dismissed the
allegation as “never seriously supported to date,” offering the equivocal denial by Col. JeanJacques Maurin that “never, during the état-major meetings he had attended, had there been a
reference to the equipping of militias” (leaving the possibility that the trainings took place but were
not discussed at état-major meetings).414 The allegations of French training of militias, however—
particularly at Gabiro—cannot be ignored. The French government can and should clarify the
matter by disclosing any documents and testimony that would shed light on the truth.
J. The Rwandan Government Recognized the Value of French Support in 1992 and Made
Every Effort to Ensure It Continued.
Throughout 1992, President Habyarimana and other Rwandan officials made sure to thank
their French patrons for their support. “[F]irst and foremost, I would like to reiterate my feelings
of deep gratitude for the steady support my country receives from France, invaluable support to
tell the truth, which the Rwandan people truly appreciate,” President Habyarimana wrote to
President Mitterrand on 21 April 1992, before asking the French President for his continued
support as well as an opportunity to meet in person.415
To show its appreciation, the Rwandan government regularly bestowed honors and awards
on the Noroît and DAMI soldiers who served in Rwanda.416 For example, on 23 August 1992,
Rwandan Defense Minister James Gasana wrote President Habyarimana to recommend Col.
Rosier for decoration as an Officer of the National Order of the Thousand Hills—the highest
honor—for “personally supervis[ing] and lead[ing] on the ground the action of a 105-mm artillery
battery which put a stop to the enemy’s advance in the operational sectors of Byumba, Ruhengeri
and Mutara.”417 While the highest decorations were reserved for military leaders like Col. Rosier,
nearly every French soldier received an honor.
French officials could plainly see, as Ambassador Martres put it in a 15 October 1992 cable,
that the Rwandan government “strongly desired” the “continuation and reinforcement” of French
military cooperation “at all levels.”418 Rwandan authorities wanted Martres to stay in Rwanda, too.
In a 5 December 1992 letter to President Mitterrand, President Habyarimana expressed his “deep
appreciation” for Martres’ “outstanding services” and requested that France extend Martres’ term
as ambassador.419 Habyarimana elaborated:
Indeed, through his effective action, and his vast knowledge of the Rwandan
problem and complexity, and in view of the extremely unstable times that my
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country is going through, Mr. Martres should be able to continue his functions for
some time to come, for the greater good of Rwanda. Any change in this regard,
occurring at this difficult time, could only be a source of instability and endanger
the precarious balance of political dialogue in my country.420
Thereafter, Mitterrand extended Martres’ term for three more months.421
Defense Minister Gasana, a moderate MRND member, found it intolerable that any
Rwandan would call for the withdrawal of French troops from Rwanda, “[s]eeing how military
cooperation with France has been of vital importance during this war, and considering how we still
need [France’s] help after the war.”422 To “demoraliz[e] these co-operants and clamor[] for their
departure,” he wrote in a 17 December 1992 letter to Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye, of the MDR,
would be to “follow[] the example of the Inkotanyi” and “would constitute an attack on the
Security of the State.”423
But perhaps the most eye-opening thank-you to France in 1992 came from CDR co-founder
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, who, in the summer, sent President Mitterrand a letter, featuring 700
signatures by Rwandan citizens, thanking France for its military and political support.424 Bruno
Delaye, who had recently replaced Mitterrand’s son, Jean-Christophe, as head of the Élysée’s
Africa Cell,425 wrote back to Barayagwiza: “The President has asked me to send you his thanks.”426
The reply letter was dated 1 September 1992—just days after the Kibuye massacres (discussed
below). When asked years later by the French Parliamentary Mission (the MIP) about Delaye’s
response to Barayagwiza, Hubert Védrine—who, as Élysée secretary-general, headed Mitterrand’s
team of advisors—replied that “France was in contact with everyone between 1990 and 1994,
whether it was President Habyarimana, opposition parties, the RPF, or the Ugandans,” and said all
such communications “should not be interpreted as support but as pressure to obtain an agreement
for a ceasefire from each of the parties.”427 Barayagwiza would later be found guilty of genocide
by the ICTR and sentenced to 32 years in prison.428
K. While Halting Progress toward Peace Produced Violent Extremist Reactions, French
Officials Discounted the Backlash and Continued to Shore Up a Government Beholden to
Extremists.
An imminent and meticulously prepared plan for systematic physical
extermination, mainly targeting the Tutsi population, is in the process of
being implemented. 429
– 25 residents of Kibuye
By August 1992, RPF High Command Chairman Paul Kagame could see two rival camps
emerging in Kigali: those with a sincere desire to solve the country’s problems, and “those who
wished to sabotage” the coalition government’s ongoing peace talks with the RPF in Arusha,
Tanzania.430 The latter camp seemed to be growing stronger and wreaking havoc. On 4 August
1992, the CDR’s youth militia staged a violent demonstration in Kigali, blocking roads and forcing
people out of their vehicles, both to protest the jailing of some CDR members and to condemn the
coalition government, led by Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye, for pursuing “peace with the
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rebels.”431 At least two civilians and possibly two gendarmes lay dead by the time order was
restored.432
The violence did not stop the peace negotiations in Arusha, where several highly
contentious issues were still on the table, including the balance of power in the “broad-based
transitional government,” which the two sides had agreed to form once peace was achieved.433
That issue, and the equally thorny problem of integrating the two sides’ militaries, would take
many months to resolve. The negotiators did, however, succeed, with the help of Tanzanian
facilitators, in approving an 18 August 1992 “Protocol of Agreement . . . On the Rule of Law,”
which affirmed the parties’ commitments to principles of national unity, democracy, pluralism,
and human rights.434 Ratification of these principles was a top priority for the RPF, according to
RPF Vice President Protais Musoni, who had reaffirmed recently that the RPF sought to have the
rule of law, including the protection of human rights, respected in Rwanda.435 He also said that
power sharing and the creation of a cabinet whose decisions would not be overruled by the
president remained primary objectives for the RPF in these 1992 talks.436 The August 1992
protocol recognized the return of refugees as an “inalienable right” and reaffirmed a commitment
to establishing a coalition government,437 with a new round of talks slated to follow in September
1992.438
Extremists responded with additional violence, this time renewing the now familiar tactic
of murdering Tutsi civilians. Between 20 and 25 August 1992, extremists in the prefecture of
Kibuye, located on Rwanda’s western border with Zaire, attacked Tutsi families, killing several
people, burning scores of homes, destroying coffee fields and banana farms, and displacing
hundreds, if not thousands, of people.439 The RPF and opposition parties blamed Habyarimana’s
party, the MRND, for the violence.440 Speaking to Radio France International on 23 August, not
long after the violence in Kibuye started, Rwandan Minister of Public Works and Energy Felicien
Gatabazi—who also served as the secretary general of the Social Democrats (“PSD”)—accused
elements closely associated with President Habyarimana and the MRND of orchestrating the
violence in order to undermine peace talks with the RPF.441
On 18 September 1992, a group of 25 Kibuye residents sent a letter to foreign diplomats in
Rwanda alleging that Akazu members and high-level government officials had directed the
Interahamwe to commit the massacres in Kibuye.442 The letter warned that “[a]n imminent and
meticulously prepared plan for systematic physical extermination, mainly targeting the Tutsi
population, is in the process of being implemented.”443 (Belgian Ambassador Swinnen would
forward the letter to Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Willy Claes on 13 October 1992. The
letter was addressed to the Apostolic Nonce, ambassadors, and heads of diplomatic, cooperative,
and advisory missions in Rwanda, presumably including French Ambassador Georges Martres.
Likely, Martres or someone on his staff received it.444)
When Habyarimana’s cabinet director, Enoch Ruhigira, met with US Ambassador Robert
Flaten on 29 August 1992, Ruhigira argued the violence in Kibuye cast doubt on the peace
process.445 According to Flaten, Ruhigira, “unsettled by the communal violence in his own
prefecture (Kibuye),” did not believe that the Rwandan government would be in any position to
negotiate a power-sharing agreement “generous” to the RPF.446 Ruhigira said the MRND and CDR
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would not accept a power-sharing agreement that favored the RPF, and he predicted that even if
they were to do so, civil violence would follow.447
Allegations would soon surface that various Rwandan soldiers had participated in the
massacres in Kibuye and elsewhere, and that gendarmes who had responded to the violence
committed “barbaric acts against the population.”448 On 30 August, Col. Ndindiliyimana, the head
of the Gendarmerie, brought his French advisor, Lt. Col. Alain Damy, along with him on a trip to
Kibuye, where the two spoke with local authorities.449 The local officials claimed the violence had
actually stemmed from a disagreement between two local families, one Hutu and the other Tutsi.450
They insisted that the accusations of Gendarmerie misconduct were false.451 Ndindiliyimana
concluded: “[O]ne shouldn’t always rely on the rumors spread by certain people about the conflicts
in Kibuye.”452
Apart from the allegations against government officials, the 18 September 1992 letter from
Kibuye residents alleged that Presidential Guard members had been among the participants in the
Kibuye massacres.453 The Presidential Guard—one of the many beneficiaries of French technical
assistance during the war—was officially a part of the Gendarmerie. Lt. Col. Damy, the French
officer assigned to advise Ndindiliyimana, would note that the Presidential Guard occupied a
unique space in the Rwandan military and was, for obvious reasons, close to the President and his
family.454 (Damy called it “a kind of Praetorian Guard,”455 a reference to the elite force charged
with protecting the Roman emperor.)
Damy took note of the criticism the Presidential Guard had generated in the year since
France assigned officers to reorganize and train it.456 After rattling off two of those criticisms—
first, that northern Rwandans were overrepresented in its ranks, and, second, that it had sometimes
performed missions outside of its jurisdiction—he alluded, obliquely, to “certain underground
actions aimed at destabilizing certain opposition political parties.”457 There was talk among human
rights groups and opposition parties that the MRND’s Interahamwe militia counted some
Presidential Guard soldiers among its members.458 A US Department of State cable described this
allegation as “credible,” though unproven.459
The French government’s response to the allegations involving the Presidential Guard in
1992 was neither swift nor decisive. According to the MIP, Col. Cussac told President
Habyarimana that France would start withdrawing its technical assistance to the Presidential Guard
in August 1992.460 The assistance, though, was still ongoing that fall, when Colonel Philippe
Capodanno was sent to Rwanda to evaluate French military cooperation there.461 Capodanno wrote
in a November 1992 report that France was planning to withdraw its DAMI of two noncommissioned officers from the Presidential Guard and assign new duties to Major Denis Roux,
the French officer who had been serving as the Guard’s technical advisor.462 “That is to say, to
cease our activities in aid of the Presidential Guard,” Capodanno wrote.463 Even then, though, the
severance was less than total. Roux—though he received an additional title, that of advisor to the
mobile Gendarmerie—retained the title of technical adviser to the head of the Presidential Guard
through at least May 1993,464 and continued to work with the Guard through his departure from
Rwanda in August 1993.465
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Roux’s recollection, as recounted in a 2014 book, was that his instructions in the summer
of 1992, as the allegations against the Presidential Guard were surfacing, were simply to “step
back a little.”466 “From then on, I intervened more as an advisor than as a trainer-instructor with
the Presidential Guard,” he said.467 His primary responsibility for the remainder of his time in
Rwanda was to train the mobile Gendarmerie to respond to rising social unrest in the country.468
“They were taught how to respect the rules, how to handle weapons, individual and collective
actions in policing, crowd management,” he recalled.469
One French officer who worked with the Presidential Guard in 1992 has since admitted to
having regrets about his service in Rwanda. The officer, Thierry Prungnaud, had, upon his arrival
in January 1992, participated in an effort help the Rwandan Gendarmerie stand up a new elite
tactical unit known as the security-and-intervention group (Groupe de sécurité et d’intervention de
la Garde Présidentielle, or GSIGP).470 The GSIGP was created in the image of the French National
Gendarmerie’s Security and Intervention Group, a conglomeration of elite gendarme units
specializing in hostage crises, para-commando operations, and presidential security.471 According
to Prungnaud, France selected about 30 Rwandan military members to serve in the new unit, whose
primary task would be to ensure the security of the Rwandan president and his entourage.472 In the
course of their training, the Rwandan recruits learned to shoot with precision, to respond to hostage
situations, to conduct reconnaissance, and to perform anti-terrorist actions.473
Prungnaud has said he later learned that his trainees—some of them, at least—were among
the perpetrators of the Genocide.474 “I think some of these guys were part of the notorious death
squads that executed many opponents of the regime, Hutu and Tutsi alike,” he said. “Of course,
it’s a shock to think that we trained killers of this sort, and that they used for genocide what we
taught them as part of a simple military training!”475
L. In Late 1992, General Quesnot’s Attempt to Fortify FAR Defensive Positions Resulted in
French Troops Running Afoul of the Cease-Fire.
In mid-October 1992, a trio of Rwandan military helicopters headed north from Kigali to
allow General Quesnot, on a brief but densely packed visit to Rwanda, to inspect the FAR’s
positions along the front.476 The cease-fire, in effect since mid-July 1992, had frozen the
government troops in place, leaving them in a defensive crouch on the near side of the
demilitarized zone.477 The FAR’s failure to retake the entirety of Byumba province before the halt
in hostilities had been humbling, but they had managed to stop the RPF military’s advance and
inflict heavy losses.478 To French observers, it seemed that neither camp was poised to launch a
major offensive anytime soon.479 And yet, with negotiations in Arusha limping along and the
prospects of an enduring peace still highly uncertain, both camps felt it necessary to prepare for
the possible resumption of combat.480 For their part, FAR commanders took advantage of the break
in fighting to train recent recruits and to replenish their stocks of equipment and ammunition.481
Ambassador Martres, who accompanied Quesnot in his meetings with President
Habyarimana and other Rwandan officials, had no doubt that the Rwandan president, at least, had
not given up hope of reconquering the territory the FAR had lost before the cease-fire.482 “[B]ut,”
he wrote in a 15 October memo, “it is clear that [Habyarimana’s] entourage is convinced that it is
prudent to focus on dissuading the RPF to return from the political field to the military field . . .
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.”483 The short-term goal for the Rwandan government was to enhance the FAR’s capacity for
“defensive combat.”484 Martres reported that the “continuation and reinforcement of French
military cooperation is strongly desired at all levels,” and emphasized, “it is on this defensive
aspect that the reinforcement of our military cooperation must be focused.”485 The goal of
preventing the RPF from taking the country by force continued to be the focus of French military
cooperation.
Quesnot’s visit led to a reshuffling of French military resources in Rwanda. Not two weeks
later, Col. Cussac, France’s defense attaché in Kigali, announced that the second Noroît company,
dispatched in response to the RPF’s attack on Byumba in June 1992, would depart Rwanda on 10
November “and will not be replaced.”486 Lest there be any concern, though, that France was
abandoning its ally, Cussac reassured the Rwandan defense minister that “if the situation so
requires, a reinforcement company from the Central African Republic could intervene within 6
hours.”487 At the same time, to help the FAR troops fortify their defenses along the front, France
agreed to send a DAMI of engineering specialists, known informally as the DAMI “Genie.”488 The
officers of this new DAMI made landfall in Rwanda on 4 November,489 joining a network of
French servicemen in Rwanda that then included the remaining Noroît company, the DAMI
instructors in Gabiro, and the various advisers and technicians assisting the Amy and Gendarmerie
under the banner of the Military Assistance Mission.490
The DAMI “Genie” officers’ stay would prove short, but controversial. Within a few weeks
of their arrival, the RPF Army twice spied them out in the field, supervising the digging of new
defensive trenches.491 A US cable on 12 December reported that American embassy officers “have
been aware of French military involvement on the front lines for some time.”492 The FAR, though,
tried to conceal their presence from the Neutral Group of Military Observers [the GOMN],493 the
team of international military officers that, under the July cease-fire agreement, was charged with
monitoring the front.494 The GOMN’s chief of operations vented his frustration to a US diplomat
in late November, saying he knew that French officers were training the FAR along the front on
the use of 105 mm artillery pieces and rocket launchers, but that Rwandan soldiers had stalled
GOMN observers at road blocks “in order to give the French the opportunity to leave the area.”495
On 2 December 1992, the FAR slipped up. In Byumba, the RPF spotted FAR soldiers, in
the company of French soldiers, advancing 500 meters to dig new trenches, a violation of the
cease-fire agreement.496 RPF forces opened fire, and a GOMN patrol was caught in the crossfire.497
The episode angered the GOMN commander, Major General Ekundayo Opaleye, who, not for the
first time, “expressed his displeasure with the French forces’ activities at the front, and stated
categorically that these forces were directly involved in the [Government of Rwanda’s] attempt to
reinforce forward.”498 A US Department of State cable was similarly disapproving: “If, as the
GOMN commander asserts, the French were supervising FAR soldiers digging foxholes in front
of the ceasefire lines in order to take new ground, this constitutes a blatant disregard for the
ceasefire line and should be addressed.”499
In Col. Nsabimana’s view, the takeaway from this incident was not that the French officers
should show more respect for the cease-fire agreement, but that their “presence around the front
must henceforth be more discreet.”500 The Rwandan Army chief of staff faulted the GOMN for
hounding the French officers, having heard from the FAR’s Byumba sector commander that a
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particular member of the GOMN team, a Zimbabwean lieutenant colonel, had been “pursuing
French specialists of the DAMI Engineers in order, according to him, to surprise them in the field
and thus have additional proof of French presence in the combat zone.”501 Nsabimana complained
about the officer to the chief of the GOMN team in Byumba and insisted that the DAMI officers
were there lawfully “within the framework of the co-operation agreements between France and
Rwanda, two sovereign countries.”502 The GOMN chief, who was already familiar with the FAR’s
complaints about the Zimbabwean officer, reportedly “promised to deal with [the officer] in an
effort to ease the strained atmosphere.”503
M. By the End of 1992, Negotiators in Arusha Had Reached a Framework for Peace That Left
a Sidelined and Furious Col. Bagosora—Widely Considered the Architect of the Genocide—
Announcing That He Would Begin Planning the “Apocalypse.”
When peace talks resumed in Arusha on 5 October 1992, the parties remained distrustful,
but observers saw reason for hope.504 The RPF signaled openness to the government’s proposal
for cabinet control over presidential actions, in lieu of the RPF’s own proposal for the
establishment of a “presidential council.”505 “All in all,” a US cable on the recommencement of
peace talks summed up, “the [Government of Tanzania, which facilitated the talks,] seems to think
there are grounds for confidence that the two sides may make more substantial progress in [the
upcoming negotiations], provided the RPF can be persuaded to desist in its posturing and both
parties can focus on negotiating a settlement as opposed to scoring points off each other.”506
This would not do for the CDR. On 8 October 1992, CDR Party President Martin Bucyana
sent an indignant letter to President Habyarimana and Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye, denouncing
the Arusha negotiations and alleging that opposition party government negotiators had gone rogue
as “allies of the RPF.”507 “It is clear that the new orientation in the negotiations is aimed at
excluding the other political formations from power-sharing that represent . . . the majority of the
population,” wrote Bucyana, expressing the fear that Arusha would diminish the CDR’s power.508
The CDR followed this letter with a march on 18 October 1992 protesting the Arusha negotiations
and supporting “the presence of French troops and François Miterrand [sic].”509 According to an
account by historian Gérard Prunier, the CDR protesters chanted, “Thank you President
Mitterrand!” and “Thank you French People!” among other slogans objecting to the peace
process.510 The protest led to violence a few hours after its conclusion when a group of eight to ten
“CDR Party fanatics” stabbed the representative of the PL party in Kanombe.511 CDR members
also killed a local MDR party leader, although it is unclear whether that happened shortly before
or after the march.512
In a 21 October 1992 memorandum, the French Foreign Ministry’s new director of African
and Malagasy affairs, Jean-Marc Rochereau de La Sablière, who had taken over the post in August
1992 when Paul Dijoud was named ambassador to Mexico,513 recognized the threat the CDR posed
to peace.514 He reported that France, regardless, was encouraging President Habyarimana to
“solidify the movement and accept the participation of the RPF in the government until elections
are held.”515 De La Sablière wrote that France needed to publicly declare its support for the Arusha
negotiations, and that France must also “persuade” Habyarimana, “so that his worries do not lead
him to refuse the Arusha compromise.”516 At the same time, de La Sablière considered it prudent
to help the Rwandan government prepare for war in the event the peace failed:
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On the ground, insofar as the possibility of renewed hostilities cannot be entirely
excluded, France should, potentially by reinforcing its cooperation, help the
Rwandan Army to solidify the frontline. The focus should particularly be on
training, the most operational use of available materials, and provision of
munitions.517
On 30 October 1992, the parties in Arusha reached a “Protocol of Agreement” that sketched
out how power would be distributed within the during the transitional period after the war.518 The
protocol’s most notable feature was that it allowed President Habyarimana to stay on as president,
but stripped him of much of his authority, devolving the bulk of his powers to a “Broad-Based
Transitional Government” (made up of the prime minister, deputy prime minister, and ministers
and secretaries of state).519 The protocol also called for the repatriation of refugees and for the
elimination of “all types of discrimination and exclusion,” among other items demanded by the
RPF,520 while leaving the issue of force integration for another day.521
This time, Habyarimana did not endorse the negotiators’ work. He took the hint from the
CDR and tacked right. In two radio addresses in early November 1992, he spoke against the GOR
delegation at Arusha.522 Later that month, during a speech in Ruhengeri, Habyarimana declared
that while he supported the negotiations, the July 1992 cease-fire was merely a piece of paper.
“Peace is not confused with papers,” he declared.523 “There will be peace if Rwandans understand
that their representative in Arusha is actually speaking in their name . . . . That is what we ask of
him. . . . That he should not bring papers to us and then claim that he has brought peace. Is peace
obtained from papers?”524 At that, the crowd applauded and whistled its support.525
Elsewhere in the speech, Habyarimana celebrated the links between the MRND and the
Interahamwe by promising to purchase new uniforms for Interahamwe members, questioning
allegations of Interahamwe crimes—“People say that investigations were carried out, but I have
not seen their results!”—and telling the audience of his political future, “it is mostly the
Interahamwe who will do my campaign, because I am with them.”526
The president’s strident support for the militia had clear implications for the steps to be
taken moving forward. “I heard instructions had been given to us [Interahamwe] to kill some
people after the Ruhengeri rally,” a former Interahamwe leader told the East and Central Africa
specialist Andrew Wallis. “I remember Habyarimana’s speech was all about the need to stop ‘the
enemy.’ We took this to mean both Tutsi generally and anyone who opposed the party.”527 As one
Rwandan magazine observed of the days that followed the Ruhengeri address:
Fear has gripped the town of Kigali. . . . [G]renade explosions are heard throughout
the night. People are cut up with the sword with total impunity. Many houses have
been demolished. All these acts are committed by the Interahamwe militia of
MRND. Since their leader once more reminded them of their mission at the MRND
rally held in Ruhengeri on 15 November 1992, much blood has flown. Before, they
beat people and destroyed houses, but did not commit many killings. Now the dead
are no longer counted. In Shyorongi, there were more than 31 persons killed and
more than 50 wounded who are now in hospital.528
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News of Habyarimana’s remarks quickly reverberated among the other parties to the
ongoing Arusha negotiations. As one US cable noted, “The Tanzanians were particularly miffed
that Habyarimana, in a recent speech in Ruhengeri, had reportedly characterized the Arusha IV
round as a ‘civil coup d’etat.’”529 Likewise, a subsequent US cable speculated that while it was
possible that RPF representatives were unwilling to discuss military integration at Arusha because
of a breakdown in communication among the party, “a more substantive, and probably more likely
explanation” was that the RPF, “in close consultation with internal allies, either reassessed the
Habyarimana motivations on the basis of the President’s November 15 speech and the deteriorating
security situation, or decided on an effort now to put maximum pressure on the MRND. The
decision could be a combination of the two . . . .”530 Meanwhile, Prime Minster Dismas
Nsengiyaremye expressed disbelief at the President’s abrupt betrayal of the spirit of the
negotiations; as Nsengiyaremye said in a speech the following week, “it is quite regrettable to note
that the chairman of the MRND, who is President of the Republic at the same time, characterized
the Arusha Accords as pieces of paper when he delivered his speech during an MRND rally in
Ruhengeri . . . . Men and women of Rwanda, such language is incomprehensible. Power, for all
times, has functioned on the basis of agreements.”531
Ultimately, however, Habyarimana’s rally would be remembered as tame compared to the
one that took place the following Sunday, 22 November 1992 (the day before the resumption of
talks in Arusha). This time, the microphone belonged to Leon Mugesera, the vice-chairman of the
MRND, speaking before a crowd in Kabaya, in the Gisenyi prefecture.532 Mugesera was known to
US diplomatic sources at the time as “a close associate of the President’s entourage” who had been
“generally attributed with complicity in the massacres of an estimated 300 Tutsi that wracked
Kibilira (just south of Kabaya) shortly after October 1990.”533
Two years after his alleged crimes at the start of the war, as Col. Laurent Serubuga looked
on from his seat on the stage,534 Mugesera stood before the crowd and called for the death of Prime
Minister Nsengiyaremye for having ceded territory to the RPF on the battlefield:
The punishment for such people is unequivocal: “Any person who demoralizes the
country’s armed forces on the war front shall be punishable by death.” That is what
the law says. Why would such an individual not be killed? Nsengiyaremye should
be prosecuted and found guilty. The law is there and it is written. He should be
sentenced to death as stipulated by the law. 535
Mugesera went on to call for the arrest and “exterminat[ion]” of Tutsi families that were,
he claimed, sending their sons to join the RPF, and death for those recruiting them.536 His words
were as chilling as they were explicit, as Mugesera told the crowd that he wanted those Tutsi
families to be “put on a list” and brought to justice.537 And if judges of Rwanda refused to
prosecute, Mugesera declared, “then the people, in the interest of whom justice should be done,
should take it upon ourselves.”538
“The delegates you will hear are in Arusha do not represent Rwanda,” Mugesera went
on. “Recently, I told someone who came to brag to me that he belonged to the P.L. [Parti Liberal,
with many Tutsi members—ed.]—I told him ‘The mistake we made in 1959, when I was still a
child, is to let you leave. . . . Your home is in Ethiopia [and] we will send you by the Nyabarongo
River so you can get there quickly.’”540 In a chilling allusion to the violent mob that attacked
539
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Education Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana at her home in May 1992,541 Mugesera promised, after
repeatedly deriding her actions as education minister, that defenders of the cause “will set out for
Nyaruhengeri, to Minister Agathe’s home, to look after the education of her children!”542 His
followers would deliver on his promise at the start of the Genocide, when Uwilingiyimana, by that
point prime minister, would be murdered.543
On the same day as Mugesera’s speech, the Belgian paper La Cite reported that “death
squads” directed by lead figures in the Habyarimana regime were engaged in mass killing around
the country.544 Violence continued to intensify in the days that followed Mugesera’s speech,
prompting the prime minister to convene an emergency 26 November meeting with members of
his cabinet “to discuss mounting political violence and banditism that is causing widespread
insecurity, even terror, among Rwandans.”545
Justice Minister Stanislas Mbonampeka dispatched a warrant for Mugesera’s arrest,
writing, “He allegedly stated among others, that certain Rwandans should go back to their homes
. . . and that, if they failed to do so, he would ask the inhabitants to entrust them to [the] River
Nyabarongo.”546 Facing imminent arrest, Mugesera found protection among government elements
sympathetic to the anti-Tutsi extremist cause, according to a 2 December cable by US Ambassador
to Rwanda Robert Flaten.”547 The justice minister submitted his resignation in protest, as the
Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique reported.548
When the MDR sent Habyarimana a 2 December letter to protest the ongoing terror
wrought by the Interahamwe, it was with the increasing sense that no one was listening. It
referenced atrocities northwest of Kigali that had started two weeks before, on the same day that
Habyarimana had given his speech in Ruhengeri, and it described violence committed “by MRND
militiamen, with the support of soldiers disguised as civilians and under the supervision of the
Mayor of Shyorongi . . . who is providing all the logistics and ferrying the executioners to their
victims’ homes.”549 Referring to “the MRND-CDR scheme to systematically massacre all the
Tutsi,” the MDR letter exhorted Habyarimana:
We believe that you are always Head of State before being Head of Party . . . . and
that as such you have the imperative responsibility of ensuring the security of all
Rwandan citizens whatever it is, even if it does not belong to your party. The
Almighty and the Rwandan people will demand it. . . . [P]lease stop these massacres
in Shyorongi Commune and order your services to sheathe the sword . . . . [I]t is
not enough to declare on the radio that there is democracy in Rwanda when people
die for daring to take the path of freedom by fleeing the tyranny of the MRND and
its President.550
Talks in Arusha had resumed on 23 November, and there was no hiding the divisions within
the Rwandan government delegation. A French observer to the negotiations, Jean-Christophe
Belliard, would later say it was as though the government had sent three delegations.551 The first
was led by the MDR-affiliated foreign minister, Boniface Ngulinzira, officially the government’s
chief negotiator.552 Separately, he recalled, there was “Habyarimana’s man,” the Rwandan
ambassador to Uganda, Claver Kanyarushoki.553 “[A]nd then,” he said, “there was somebody at
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the end of the table who did not speak a word, but we could see was influential”: the Ministry of
Defense Chief of Staff Colonel Théoneste Bagosora.554
Belliard had Foreign Minister Ngulinzira’s ear in Arusha but came to find that this was not
worth much.555 “Ngulinzira was powerless,” he recalled at a conference in the Hague in 2014. “It
was not he who made decisions. The real decisions were made elsewhere.”556 Ambassador
Kanyarushoki’s role, it seemed, was to slow the process down557—to keep Ngulinzira from getting
ahead of the rest of the delegation. Col. Bagosora, meanwhile, “did not speak but seemed to think
a lot,” Belliard said. “I had the sense that a lot of things got decided at his level. So we had the
negotiations going on every day, a kind of shadow theatre, and then the real negotiations going on
in parallel with people who did not want to make any progress.”558
Back in Kigali, it was increasingly apparent that Habyarimana was boxed in.559 On the one
hand, he seemed to recognize that the Rwandan army, even after two years of French wartime aid,
was weak and ill-prepared to go back to war.560 It was also clear, though, that the extremists within
his party, and within the CDR, would be hostile to virtually any compromise that might break
through the impasse in Arusha.561 “[T]he current situation looks more and more like a puzzle
whose various parts seem less than ever to want to fit together harmoniously,” Habyarimana mused
in a 5 December letter to President Mitterrand.562 The new era of multiparty politics in Rwanda
had complicated his rule. Habyarimana seemed to lament this development, telling Mitterrand that
his administration, no longer under the sway of a single party, was too riven by partisanship to
“succeed[] in imposing itself and restoring public order.”563 This, he suggested, is why the BroadBased Transitional Government must not reign long; elections must be held within 12 months at
most, so that “my country can regain a strong government capable of escaping the current transition
phase.”564
Habyarimana’s letter went on to say that, until peace is restored in Rwanda, it would be
incumbent on France not only to maintain, but to “intensify,” its military presence, which he
described as an “invaluable” force for stability in a time of crisis.565 In Habyarimana’s telling,
France’s military support for the government was helping to pressure the RPF—and, he could not
help but add, Uganda—to be “realistic” in its negotiations in Arusha.566 His argument, essentially,
was that the RPF would be more inclined to accept a fair deal if the prospect of resuming its war
with the government was too daunting to contemplate, in light of the government’s continued
support from France.567
Habyarimana, it bears noting, was not alone in thinking this way. Ambassador Martres,
reflecting back on his tenure in Rwanda, would similarly argue in his 1993 end-of-mission report
that France’s military support for Habyarimana’s government, “especially during the period of
intense fighting in July 1992,” had helped “convince the RPF that [France] would hinder any plan
to resolve by arms a problem that should only be resolved by democratic means.”568 But in midDecember 1992, Martres had expressed an “increasingly critical view” of the Habyarimana regime
that cast doubt on its commitment to peace.569 In his notes marked “consultations w[ith] The
French on Rwanda,” David Rawson, who was the initial US observer during the Arusha peace
talks, and would be appointed as the US ambassador to Rwanda in November 1993,570 wrote that
Martres thought Habyarimana was “playing for time” and was “no longer acting in good faith.”571
Martres understood that “people around Habyarimana” were “fearful for [their] own lives in [a]
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gov[ernmen]t controlled by opposition” and were “prepared to do anything to protect
themselves.”572
Bruno Delaye, the head of the Élysée Africa Cell, sensed that the negotiations in Arusha
were “rapidly approaching the end-game,” according to a US cable.573 Delaye and Quai d’Orsay
African Affairs Director de La Sablière told a State Department official that Habyarimana had
indicated he was “prepared to accept 90 percent of the RPF’s demands at Arusha.”574 In exchange,
the Rwandan president wanted assurances that local elections would be held promptly, and, more
controversially, that the agreement would “bring extremist Hutu elements into the government”—
in order, he insisted, to “preclude their taking their cause into the streets.”575 De La Sablière said
the French government viewed both of these demands as reasonable.576 (Belliard would later tell
the MIP that it had been the settled position of the Quai d’Orsay’s Directorate of African and
Malagasy Affairs that the power-sharing agreement should reserve a place for the CDR in the
interim government, or, failing that, in the national assembly.577 The thinking, he said, was “it was
better to integrate these extremists in politics to prevent them from becoming uncontrollable.”578)
Word made it back to Rwanda late on 22 December that Foreign Minister Ngulinzira, as
head of the government delegation, had reached an agreement with the RPF.579 Under the
agreement, which remained unsigned, the MRND would retain the presidency and would hold four
posts in the transition cabinet.580 The MDR and RPF would each get four posts as well, with the
position of prime minister going to the former and vice-prime minister to the latter. The rest of the
posts would go to the PL and the center-left PSD (three positions apiece), with two more posts yet
to be allocated.581
The reaction in Kigali was, at first, muted.582 Even as Radio Rwanda was reporting the
announcement, it was continuing to report on an MRND communiqué, pegged to a party meeting
just one day earlier, that accused the MDR-affiliated prime minister of spreading lies about the
MRND and hampering the peace process.583 “Thus,” a US cable reported, “everyone who heard
the radio on the evening of December 22 or the morning of December 23 knew there was
something amiss.”584
The MRND formally confirmed suspicions about its dissatisfaction with the deal the
morning after the announcement.585 In a statement, the party’s national secretary denigrated the
deal as unfair and criticized Ngulinzira for short-circuiting ongoing discussions between the
MRND and other parties.586 The statement left open the possibility that the MRND would refuse
to participate in the new government.587 It was fast becoming evident that Ngulinzira, in approving
the deal when he did, had been gambling that the MRND would come around. Even PL President
Justin Mugenzi, whose party would get three seats in the proposed cabinet, was willing to
acknowledge privately that the announcement had been premature and, in his words, “stupid.”588
Col. Bagosora, too, was unhappy that the foreign minister had not sought out his blessing
before accepting the deal.589 There could be little doubt that, had Ngulinzira done so, he would not
have assented to it. Bagosora had been adamant that the CDR must be represented in the
government, at one point pulling Belliard aside to make this clear.590 To deny the CDR a seat at
the table, he wrote in a 23 December letter to Ngulinzira, “does not take into account the political
reality in the country and risks creating a difficult situation to manage.”591
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1992
Negotiations in Arusha were not yet complete when Christmas rolled around. In particular,
the parties had yet to hash out a plan for integrating the military.592 By 26 December, though,
Bagosora had had enough. In a terse letter to President Habyarimana, Ngulinzira wrote that
Bagosora had walked out in the middle of a meeting and did not come back, having apparently
decided to return to Kigali.593 “I consider that he has just abandoned the mission you entrusted to
him and that disciplinary action should be taken against him,” the foreign minister wrote.594
Years later, at Bagosora’s trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, a
witness for the prosecution testified about an encounter he and two colleagues had with Bagosora
during the negotiations in Arusha before Christmas.595 The witness, a member of the RPF
delegation, recalled that, one day, while heading to lunch after a morning of negotiations, the three
colleagues came upon Bagosora in a hotel elevator, his suitcases in hand.596 When the witness
asked why Bagosora was heading home early, the colonel replied, ominously, that he “was going
to prepare the ‘apocalypse.’”597
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Notes to Chapter V
1
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR-97-23-S, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 39(vi) (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 4 Sep. 1998). Kambanda was the prime minister of the genocidal interim Rwandan government (8 April to
17 July 1994). He made this statement upon pleading guilty to genocide, among other crimes, in 1998.
2
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
3
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”). The minister of the interior was Faustin Munyazesa. See Gouvernements, representation
politique, principaux corps d’état, institutions de la société civile [Governments, Political Representation, Main Bodies
of State, Institutions of Civil Society] 5 (20 Mar. 2000).
4
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
5
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
6
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
7
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”) (“Faced with this situation, the AD contacted the Chief of Staff of the Gendarmerie
[Rwagafilita] while emphasizing that this mission (at least on a judicial level) should have been incumbent upon the
Gendarmerie. If he agreed, he has nevertheless hid behind the argument of digital inadequacy of his personnel and
lack of their professional training.”); see also ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 141 (2019) (describing
Rwagafilita’s lack of professionalism).
8
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
9
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
10
Excerpt of Cable from Bernard Cussac, signed by Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “BRAVO: Arming of
civilian populations”).
11
See, e.g., Report from Military Assistance Mission to the Head of the Military Cooperation Mission (21 Oct. 1992)
(Subject: “Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement”) (noting the activities of the political parties’ militias);
Duclert Commission Report 159 AN/PR-BD, AG/5(4)/BD/58, Note du général Quesnot et Thierry de Beaucé [ce
dernier signe de façon manuscrite] au président de la République sous couvert du secrétaire général, 3 avril 1992.
12
MIP Tome I 99.
13
See Chapter V, Section I.
14
Letter from Alphonse Kibibi to Juvénal Habyarimana (7 Oct. 1991). In Kinyarwanda, the word interahamwe was
used to connote a coming together, such as in this quote from a 7 Oct. 1991 letter to Habyarimana: “This is how we
should behave in the difficult times we are going through. Difficult times for our Rwanda. [A]ll of us Rwandans should
continue to support the policy of peace and unity for all the people of Rwanda. Tutsi, Hutu, Twa and all those who
live in Rwanda, we must be those who come together [interahamwe] and do the job well, striving to promote the truth
by staying together as brothers.”
15
See Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 456-57;
Prosecutor v. Bagosora, Case No. ICTR-98-41, Expert witness report of Dr. Alison Des Forges 17 (3 Sept. 2002).
Some accounts suggest that the Interahamwe was created in response to the formation of militias by opposition parties,
such as the MDR’s Inkuba [Thunder]. See Prosecutor v. Karemera, Case No. ICTR-98-44-T, ¶¶ 182, 199 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 2 Feb. 2012); see also Prosecutor v. Bagosora, Case No. ICTR-98-41, Expert witness report of Dr.
Alison Des Forges 17 (3 Sept. 2002). Other accounts, like the 1993 FIDH commission, suggest that armed militia of
other parties were created in response to the Interahamwe. See Communique De Presse, FIDH Report (8 Mar. 1993),
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Chapter V
1992
in ASSOCIATION RWANDAISE POUR LA DEFENSE DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE ET DES LIBERTES PUBLIQUES [RWANDAN
ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND PUBLIC LIBERTIES], RAPPORT SUR LES DROITS DE L’HOMME
AU RWANDA OCTOBRE 1992 - OCTOBRE 1993 [REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN RWANDA OCTOBER 1992 - OCTOBER
1993] 66 (1 Dec. 1993) (“Following the establishment of the Interahamwe, other political parties also organized
militias, which also engage in abuses and attacks.”).
16
Prosecutor v. Bagosora, Case No. ICTR-98-41, Expert witness report of Dr. Alison Des Forges 17 (3 Sept. 2002).
17
Memorandum from James Gasana 10 (6 June 1998) (Subject: “La Violence Politique au Rwanda 1991-1993”).
18
Prosecutor v. Bagosora, Case No. ICTR-98-41, Expert witness report of Dr. Alison Des Forges 17 (3 Sept. 2002).
19
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 12 (14 May 1992).
20
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 12 (14 May 1992).
21
Communique De Presse, FIDH Report (8 Mar. 1993), in ASSOCIATION RWANDAISE POUR LA DEFENSE DES DROITS
DE LA PERSONNE ET DES LIBERTES PUBLIQUES [RWANDAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND
PUBLIC LIBERTIES], RAPPORT SUR LES DROITS DE L’HOMME AU RWANDA OCTOBRE 1992 - OCTOBRE 1993 [REPORT ON
HUMAN RIGHTS IN RWANDA OCTOBER 1992 - OCTOBER 1993] 66 (1 Dec. 1993).
22
See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 457 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. For Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008) (“President Habyarimana made the first donation of 500,000 Rwandan francs
to the organization, which was used to purchase uniforms and to provide transport to meetings and rallies.”). A Belgian
intelligence official would later write, shortly before the Genocide, that “support from personalities of the
[Habyarimana] regime” enabled the Interahamwe to operate “with almost total impunity.” Rapport - Étude sur les
milices interahamwe préparée par le Major Hock [Report – Study on the Interahamwe Militias prepared by Major
Hock] 2 (2 Feb. 1994).
23
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 5-7 (14 May 1992).
24
The MRND originally filled the Interahamwe’s ranks with unemployed youth from in and around Kigali. See
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 457 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008); see also HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 14 (1999) Of the
nearly 60 percent of Rwandans under the age of twenty, tens of thousands had little hope of obtaining the land needed
to establish their own households or the jobs necessary to provide for a family. Such young men, including many
displaced by the war and living in camps near the capital provided many of the early recruits to the Interahamwe,
trained in the months before and in the days immediately after the Ggenocide began.
25
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 5-6 (14 May 1992).
26
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 6-7 (14 May 1992).
27
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 10 (14 May 1992). See page 7 of the
same for Major Nkundiye, a battalion commander in the Presidential Guard, recruiting from within the Presidential
Guard for the Interahamwe and for Captain Pascal Simbikangwa doing the same within the Rwandan Service Central
de Renseignements.
28
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Exhibit 2D12 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 22
Feb. 1992).
29
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 278 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
30
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 259, 261 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003). Prior to the creation of the CDR, Barayagwiza (like all Rwandans before
multipartyism) was an MRND member. See Letter from Bonaventure Habimana, Secretary General of the MRND to
Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda 1 (5 Sept. 1990).
31
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1052 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
32
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1052 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
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Chapter V
1992
33
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶1052 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
34
JEAN-PIERRE CHRETIEN, JEAN-FRANCOIS DUPAQUIER, MARCEL KABANDA & JOSEPH NGARAMBE, RWANDA LES
MEDIAS DU GENOCIDE [RWANDA THE MEDIAS OF THE GENOCIDE] 95 (2002). The ICTR found that CDR co-founder
Jean Bosco Barayagwiza directed the Impuzamugambi to carry out massacres and other acts of violence on his orders.
See Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement, ¶¶ 706-720 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3
Dec. 2003).
35
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR-97-23-S, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 39(ii) (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 4 Sep. 1998).
36
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR-97-23-S, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 39(vi) (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 4 Sep. 1998).
37
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 179 (1999). According to the HRW report, “Once the
genocide began, there was virtually no distinction between Impuzamugambi and Interahamwe in the field.”
38
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
39
Broadcast Editorial, Radio Rwanda, Les Agresseurs du Rwanda se prépareraient à se livrer à des actes de terrorisme
et de déstabilisation des institutions étatiques sous leurs différents aspects [The Attackers of Rwanda Would Prepare
Themselves to Commit Acts of Terrorism and Destabilization of State Institutions in their Various Aspects] (3 Mar.
1992); see also Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 671
(Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003) (regarding Bamwanga reading the broadcast).
40
Broadcast Editorial, Les Agresseurs du Rwanda se prépareraient à se livrer à des actes de terrorisme et de
déstabilisation des institutions étatiques sous leurs différents aspects [The Attackers of Rwanda Would Prepare
Themselves to Commit Acts of Terrorism and Destabilization of State Institutions in their Various Aspects], RADIO
RWANDA, 3 Mar. 1992.
41
Broadcast Editorial, Les Agresseurs du Rwanda se prépareraient à se livrer à des actes de terrorisme et de
déstabilisation des institutions étatiques sous leurs différents aspects [The Attackers of Rwanda Would Prepare
Themselves to Commit Acts of Terrorism and Destabilization of State Institutions in their Various Aspects], RADIO
RWANDA, 3 Mar. 1992.
42
Broadcast Editorial, Les Agresseurs du Rwanda se prépareraient à se livrer à des actes de terrorisme et de
déstabilisation des institutions étatiques sous leurs différents aspects [The Attackers of Rwanda Would Prepare
Themselves to Commit Acts of Terrorism and Destabilization of State Institutions in their Various Aspects], RADIO
RWANDA, 3 Mar. 1992.
43
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 675 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003). The FIDH Report investigators later determined that the letter broadcast on Radio Rwanda
was fraudulent. That finding was echoed in the MIP, which reported that Rwandan officials, possibly Nahimana,
authored the false letter. MIP Tome I 98.
44
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 689 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
45
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 681 & 689 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
46
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 681 & 689 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
47
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 689 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003); see also Ferdinand Nahimana et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-99-52-A, Appeals
Chamber Judgement, ¶ 1052 (28 Nov. 2007). The international tribunal sentenced Nahimana to life in prison in 2003
before an appeals court reduced his sentence to 30 years in 2007. Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana, Case No. MICT13-37-ES.1, ¶ 35. In 2016, he was released after serving two-thirds of the reduced sentence.
48
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 668, 681 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
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Chapter V
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49
Pierre Bucyensenge, Tales from Bugesera, Where Tutsis were ‘Exiled’, THE NEW TIMES (31 Mar. 2014). Bugesera,
as described in Bucyensenge’s article, was Rwanda’s version of the barren steppes where undesirables and the
politically suspect were deported throughout Soviet history. The communal violence that followed Belgium’s
departure in 1959 and Rwanda’s transformation into a one-party state founded on the principle of Hutu domination
left thousands of Tutsi dead and some 300,000 refugees dispersed internally and in neighboring countries. The
authorities often “replanted” internal refugees in Bugesera and a neighboring district, places of “dense forests, gigantic
savannah, wild animals and tse-tse flies,” and left them largely to fend for themselves. Many, especially the young
and old, succumbed to hunger and disease. The survivors erected makeshift grass huts and, though the region was hot
and dry, began to farm small plots of land. Three decades later, some had managed to carve out a modest prosperity,
owning cattle and family cars.
50
Pierre Bucyensenge, Tales from Bugesera, Where Tutsis Were ‘Exiled’, THE NEW TIMES (31 Mar. 2014).
51
FIDH Report 26 (1993).
52
FIDH Report 26 (1993). There were other signs of the violence ahead. By February 1992, the Interahamwe was
threatening the kind of violence that would come to characterize the coming massacres. See also Press Release, MDR
(12 Feb. 1992) (Subject: “Announcement No. 2”) (warning MDR members that the Interahamwe was stockpiling
traditional weapons like cudgels, swords, and commando rope); Press Release, MDR (25 Feb. 1992) (Subject:
“Announcement No. 4”) (updating the previous MDR notice, notifying its members that the Interahamwe was now
armed with grenades).
53
Press Release, MDR (12 Feb. 1992) (Subject: “Announcement No. 2”).
54
Press Release, MDR (25 Feb. 1992) (Subject: “Announcement No. 4”).
55
Anastase Gasana, Interahamwe za Muvoma or the MRND Party Hardliners 9-10 (14 May 1992); see also DANIELA
KROSLAK, THE FRENCH BETRAYAL OF RWANDA 38 (2008).
56
FIDH Report 27 (1993). See also id. at n.14. The FIDH points out that facilities to make photocopies of a document
(in this case the pamphlet) in Bugesera are virtually non-existent outside of government or party offices.
57
FIDH Report 28 (1993).
58
FIDH Report 27 (1993).
59
FIDH Report 27 (1993).
60
FIDH Report 27 (1993).
61
FIDH Report 27 (1993).
62
FIDH Report 27 (1993).
63
MIP Tome I 97.
64
Thousands Still Displaced After Tribal Clashes, AFP, 27 Mar. 1992.
65
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 72 (1999). Notably, human rights reports claimed that
Rwandan military joined forces with the Interahamwe at Bugesera. During the massacres, “soldiers in civilian dress
joined groups of killers while others in uniform disarmed Tutsi and kept them cornered until the killing teams could
arrive.”
66
DANIELA KROSLAK, THE FRENCH BETRAYAL OF RWANDA 38 (2008).
67
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
68
See, e.g., DANIELA KROSLAK, THE FRENCH BETRAYAL OF RWANDA 38 (2008).
69
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
70
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
71
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
72
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
73
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
74
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
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75
Rwanda Imposes Curfew in Area of Ethnic Fighting, REUTERS, 8 Mar. 1992. The article reported that, according to
witnesses, “bands of Hutus armed with machetes, spears, and clubs were still roaming the mountainous area,” several
days after the violence started.
76
Rwanda Imposes Curfew in Area of Ethnic Fighting, REUTERS, 8 Mar. 1992; Toll of Tribal Fighting in Rwanda
‘Could Be 300’, AFP, 8 Mar. 1992.
77
Arson, Looting Leaves 3,000 Tutsi Refugees, 10 Dead, AFP, 7 Mar. 1992.
78
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
79
Cable from George Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
80
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992).
81
Duclert Commission Report 153 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 989/57, Msg n°115 AD/RWA, 9 Mar. 1992). A French
military intelligence report on 13 March 1992 described the massacres, similarly, as an “anti-Tutsi pogrom.” Id.
(quoting SHD, GR 2000 Z 131/14, Fiche n° 8981 DEF/EMA/CERM2, 13 Mar. 1992).
82
Duclert Commission Report 153 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 989/57, Msg n°115 AD/RWA, 9 Mar. 1992).
83
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
84
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
85
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
86
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992. As a March 1992 letter from 13
Rwandan expatriates in Nairobi sent to President Mitterrand after the Bugesera massacres would reiterate: “The
presence of your troops . . . does not have the effect of tempering the murderous ardor of Rwandan civil and military
authorities against innocent populations.” MONIQUE MAS, PARIS-KIGALI 1990-1994 92 (1999). French officials
intended French troops to serve as a deterrent of the RPF, but the attackers of unarmed Tutsi did not see these troops’
presence as a reason to restrain themselves.
87
PIERRE PEAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS MENTEURS: RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS: RWANDA
1990-1994] 104 (2005).
88
PIERRE PÉAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS MENTEURS: RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS: RWANDA
1990-1994] 104-05 (2005).
89
PIERRE PÉAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS MENTEURS: RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS: RWANDA
1990-1994] 105 (2005).
90
PIERRE PÉAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS MENTEURS: RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS: RWANDA
1990-1994] 105 (2005).
91
PIERRE PÉAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS MENTEURS: RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS: RWANDA
1990-1994] 105 (2005).
92
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
93
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
94
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
95
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
96
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
97
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
98
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State 1-2 (27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “GOR Seeks Emergency
Assistance”).
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1992
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State 6 (27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “GOR Seeks Emergency Assistance”).
100
Cable from Johan Swinnen (7 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles sérieux dans le Bugesera”).
101
Cable from Johan Swinnen (7 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles sérieux dans le Bugesera”).
102
Cable from Johan Swinnen 1 (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Ethnische onlusten in de Bugesera”) The Canadian consul
and a representative of the papal nuncio also made trips to Nyamata that day.
103
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Ethnische onlusten in de Bugesera”).
104
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Ethnische onlusten in de Bugesera”).
105
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Ethnische onlusten in de Bugesera”).
106
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Ethnische onlusten in de Bugesera”).
107
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.”, is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
108
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Ethnische onlusten in de Bugesera”).
109
Cable from Johan Swinnen (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Onlusten Bugesera”).
110
Cable from Johan Swinnen (8 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Émeute ethnique - demarche aurpés des autroités
Rwandiases”).
111
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
112
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
113
Cable from Francois Ngarukiyintwali 1 (10 Mar. 1992).
114
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
115
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
116
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
117
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
118
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (13 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Prime Minister Comments on Politics
and Bugesera”).
119
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
120
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Demarche to President Habyarimana
on Bugesera and Democracy”).
121
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.”, is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda.
122
Duclert Commission Report 321 (citing SHD, GR 2003Z 989 57, Fiche n° 898 57, 13 Mar. 1992).
123
Duclert Commission Report 321 (quoting SHD, GR 2003Z 989 57, Fiche n° 898 57, 13 Mar. 1992).
124
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (13 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Prime Minister Comments on Politics
and Bugesera”).
125
Cable from Johan Swinnen (12 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Onlusten in Rwanda”).
126
Memorandum from Donat Hakizimana to Juvénal Habyarimana (7 Feb. 1992). (Subject: “Note à Son Excellence
Monsieur le Président de la République sur la mise en place des cadres de l'Administration Centrale et des Société
mixtes”).
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127
Shyirambere J. Barahinyura, 1973-1988 Le Major-General Habyarimana, quinze ans de tyrannie et de tartuferie
au Rwanda [1973-1988 The Major-General Habyarimana, Fifteen Years of Tyranny and Hypocrisy] 84-85 (1988)
(reproducing Birara’s 1979 letter).
128
Cable from Johan Swinnen (12 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Onlusten in Rwanda”).
129
Cable from Johan Swinnen (12 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Onlusten in Rwanda”).
130
Cable from Johan Swinnen (12 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Onlusten in Rwanda”); see also Cable from Johan Swinnen
(27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda – onlusten Bugesera”).
131
Cable from Johan Swinnen (27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda – onlusten Bugesera”).
132
Cable from Johan Swinnen (27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda – onlusten Bugesera”)
133
Cable from Johan Swinnen (27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda – onlusten Bugesera”).
134
Cable from Johan Swinnen 2 (27 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda – onlusten Bugesera”).
135
See, e.g., FIDH Report 28 (1993); ASSOCIATION RWANDAISE POUR LA DEFENSE DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE ET
DES LIBERTES PUBLIQUES [RWANDAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND PUBLIC LIBERTIES],
RAPPORT SUR LES DROITS DE L’HOMME AU RWANDA OCTOBRE 1992 - OCTOBRE 1993 [REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN
RWANDA OCTOBER 1992 - OCTOBER 1993] 139 (1 Dec. 1993).
136
Report from Alain Damy, Compte Rendu d’Activité: Periode du 1er Avril au 30 Septembre 1992 [Activity Report:
Period from 1 April to 30 September 1992] 4 (14 Oct. 1992).
137
Report from Bernard Cussac, Bilan de l’Assistance Militaire Technique Gendarmerie au Rwanda [Assessment of
Gendarmerie Military Technical Assistance in Rwanda] 4 (9 Oct. 1992); see also Letter from Bernard Cussac to
Augustin Bizimana (25 July 1991) (Subject: “autorisation d’importation et de detention d’armes”); Report from Alain
Damy, Compte Rendu d’Activité: Periode du 1er Avril au 30 Septembre 1992 [Activity Report: Period from 1 April
to 30 September 1992] 17 (14 Oct. 1992); Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa
Mission au Rwanda (3 – 6 novembre 1992) [Report of Colonel Capodanno on his Mission in Rwanda (3 – 6 November
1992)] 7 (10 Nov. 1992).
138
Note from Paul Dijoud (10 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la politique de la
France”); see also Note from Paul Dijoud (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la
politique de la France”). The MIP report includes a revised version of Dijoud’s note, which bears some slight—but
telling—differences. That version, dated 11 March 1992, is softer in tone. There, one can find passing references to
France’s “effort to help this country end the crisis” and to its hope of “[t]ruly taking responsibility” for refugees. Most
notably, it acknowledges that “violence . . . is multiplying against Tutsi populations which are deemed to be close to
the rebels.” The 10 March note contains none of these statements.
139
Note from Paul Dijoud (10 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la politique de la
France”).
140
Note from Paul Dijoud (10 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la politique de la
France”).
141
MIP Tome I 184.
142
Report from Jean Varret, Compte rendu de mission au Rwanda et au Burundi [Report of mission to Rwanda and
to Burundi] 9 (27 May 1992).
143
Note from Paul Dijoud (10 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la politique de la
France”).
144
Note from Paul Dijoud (10 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la politique de la
France”). Dijoud’s plan had two other points. First, he called for France—and, “if necessary,” other Western
countries—to “exert strong pressure on Uganda and in particular on President Museveni to play a more positive role
in seeking peace.” Second, UNHCR’s proposals to resolve the region’s refugee “problem” should “finally see the light
of day” (though, Dijoud wrote, there should be a common understanding that a fix will take some time—more than a
few months, certainly).
145
Note from Paul Dijoud (10 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Nécessité de réaffirmer et préciser la politique de la
France”).
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146
Excerpt of cable from W.B. to unknown recipient (11 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Troubles inter-ethniques dans le
Bugesera”). “W.B.” is likely William Bunel, counselor to the French Ambassador to Rwanda. The cable on 11 March
reported that the situation was still not yet under control.
147
Italian Nun Killed in Rwanda, AFP, 10 Mar. 1992. This AFP and several other news reports of her death
misidentified Locattelli as a “nun,” but she was a lay missionary. See PIERRE PÉAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS
MENTEURS: RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS: RWANDA 1990-1994] 105 (2005).
148
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 139 n.20 (1995).
149
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 139 n.20 (1995).
150
Memorandum from Boniface Ngulinzira to Juvénal Habyarimana 5 (approximate date 13 May 1992) (Subject:
“Visite du Ministre français de la Coopération et du Développement au Rwanda).
151
Italian Nun Killed in Rwanda, AFP, 10 Mar. 1992.
152
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
153
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
154
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
155
Transcript, Interview by RFI with George Martres in JEUNE AFRIQUE, 9 Mar. 1992.
156
Account taken from interview by LFM with Immaculée Songa.
157
Cable from Georges Martres (9 Mar. 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
158
See Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 668 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003); see also MIP Tome I 98 (reporting rumors of Nahimana’s involvement in creating the
leaflet).
159
See Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1092 & 1105
(Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003). Nahimana was sentenced to life in prison. However, in 2007, an
international tribunal reduced his sentence to 30 years on appeal. Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No.
ICTR-99-52-A, Judgement, (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 28 Nov. 2007) In 2016, he was released after serving twothirds of the reduced sentence. Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. MICT-13-37-ES.1, Decision of the
President on the Early Release of Ferdinand Nahimana, ¶ 38 (Mechanism for Int’l Crim. Tribs. 5 Dec. 2016).
160
See Justin Hategekimana, Hategekimana Justin yaba atishimiye imikorere ya bamwe mu bavugir’a kuri RadioRwanda, [Hategekimana Justin Might Not Be Happy with the Work of Some Radio Rwanda Reporters/Journalists]
KANGURA 7, 10-11 (Dec. 1990). Nahimana succeeded Christophe Mfizi at ORINFOR sometime before the end of
1990. See Letter from Ferdinand Nahimana to Juvénal Habyarimana (14 Apr. 1992). Nahimana remained at
ORINFOR until at least 14 April 1992, although his last day there is unclear.
161
Thomas Kamilindi, Journalism in a Time of Hate Media, in THOMPSON ET AL., THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA
GENOCIDE 136 (2007); see also American Cultural Center at the United States Embassy in Kigali, Media Situation in
Rwanda 19 (10 Jan. 1992) (“It may even be that private radio stations will start up and break Radio Rwanda’s
stranglehold on the most important medium in the country.”). While the RPF’s radio station, Radio Muhabura, was
received in Rwanda, it broadcast from Uganda.
162
American Cultural Center at the United States Embassy in Kigali, Media Situation in Rwanda 18 (10 Jan. 1992).
Kangura reported that RTLM began broadcasting on 8 July 1993.
163
American Cultural Center at the United States Embassy in Kigali, Media Situation in Rwanda 18-19 (10 Jan. 1992)
(noting “Radio Rwanda’s stranglehold on the most important medium in the country”); Prosecutor v. Ferdinand
Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 342-343 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec.
2003) (“Radio was increasingly important as a source of information as well as entertainment and a focus of social
life. . . . [Y]oung people could always be seen on the street with a radio listening to RTLM and . . . the broadcasts
were a common topic of conversation in homes, offices and on the street. . . . [P]eople listened to RTLM in bars and
at work, and . . . you could hear it in taxis and at the market. . . . [O]ne would find little radios in offices, cafes, bars
and other public fathering places, even in taxis.”).
164
Habyarimana Announces Multiparty State by June, AFP, 21 Apr. 1991.
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165
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 342 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
166
Accord of Radio Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of FRANCE and the Government of the
Republic of Rwanda, Rw. – Fr. (1962); see also Thomas Kamilindi, Journalism in a Time of Hate Media, in
THOMPSON ET AL., THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 136 (2007). It is sometimes falsely reported that it began
broadcasting in 1963. See American Cultural Center at the United States Embassy in Kigali, Media Situation in
Rwanda 18 (10 Jan. 1992)
167
Accord of Radio Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of FRANCE and the Government of the
Republic of Rwanda, Rw. – Fr. (1962).
168
Accord of Radio Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of FRANCE and the Government of the
Republic of Rwanda, Rw. – Fr. (1962).
169
See American Cultural Center at the United States Embassy in Kigali, Media Situation in Rwanda 18-19 (10 Jan.
1992).
170
FERDINAND NAHIMANA, DES LIGNANGES AUX ROYAUMES ET DES ROYAUMES AUX CHEFFERIES: HISTOIRE SOCIOPOLITIQUE DES REGIONS PERIPHERIQUES NORD ET NORD-OUEST DU RWANDA ACTUEL, DU 16EME SIECLE A 1931 [FROM
LINEAGES TO KINGDOMS AND FROM KINGDOMS TO CHIEFDOMS: A SOCIO-POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTH AND
NORTHWEST PERIPHERAL REGIONS OF RWANDA FROM THE 16TH CENTURY TO 1931], DOCTORAL DISS. UNIVERSITÉ
PARIS VII, 1986.
171
FERDINAND NAHIMANA, DES LIGNANGES AUX ROYAUMES ET DES ROYAUMES AUX CHEFFERIES: HISTOIRE SOCIOPOLITIQUE DES REGIONS PERIPHERIQUES NORD ET NORD-OUEST DU RWANDA ACTUEL, DU 16EME SIECLE A 1931 [FROM
LINEAGES TO KINGDOMS AND FROM KINGDOMS TO CHIEFDOMS: A SOCIO-POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTH AND
NORTHWEST PERIPHERAL REGIONS OF RWANDA FROM THE 16TH CENTURY TO 1931], DOCTORAL DISS. UNIVERSITÉ
PARIS VII, 1986.
172
Interview by LFM with Christophe Mfizi; CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RÉSEAU ZÉRO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DÉMOCRATIE
ET DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE AU RWANDA (1975–1994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE
REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (1975-1994)] 10-11 (2006).
173
CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RÉSEAU ZÉRO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DÉMOCRATIE ET DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE AU RWANDA (1975–
1994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (1975-1994)] 10-11
(2006).
174
CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RÉSEAU ZÉRO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DÉMOCRATIE ET DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE AU RWANDA (1975–
1994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (1975-1994)] 4, 8, 11
(2006).
175
CHRISTOPHE MFIZI, LE RÉSEAU ZÉRO: FOSSOYEUR DE LA DÉMOCRATIE ET DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE AU RWANDA (1975–
1994) [THE ZERO NETWORK: GRAVEDIGGER OF DEMOCRACY AND THE REPUBLIC IN RWANDA (1975-1994)] 67 – 68
(2006).
176
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 691 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
177
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 689 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
178
Association Rwandaise pour la Défense des Droits de la Personne et des Libertés Publiques, Déclaration sur les
massacres en cours de la population de la région du Bugesera [Declaration on the Ongoing Massacres of the
Population of the Bugesera Region] (10 Mar. 1992). The statement said, “We particularly disapprove of the spreading
of fake communiques and other leaflets by the national radio, which, by doing so, is acting as an effective conduit for
the fascists of that country, and which is thereby making itself co-responsible for the loss of human lives through its
calls for interethnic hatred and division.” See Cable from Ambassador Johan Swinnen (March 10, 1992) (showing
Belgian Ambassador Johan Swinnen forwarding the statement to Brussels on 10 March 1992).
179
Press Release, MDR, Halte au massacre des innocents [Stop the Massacre of Innocents] (11 Mar. 1992).
180
See Letter from Ferdinand Nahimana to Juvénal Habyarimana 5 (14 Apr. 1992).
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181
Mission Report of the Ministry of Information in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Germany,
December 9 – 19, 1992 Ndengejeho (1 Feb. 1993).
182
Mission Report of the Ministry of Information in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Germany,
December 9 – 19, 1992 (1 Feb. 1993).
183
Interview by LFM with Christophe Mfizi.
184
Interview by LFM with Christophe Mfizi.
185
See Report by Missionnaires d’Afrique, 19 Apr. 1992; Marie-France Cros, Rwanda: la balle est dans le camp du
Président [Rwanda: the Ball is in the President's Court], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 12 Mar. 1992.
186
Report by Missionnaires d’Afrique, 19 Apr. 1992.
187
Report by Missionnaires d’Afrique, 19 Apr. 1992.
188
Report by Missionnaires d’Afrique, 19 Apr. 1992.
189
Gouvernements, representation politique, principaux corps d’état, institutions de la société civile [Governments,
Political Representation, Main Bodies of State, Institutions of Civil Society] 5-6 (30 Mar. 2000). The MDR, Parti
Liberal (PL), and Social Democrats (PSD) each received three seats, while the Christian Democratic Party (PDC)
received one. Habyarimana’s party, the MRND, did at least retain some of the most powerful posts in the cabinet,
including minister of the interior (Faustin Munyazesa, a holdover from the previous cabinet) and minister of defense,
which passed from Augustin Ndindiliyimana to the moderate James Gasana.
190
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 145-146 (1995).
191
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 145-146 (1995).
192
Cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State 2 (21 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Internal Insecurity: An
Ongoing Problem”).
193
Six People Seriously Injured in Bomb Attack in Kigali, AFP, 25 Apr. 1992.
194
President’s Party Accused Over Blast, AFP, 2 May 1992.
195
Fresh Bomb Attack in Rwanda, AFP, 7 May 1992.
196
Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
197
Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
198
Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
199
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 245, 248 (2003).
200
Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
201
Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
202
Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
203
Press Release, RPF, La Caution militaire française du régime MRND [The French Military Guarantor of the MRND
Regime] (9 June 1992).
204
Colette Braeckman, Des militaires rwandais en colère se livrent au pillage à Gisenyi [Angry Rwandan Soldiers
Turn to Looting in Gisenyi], LE SOIR, 1 June 1992.
205
Report from the MAM, French Embassy in Rwanda, Actes de terrorisme perpétrés au Rwanda depuis décembre
1991 [Acts of Terrorism Perpetrated in Rwanda since December 1991] 7, 9 (31 May 1992).
206
Report from the MAM, French Embassy in Rwanda, Actes de terrorisme perpétrés au Rwanda depuis décembre
1991 [Acts of Terrorism Perpetrated in Rwanda since December 1991] 7, 9 (31 May 1992).
207
Report from the MAM, French Embassy in Rwanda, Actes de terrorisme perpétrés au Rwanda depuis décembre
1991 [Acts of Terrorism Perpetrated in Rwanda since December 1991] 8 – 9 (31 May 1992).
208
Report from the MAM, French Embassy in Rwanda, Actes de terrorisme perpétrés au Rwanda depuis décembre
1991 [Acts of Terrorism Perpetrated in Rwanda since December 1991] 8 (31 May 1992).
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209
Report from the MAM, French Embassy in Rwanda, Actes de terrorisme perpétrés au Rwanda depuis décembre
1991 [Acts of Terrorism Perpetrated in Rwanda since December 1991] 9 (31 May 1992).
210
Memorandum from François Munyengango to James Gasana (11 May 1992).
211
Memorandum from François Munyengango to James Gasana (11 May 1992).
212
Memorandum from François Munyengango to James Gasana (11 May 1992).
213
Memorandum from François Munyengango to James Gasana (11 May 1992).
214
Memorandum from François Munyengango to James Gasana (11 May 1992).
215
Memorandum from François Munyengango to James Gasana (11 May 1992).
216
Report from Bernard Cussac, Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990 [Activities
of the Military Assistance Mission since October 1, 1990], 5 (14 May 1992). At the Rwandan government’s urging,
France had opened a second training site in the northeastern community of Gabiro to accommodate units fighting in
that region. See Cable from the French Ministry of Defense (5 Sept. 1991) (Subject: “Emploi du DAMI/RWANDA
(PANDA)”; Cable from Dominique Delort (26 Dec. 1991) (Subject: “Visite de l’Amiral CEMA au Rwanda du 23 au
25 decembre”). There, the instructors sought mainly to prepare their trainees for nighttime operations. Chollet’s
successor as commander of the DAMI, Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Louis Nabias, felt it was important, as well, to teach
the units how to properly effect circumvention maneuvers, as all of their offensives, to that point, had been frontal
attacks. His methods seemed at first to work. In a memo that month, Col. Cussac boasted that, on several instances,
the trainings in Mukamira and Gabiro proved their worth, as freshly trained Rwandan units obtained “brilliant results”
on the battlefield. See MIP Tome I 152; Report from Bernard Cussac, Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire
depuis le 1er Octobre 1990 [Activities of the Military Assistance Mission since October 1, 1990] 5 (14 May 1992).
217
MIP Tome I 152.
218
Report, Situation de la coopération militaire franco-rwandaise [Status of French-Rwandan Military Cooperation]
(21 Oct. 1992).
219
Transcript of an Interahamwe protest in front of the Office of the Prime Minister in Kigali 2 (28 May 1992); Press
Release, MRND and Interahamwe (28 May 1992).
220
Transcript of an Interahamwe protest in front of the Office of the Prime Minister in Kigali 2 (28 May 1992).
221
Transcript of an Interahamwe protest in front of the Office of the Prime Minister in Kigali 2 (28 May 1992); Letter
from MRND National Secretary Matthieu Ngirumpatse to Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye, “Brutalités contre
des militants du MRND,” (May 30, 1992).
222
Transcript of an Interahamwe protest in front of the Office of the Prime Minister in Kigali 2 (28 May 1992).
223
Press Release, MRND and Interahamwe (28 May 1992).
224
Colette Braeckman, L’Opposition rencontre les “rebelles” [The Opposition Meets the “Rebels”], LE SOIR, 30 May
1992.
225
Colette Braeckman, L’Opposition rencontre les “rebelles” [The Opposition Meets the “Rebels”], LE SOIR, 30 May
1992.
226
Marie-France Cros, Opposition et guérilla rwandaise: “Nous nous sommes découverts” [Opposition and Rwandan
Guerrilla Fighters: “We Discovered Each Other”], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 12, 2 June 1992.
227
Marie-France Cros, Opposition et guérilla rwandaise: “Nous nous sommes découverts” [Opposition and Rwandan
Guerrilla Fighters: “We Discovered Each Other”], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 12, 2 June 1992.
228
Marie-France Cros, Opposition et guérilla rwandaise: “Nous nous sommes découverts” [Opposition and Rwandan
Guerrilla Fighters: “We Discovered Each Other”], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 12, 2 June 1992.
229
Colette Braeckman, L’Opposition rencontre les “rebelles” [The Opposition Meets the “Rebels”], LE SOIR, 30 May
1992.
230
Colette Braeckman, L’Opposition rencontre les “rebelles” [The Opposition Meets the “Rebels”], LE SOIR, 30 May
1992.
231
Bagarres meurtrières [Deadly Brawls], REUTERS, 1 June 1992.
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232
Colette Braeckman, Des militaires rwandais en colère se livrent au pillage à Gisenyi [Angry Rwandan Soldiers
Loot in Gisenyi], LE SOIR, 1 June 1992; Marie-France Cros, Opposition et guérilla rwandaise: “Nous nous sommes
découverts” [Opposition and Rwandan Guerrillas: “We Discovered Each Other”], LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 12, 2 June
1992.
233
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (1 June 1992) (Subject: “Tensions in Rwanda”).
234
Colette Braeckman, Des militaires rwandais en colère se livrent au pillage à Gisenyi [Angry Rwandan Soldiers
Turn to Looting in Gisenyi], LE SOIR, 1 June 1992.
235
Colette Braeckman, Des militaires rwandais en colère se livrent au pillage à Gisenyi [Angry Rwandan Soldiers
Turn to Looting in Gisenyi], LE SOIR, 1 June 1992.
236
Cable from Georges Martres (5 June 1992) (Subject: “Appel du Président Habyarimana”).
237
Report from Marc Verschoore, Rwanda (Synthèse) 9 (18 Jan. 1993); Cable from Georges Martres (7 June 1992)
(Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
238
See Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe. The RPF
announced at the time that it had attacked Byumba to head off a FAR offensive following the buildup of forces and
weaponry there. See Press Release, RPF (5 June 1992).
239
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake. See also Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe (“[W]e had
not launched the attack to capture towns but to create impact to force the government to go back to the negotiating
table.”). The day of the offensive, 5 June, was the date RPF and government delegations were scheduled to meet for
talks in Paris. See Cable from Walter Curley Jr. to the US Embassy in Kigali (5 June 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda talks
in Paris: DAS DAVIDOW meeting with Quai Africa director Dijoud”).
240
See Cable from Robert Flaten to US Embassy in Dar es Salaam (8 July 1992) (Subject: “GOR-RPF Peace Talks”)
(“The RPF attack on Byumba town on June 5 . . . has had a profound effect on Rwandan politics. For the first time
since the invasion in October 1990, Rwandans have had to face the possibility that the RPF might actually win
militarily.”).
241
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake
242
Letter from Bernard Cussac to Jacques Lanxade (25 May 1992) (Subject: “Synthèse bimensuelle mars et avril
1992”).
243
Letter from Bernard Cussac to Jacques Lanxade (25 May 1992) (Subject: “Synthèse bimensuelle mars et avril
1992”).
244
Letter from Bernard Cussac to Jacques Lanxade (25 May 1992) (Subject: “Synthèse bimensuelle mars et avril
1992”).
245
Letter from Bernard Cussac to Jacques Lanxade (25 May 1992) (Subject: “Synthèse bimensuelle mars et avril
1992”).
246
Report from Bernard Cussac, Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990 [Activities
of the Military Assistance Mission since October 1, 1990] 3 (14 May 1992).
247
Report from Bernard Cussac, Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990 [Activities
of the Military Assistance Mission since October 1, 1990] 3 (14 May 1992).
248
Report from Bernard Cussac, Activités de la Mission d’Assistance Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990 [Activities
of the Military Assistance Mission since October 1, 1990] 3 (14 May 1992).
249
Report from Bernard Cussac, defense attaché to the French Embassy in Kigali, Activités de la Mission d’Assistance
Militaire depuis le 1er Octobre 1990 [Activities of the Military Assistance Mission since October 1, 1990] 3 (14 May
1992) (ellipsis in original).
250
Cable from Georges Martres (7 June 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
251
Cable from Georges Martres (5 June 1992) (Subject: “Appel du Président Habyarimana”). Habyarimana, as was
his habit, said the attack had been “launched by President Museveni.”
252
Cable from Georges Martres (5 June 1992) (Subject: “Appel du Président Habyarimana”).
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253
Cable from Georges Martres (7 June 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”); Stephen Smith, La Guerre secrète
de l’Élysée en Afrique de l’Est [The Élysée’s Secret War in East Africa], LIBÉRATION, 11 June 1992 (reporting the
number of troops as 150).
254
Cable from Georges Martres (7 June 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
255
Cable from Georges Martres (7 June 1992) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
256
Meeting Notes Taken at the Cabinet Meeting Held on 9 June 1992 (9 June 1992); see also Cable from Robert
Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 June 1992) (Subject: “Council of Ministers retires top military officers”) (“[T]he
GOR announced today, 10 June, that the Council of ministers has taken the decision to reorganize the Armed Forces.”).
257
MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 140.
258
Cable from Bernard Cussac (10 June 1992) (Subject: “Changements a La Tete Des Armees Rwandaises”).
259
See Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence (Int’l Crim. Trib.
For Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
260
See Cable from Bernard Cussac (10 June 1992) (Subject: “Changements a La Tete Des Armees Rwandaises”);
Letter from James Gasana to Déogratias Nsabimana and Augustin Ndindiliyimana (12 June 1992) (Subject:
“Organigramme du Ministère de la Defense”).
261
Cable from Bernard Cussac and Georges Martres (10 June 1992) (Subject: “Changements a La Tete Des Armees
Rwandaises”).
262
See MIP Tome I 104-05.
263
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 June 1992) (Subject: “Council of Ministers Retires Top
Military Officers”).
264
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 June 1992) (Subject: “Council of Ministers Retires Top
Military Officers”).
265
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 June 1992) (Subject: “Council of Ministers Retires Top
Military Officers”).
266
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 June 1992) (Subject: “Council of Ministers Retires Top
Military Officers”).
267
Memorandum from Déogratias Nsabimana 2 (21 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Diffusion d’information”). The document
had been prepared by a 10-person committee appointed in December 1991 by Rwandan military leaders. Nsabimana,
in circulating the document, asked recipients to disseminate it “widely[,] drawing particular attention to the chapter
on the definition of the enemy, his identification as well as on his recruitment locations.”
268
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
269
AFP, L’Envoi de renforts au Rwanda ne vise qu’à assurer la sécurite des ressortissants etrangers, selon le Quai
d’Orsay [Sending Support to Rwanda is Only to Ensure Security of Foreigners, According to the Quai d’Orsay] (11
June 1992) (“Paris had ‘no other objective than to help the country [Rwanda] move towards democracy’”); Guerre
d’octobre, DIALOGUE No. 157, 48 (Aug. 1992).
270
Press Release, RPF, La Caution militaire française du régime MRND [The French Military Guarantor of the MRND
Regime] (9 June 1992).
271
Stephen Smith, La Guerre secrète de l’Élysée en Afrique de l’Est [The Élysée’s Secret War in East Africa],
LIBÉRATION, 11 June 1992.
272
Stephen Smith, La Guerre secrète de l’Élysée en Afrique de l’Est [The Élysée’s Secret War in East Africa],
LIBÉRATION, 11 June 1992.
273
Jean-François Dupaquier, La France au chevet d’un fascisme africain [France at the Bedside of African Fascism],
L’ÉVÈNEMENT DU JEUDI, 25 June 1992.
274
Jean-François Dupaquier, La France au chevet d’un fascisme africain [France at the Bedside of African Fascism],
L’ÉVÈNEMENT DU JEUDI, 25 June 1992.
275
Jean-François Dupaquier, La France au chevet d’un fascisme africain [France at the Bedside of African Fascism],
L’ÉVÈNEMENT DU JEUDI, 25 June 1992.
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276
Jean-François Dupaquier, La France au chevet d’un fascisme africain [France at the Bedside of African Fascism],
L’ÉVÈNEMENT DU JEUDI, 25 June 1992.
277
MONIQUE MAS, PARIS-KIGALI 1990-1994 65 (1999).
278
Letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the French Embassy in Kigali (3 Feb. 1992).
279
Press Release, Union du Peuple Rwandais (UPR), Communiqué du Parti Union du Peuple Rwandais (UPR) sur la
nomination du Lieutenant-Colonel Chollet comme conseilleur du president rwandais et de son chef d’état-major
[Communiqué from the Rwandan People’s Union Party (UPR) on the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel Chollet as
adviser to the Rwandan president and his chief of staff] (24 Feb. 1992).
280
Press Release, MDR, Communiqué no. 9 (14 Feb. 1992).
281
Adrien Rangira, Rwanda uragana he? [Where Are You Heading, Rwanda?], KANGUKA 53, 4 (25 Feb. 1992); see
also Birakomeye! [Be Cautious!], UMURANGI 006, 8 (26 Feb. 1992) (accusing the Rwandan Army of betraying the
country).
282
Pas de fonctions de conseiller auprès du président [No Advisory Functions to the Rwandan President for the Head
of the French Military Assistance Mission], AFP, 28 Feb. 1992.
283
MIP Tome I 137, 158; Principales actions de la MMC au profit des FAR depuis octobre 1990 [Main actions of the
MCM for the benefit of the FAR since October 1990], 9 (undated). President Mitterrand reportedly decided in April
1991 to make Canovas’ position permanent. See Letter from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr.
1991).
284
MIP Tome I 158. The MIP report would treat Chollet’s departure on 3 March 1992, just a few weeks after the leak
of the Rwandan Foreign Ministry’s letter, as proof that the letter’s assertion that Chollet was advising Habyarimana
and the FAR’s chief of staff was inaccurate. See id. at 158-159.
285
MIP Tome I 159; see Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa Mission au Rwanda (3 – 6 novembre 1992) [Report
of Colonel Capodanno on his Mission in Rwanda (3 – 6 November 1992)] 3 (10 Nov. 1992).
286
Duclert Commission Report 158.
287
Duclert Commission Report 157 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/7, Draft letter of mission of Lt cl Maurin, 17 Apr.
1992).
288
Stephen Smith, La Guerre secrète de l’Élysée en Afrique de l’Est [The Élysée’s Secret War in East Africa],
LIBÉRATION, 11 June 1992.
289
Jean-François Dupaquier, La France au chevet d’un fascisme africain [France at the Bedside of African Fascism],
L’ÉVÈNEMENT DU JEUDI, 25 June 1992.
290
Duclert Commission Report 696 (quoting ADIPLO, 610COOP/2, Note to the Minister for Cooperation and
Development, [April 1992], pp. 2-3).
291
Duclert Commission Report 158 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/7, MSG NMR 3100/DEF/EMA/EMP3, 26 February
1991 and 9003 Z 17/16 Directive NMR 3145/DEF/EMA/EMP.3, 20 March 1991). As Serabuga’s advisor, Maurin
was “integrated into the heart of the Rwandan army.” Id. at 167. Maurin was “working on the reorganization or creation
of several units focused on intelligence, a very well-known weakness of the FAR.” Id. But, “Maurin remained far
from the sensitive areas of the front, which seemed to be hidden from him” and Habyarimana, initially, did not meet
with Maurin. Id. The Duclert Commission posited that whatever arms-length treatment Maurin received may have
been the result of Maurin’s close proximity to Serabuga, who Habyarimana would soon remove from his position. Id.
The Duclert Commission suggested also that the FAR attempted to shield Maurin from its “desertions and poor
command.” Id.
292
Report from Marc Verschoore 9 (18 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”); Cable from Georges Martres (7 June 1992)
(Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
293
Muyco Report 50-51.
294
MIP Tome I 154.
295
Journal Officiel de la Republique française n°154, Décret du 5 juillet 1993 portant promotion et nomination
[Decree of 5 July 1993 on Promotion and Appointment] 1 (6 July 1993); see also LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS
PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 820-821 (2019).
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296
PIERRE SERVENT, LES PRÉSIDENTS ET LA GUERRE [PRESIDENTS AND WAR] 126-127 (2017); see also Didier Philippi
et l’Amicale des Elephants noirs, Histoire abrégée des operations de la CPIMa au Tchad 1969-1972 [A Brief History
of CPIMa Operations in Chad 1969-1972], REVUE MILITARIA N° 404, May 2019. Didier Philippi et l’Amicale des
Elephants noirs, Histoire abrégée des operations de la CPIMa au Tchad 1969-1972 [A Brief History of CPIMa
Operations in Chad 1969-1972], REVUE MILITARIA N° 404, 7 May 2019. Rosier was a lieutenant in the Marine
Infantry Paratroopers Company (Compagnie Parachutiste d’Infanterie de Marine, or CPIMa) in 1971, when he took
charge of his own commando unit in Chad. He remained in Chad with the CPIMa until 1975; Jacques Rosier, Combats
au Tchad, Tchad – Juin 1971, Kouroudi [Fighting in Chad, Chad – June 1971, Kouroudi], AMICALE DES ANCIENS DE
LA COMPAGNIE PARACHUTISTE D’INFANTERIE DE MARINE DE L’EX-AFRIQUE EQUATORIALE FRANCAISE, 13, 18 June
1971.
297
See NATHANIEL K. POWELL, FRANCE'S WARS IN CHAD: MILITARY INTERVENTION AND DECOLONIZATION IN AFRICA
225-262 (2021); DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I
DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 51 (2011). See also JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME
RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 69 (2010).
298
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 820-821 (2019).
299
JACQUES ROSIER, RAPPORT, NMR 001/TURQUOISE/ DET COS (27 July 1994).
300
BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, THE
FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 101-102 (2005) (Interviewing Jacques Rosier).
301
Loïc Salmon, Dans les livres: l’Escadron Bleu par Dominique Delort [In the Books: The Blue Squad by Dominique
Delort], June 2018; see also Didier Philippi et l’Amicale des Elephants noirs, Histoire abrégée des operations de la
CPIMa au Tchad 1969-1972 [A Brief History of CPIMa Operations in Chad 1969 – 1972], REVUE MILITARIA N° 404,
6-8, 7 May 2019.
302
BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, THE
FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 101-102 (2005); see also Letter from James Gasana to Juvénal Habyarimana (23 Aug.
1992) (Subject: “Proposition de Décoration”).
303
Letter from Deogratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (22 June 1992).
304
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
305
Letter from Deogratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (22 June 1992).
306
Letter from Deogratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (22 June 1992).
307
Letter from Deogratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (22 June 1992).
308
Letter from Deogratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (26 June 1992) (Subject: “Instruction sur les canons 105 mm”).
309
BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, THE
FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 102 (2005).
310
See Duclert Commission Report 176; BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE
RWANDA [FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, THE FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 102 (2005).
FRANÇAISE ET LE
311
Duclert Commission Report 177 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/8, Fax 2995/COA/A, 26 June 1992).
312
Duclert Commission Report 177 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/8, Fax 2995/COA/A, 26 June 1992).
313
See Duclert Commission Report 181 (“Clearly, our ‘semi-direct’ aid, as I had initially told [a Rwandan official],
was only temporary” (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/9, Fm Rosier to Mercier “strictly private,” 24 July 1992)); id. at
231 (observing “the transition from indirect to semi-direct support” in the summer of 1992).
314
BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, THE
FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 102 (2005); see also Mucyo Report 421-422 (2008).
315
BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, THE
FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 102 (2005); see also Mucyo Report 421-422 (2008). According to testimony to the
Mucyo Commission by ex-FAR soldier, Isidore Nzeyimana (given on 12 November 2006), the French taught the FAR
to use the “122 mm Egyptian guns,” as well as the 105 mm French-supplied weapons, because they were similar.
316
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga; Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera; Mucyo Report Sect. 1.1
(2008).
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317
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
318
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
319
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
320
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
321
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
1992
322
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe; Interview by LFM with Richard Sezibera; Interview by LFM with Charles
Karamba.
323
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
324
Interview by LFM with James Kabarebe.
325
Michel Goya, Je suis complice de genocide mais je me soigne, LA VOIE DE L’ÉPÉE, 5 April 2019.
326
Interview by LFM with Gonzague Habimana; Interview by LFM with Jean Damascene Kaburame; Mucyo Report
Sect. 1.1 (2008) (highlighting the testimony of ex-FAR officers Evariste Murenzi (30 Oct. 2006) and Paul Rwarakabije
(26 Oct. 2006)).
327
MIP Audition of Georges Martres Tome III Vol.1, 155.
328
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
329
Stephen Smith, Espoirs de paix pour les Rwandais [Hope of Peace for the Rwandans], LIBÉRATION, 14 July 1992.
330
Letter from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 July 1992).
331
Letter from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (1 July 1992).
332
See, e.g., Letter from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 July 1992) (characterizing the RPF as the
“aggressor” for its cease-fire violations).
333
Françoise Carle, [née Chrétien Françoise, Marie], MAITRON, 5 Nov. 2012, http://maitron-en-ligne.univparis1.fr/spiphp?article142840.
334
335
Telephone interview by LFM with Françoise Carle.
JEAN GUISNEL, LES GÉNÉRAUX—ENQUÊTE SUR LE POUVOIR
INVESTIGATION INTO MILITARY POWER IN FRANCE] 80-102 (1990).
MILITAIRE EN
FRANCE [GENERALS—AN
336
ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZBROD, LE PRESIDENT QUI N’AIMAIT PAS LA GUERRE [THE PRESIDENT WHO DIDN’T LIKE
WAR] (1995).
337
Jacques Isnard, Le Métier de démineur ou le face-a-face avec la perversité humaine [Either the Bomb-Disposal
Profession or a Face-to-Face with Human Depravity], LE MONDE, 21 Oct. 1982; see also Claude Denis Mouton, Le
Genie parachutiste au Liban [Paratrooper Genius in Lebanon], Amicale 17e Regiment du Genie Parachutiste (last
visited: March 15, 2021).
338
Christian Quesnot, Le Facteur humain, composante de la dissuasion [The Human Factor, Component of
Dissuasion], OFFICIER UN JOUR, 1, 26 Oct. 2015.
339
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (1 July 1992) (emphasis omitted).
340
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (1 July 1992).
341
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (1 July 1992).
342
The N’sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992).
343
The N’sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992).
344
The N’sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992); see also The N’Sele Ceasefire
Agreement, Rw. – RPF (29 Mar. 1991).
345
Notes on Memorandum from Dominique de Combles de Nayves to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (6 Aug.
1992).
346
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (13 July 1992).
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347
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (13 July 1992); see also Memorandum from Christian
Quesnot to François Mitterrand (1 July 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda. Situation militaire”) (stating that the RPF was
receiving significant support from the Ugandan Army).
348
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 July 1992).
349
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 July 1992).
350
Memorandum from Claver Karangwa (23 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport sur l’entretien que le Chef EM Gd N a
eu avec un Officier de la Direction du Renseignement à l’Etat-Major des Armées Françaises”).
351
Memorandum from Claver Karangwa (23 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport sur l’entretien que le Chef EM Gd N a
eu avec un Officier de la Direction du Renseignement à l’Etat-Major des Armées Françaises”).
352
Memorandum from Claver Karangwa (23 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport sur l’entretien que le Chef EM Gd N a
eu avec un Officier de la Direction du Renseignement à l’Etat-Major des Armées Françaises”).
353
The N’sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992).
354
Memorandum from Francois Nicoullaud to Roland Dumas (6 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Application de l’accord de
cessez-le-feu au Rwanda”). Also copied at the Élysée were Gilles Vidal of the Africa Cell and General Quesnot’s
office.
355
Memorandum from Francois Nicoullaud to Jacques Lanxade (14 Aug. 1992). The communication from the Foreign
Ministry to the Defense Ministry occurred on 12 August 1992.
356
MIP Tome I 181.
357
MIP Tome I 181. More specifically, France provided 14.9 million French francs (roughly $2.7 million) in weapons
at no charge to the Rwandan government.
358
MIP Tome I 181. In 1990, France provided 3.3 million French francs ($600,000) in weapons. In 1991, the figure
was 1.7 million French francs ($310,000).
359
Summary of the CIEEMGs from 1987 to 1994 (15 Dec. 1998).
360
Memorandum from Francois Nicoullaud to Roland Dumas (6 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Application de l’accord de
cessez-le-feu au Rwanda”).
361
Memorandum from Francois Nicoullaud to Roland Dumas (6 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Application de l’accord de
cessez-le-feu au Rwanda”).
362
Notes on Memorandum from Dominique de Combles de Nayves to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (6 Aug.
1992) (“Compliance with Article II-6 [the portion of the cease-fire addressing removal of foreign troops—ed.] should
normally lead to the departure of the two “Noroît” companies whose mission is to protect the French community, the
departure of the military training assistance detachment (DAMI) ‘Panda’ whose members do not have the status of
military technical assistant, [and] the departure of the artillery training team and the transmission team.”); MIP Tome
I 29.
363
Memorandum from Francois Nicoullaud to Roland Dumas (6 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Application de l’accord de
cessez-le-feu au Rwanda”).
364
MIP Tome I 29.
365
Notes on Memorandum from Dominique de Combles de Nayves to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (6 Aug.
1992)
366
Notes on Memorandum from Note from Dominique de Combles de Nayves to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(6 Aug. 1992).
367
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac (9 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Bilan de l’Assistance Militaire Technique
Gendarmerie au Rwanda”).
368
Memorandum from Celestin Rwagafilita (12 May 1992) (Subject: “Compte-Rendu de la Visite du Gen Varret à
l’EM Gd N”).
369
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, RWANDA PERSECUTION
CRITICS 1990 – 1992 5-6 (May 1992).
OF
TUTSI MINORITY
AND
REPRESSION
OF
GOVERNMENT
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370
Letter from Daniel Lustig to Dismas Nsengiyaremye (15 July 1992); see also Letter from Jerome Stone to
Mbonampeka Stanislas 2 (11 July 1992).
371
Letter from Daniel Lustig to Dismas Nsengiyaremye, Rwandan prime minister (15 July 1992); see also Letter from
Jerome Stone to Mbonampeka Stanislas 2 (11 July 1992).
372
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
373
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
374
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
375
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
376
See Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana; AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, RWANDA PERSECUTION OF TUTSI
MINORITY AND REPRESSION OF GOVERNMENT CRITICS 1990 – 1992 5-6 (May 1992); Report of the Rwandan National
Gendarmerie Etat-Major, signed by P. Célestin Rwagafilita and J. Baptiste Iradukunda (27 May 1992) (Subject:
“Compte-rendu de réunion d’EM Gd. N. tenue en date du 27 mai 1992 de 09h00 à 10h05”) (showing that French
officers were present at the May 1992 meeting at which it was decided to change the name of the Fichier Central).
377
Duclert Commission 776 (quoting SHD, Late Versement n°1, Fax to EMA. Cab c 32/colonel Fruchard, 6 June
1991) (Galinié insisted to President Habyarimana that the FAR should “finally take prisoners, especially Ugandans,
and that they [the prisoners] must stop ‘dying of their wounds.’”).
378
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana; MIP Tome I 177. The late historian and human rights activist Alison
Des Forges testified to the MIP that former Rwandan Defense Minister James Gasana had reported the presence of
French officers at the CRCD, “a place well known for being the place of torture by the Gendarmerie and the Rwandan
police.” See MIP Audition of Alison Des Forges, Tome III, Vol. 2 83. In a subsequent letter to the Mission, however,
Des Forges stated that after being questioned by on the matter by members of the Mission, she conducted “a small
survey” that convinced her that torture had stopped at the CRCD after the installation of the coalition government in
1992 and that “it is possible that it is the French presence that helped to end the use of torture.” Mukagasana’s
testimony contradicts the results of Des Forges’ small survey.
379
Account taken from interview by LFM with Gerard Nshimyumuremyi.
380
See Report from the MAM, French Embassy in Rwanda, Actes de terrorisme perpétrés au Rwanda depuis décembre
1991 [Acts of terrorism perpetrated in Rwanda since December 1991] 7, 9 (31 May 1992) (noting that the Rwandan
prime minister, an MDR member, “seemed to be completely convinced of the ‘Akazu’s’ guilt” in recent acts of
terrorism and that it “was within this framework that he asked France to increase its assistance to the judicial police”).
381
Interview by LFM with François Nsanzuwera.
382
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
383
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
384
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
385
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
386
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
387
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
388
Interview by LFM with Liberata Mukagasana.
389
See, e.g., Memorandum from Jean-Louis Nabias to Bernard Cussac (19 Apr. 1992) (“The field service period took
place at the Ruhengeri and Gabiro sites in order to apply the technical and tactical know-how acquired . . . to perform
live reconnaissance.”); Memorandum from Jean-Louis Nabias to Bernard Cussac (24 Apr. 1992) (discussing training
“that took place at Camp Mukamira and at Gabiro between 1 March and 4 April 1992”); Memorandum from JeanLouis Nabias to Bernard Cussac (30 April 1992) (noting that “instruction was given by 9 instructor specialists based
at the Gabiro Guest House”).
390
See Prosecutor v. Bernard Munyagishari, Case No. ICTR-05-89-T, Indictment ¶14 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 9
June 2005); HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 83 (1999) (identifying Gabiro as a militia
training site); Transcript of Interview with Prosper Ngendahimana in Kanombe, Rwanda, 19 Dec. 2002 (interview
with FAR soldier who identified Gabiro as a militia training site); Interview by LFM with Vital Mucanda. Mucanda
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said he spent about a month at Gabiro at the end of 1992 or the beginning of 1993, where FAR soldiers trained him
and other Interahamwe in firearm operation outside of the camp.
391
Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana et al., Case No. ICTR-00-56-T, Trial Proceedings, 19-24 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 13 Jan. 2005).
392
Former Rwandan Mayor Sentenced to Life Over Role in Genocide, VOICE OF AMERICA, 29 Dec. 2015.
393
Some French military cooperants dressed in Rwandan military uniforms. See MIP Tome I 29.
394
Mucyo Report Sect. 2.2.1; Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Mwumvaneza.
395
Mucyo Report Sect. 2.2.1.
396
Mucyo Report Sect. 2.2.1.
397
Mucyo Report Sect. 2.2.1; Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Mwumvaneza. Additional Rwandan witnesses have
provided corroborating testimony. For example, Elias Nkurunziza, another councilor in Muvumba commune,
observed the same 1992 meeting between bourgmestre Rwabukombe and French soldiers. The similarities in their
testimony are striking: both remembered being asked to recruit civilians for training, both traveled by bus to Gabiro,
and both received small arms training outside Gabiro. The differences in their testimony were slight; for example,
Mwumvaneza recalled training in a valley, but Nkurunziza recalled training in an airplane landing field, and while
Mwumvaneza recalled four French soldiers present at the initial meeting, all but one with blackened faces, Nkurunziza
recalled only three present and only one with a blackened face. Also worth noting is that Nkurunziza recalled the
French soldiers arriving at the initial meeting in a Suzuki Jeep, somewhat consistent with Liberata Mukagasana’s
recollection of her colleagues traveling to Mutara in a Land Rover. Mucyo Report Sect. 2.2.1. Another witness,
Sylvestre Munyadinda, recounted being recruited by a Muvumba commune councilor to be trained in the use of
weapons around June 1992. He recalled boarding a bus for Gabiro and then receiving training in the same place that
Nkurunziza identified, Rwangingo. He also recalled that at times white men would inspect their training with highranking FAR officers. Initially, Munyadinda did not identify the men as French, only non-Rwandans. Mucyo Report
Sect. 2.2.1. During a subsequent interview, however, he referred to them as French, said they wore FAR uniforms and
black berets (as did Emmanuel Mwumvaneza), and recalled one of them going by the name Eugene. However, he also
placed the date earlier, in July 1991, potentially misremembering due to the passage of time. See Interview by LFM
with Sylvestre Munyadinda.
398
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije. Munyadinda Sylvestre echoed these sentiments when he explained that
he trained outside Gabiro to conceal the firearms training from opposition political parties. See Interview by LFM
with Sylvestre Munyadinda. And a FAR soldier named Martin Ndamage testified that he saw civilians at Gabiro for
training, but when he asked about them, he was told they were forest rangers receiving military training, which he
interpreted as a lie intended to conceal the secretive training. Mucyo Report Annexes, Witness Testimony #21, 380.
399
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
400
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
401
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije. Evariste Murenzi, a para-commando in 1992 who in 1993 moved to the
Presidential Guard, eventually becoming second-in-command, also received reports of French soldiers training
militias in Gabiro, specifying that the training was in the use of small arms such as pistols. See Interview by LFM with
Evariste Murenzi.
402
HOWARD ADELMAN & ASTRI SUHRKE, EARLY WARNING AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT 33 (Mar. 1996) (citing to
interviews conducted in 1995 in Geneva, Kigali, and Dar es Salaam).
403
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 74 (2012).
404
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 78-80 (2012).
405
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 80 (2012).
406
MIP Tome I 370.
407
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 80 (2012).
408
Mehdi Ba, Au Nom de la France, in GOLIAS MAGAZINE no. 101, 25 (Mar./Apr. 2005); JACQUES MOREL, LA FRANCE
AU COEUR DU GÉNOCIDE DES TUTSIS [FRANCE AT THE HEART OF THE GENOCIDE OF THE TUTSI] 235 (2018) (stating that
Germain was an accountant at the cultural center).
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1992
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
410
See, e.g., VÉNUSTE KAYIMAHE, FRANCE-RWANDA: LES COULISSES DU GÉNOCIDE [BACKSTAGE OF A GENOCIDE]
144-45, 157 (2001). Kayimahe named French Adjutants Lebarde and Gratade of the 3rd RPIMa as supervising the
training of Interahamwe in 1993 and said that he witnessed French soldiers jogging with militia trainees in the Kigali
neighborhoods of Gikondo, Nyamirambo, Kacyiru and Muhima. The MIP noted, however, that Lebarde and Gratade
denied Kayimahe’s account and suggested that Kayimahe may have been confused because Lebarde and Gratade had
been in charge of training the Presidential Guard (which, in addition to the militias, would play a key role in carrying
out the Genocide). MIP Tome I 369. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Rwandan para-commando who was a confidential
witness with initials DA at the ICTR’s Military II trial testified to witnessing French soldiers train Interahamwe leaders
to use firearms in the Presidential Guard camp in Kimihurura around May 1993. Prosecutor v. Augustin
Ndindiliyimana et al., Case No. ICTR-00-56-T, Transcript of trial proceedings, 24 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 13
Jan. 2005).
411
Cable from Bernard Cussac and Georges Martres (22 Jan. 1992) (Subject: “Armement des populations civiles”).
Although the MIP did not publish the complete document—this NMR does not contain the first [Alpha] section, but
picks up with Bravo—this report originated with DA Cussac [FM: “MilFrance Kigali”], and it is assumed that it was
sent to “MINDEFENSE Paris” and others military commands; Ambassador Martres is copied on all NMR reports.
412
Cable from Johan Swinnen (27 March 1992) (Subject: “Rwanda – onlusten Bugesera”).
413
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
414
MIP Tome I 370-71 (referring to the allegation of French soldiers training militias as “never seriously supported
to date”); BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND,
THE FRENCH ARMY, AND RWANDA] 95 (2005) (citing Col. Étienne Joubert, who denied during an interview that the
DAMI under his command trained militias in Gabiro).
415
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to Francois Mitterrand 1, 3, 4 (21 Apr. 1992).
416
See, e.g., Letter from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (4 May 1992) (suggesting that Habyarimana decorate French
soldiers throughout the year in order to ensure that the soldiers are decorated before they leave); Letter from Bernard
Cussac to James Gasana (22 May 1992) (requesting awards for various French soldiers); Letter from James Gasana
to Juvénal Habyarimana (26 June 1993) (recommending awards for French soldiers).
417
Letter from James Gasana to Juvénal Habyarimana, (23 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “proposition de décoration”). For
example, on 10 September 1992, the Chancellor of National Orders, Venant Ntabomvura, recommended that President
Habyarimana decorate 196 French soldiers prior to their anticipated departure. See Letter from Venant Ntabomvura
to Juvénal Habyarimana (10 Sept. 1992).
418
Cable from George Martres (15 Oct. 1992).
419
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand 5 (5 Dec. 1992).
420
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand 5 (5 Dec. 1992).
421
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana 2-3 (16 Jan. 1992).
422
Letter from James Gasana to Dismas Nsengiyaremye (17 Dec. 1992).
423
Letter from James Gasana to Dismas Nsengiyaremye (17 Dec. 1992).
424
Letter from Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza to François Mitterrand (30 July 1992) in ZIRIKANA NO 001 (15 Sept. 1992).
The exact date of the letter is unclear. The reprint in Zirikana dates the letter as 30 July 1992. In his response to the
letter, Bruno Delaye referred to the letter’s date as 20 August 1992. See Letter from Bruno Delaye to Jean-Bosco
Barayagwiza (1 Sept. 1992).
425
See JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MITTERRAND, MÉMOIRE MEURTRIE [BITTER MEMORIES] 167-68 (2001); MIP Audition of
Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1, 315 (noting that Delaye’s tenure as advisor to President Mitterrand began in July
1992).
426
Letter from Bruno Delaye to Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza (1 Sept. 1992); Bruno Delaye, Reponse de Francois
Mitterrand [Response of Francois Mitterrand], ZIRIKANA NO 001, 10 (1 Sept. 1992).
427
MIP Hearing of Hubert Védrine, Tome III, Auditions, Vol 1, 206-207.
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428
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-A, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1097 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. For Rwanda 28 Nov. 2007).
429
Letter from A. Mulindabigwi et al to foreign diplomats in Rwanda (18 Sept. 1992) (appended to cable from Johan
Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (13 Oct. 1992)).
430
Rwanda Youth Block Roads, [publication unknown], 5 Aug. 1992.
431
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (4 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Party Youth Riot; 4 Reported Killed”);
Rwanda Youth Block Roads, [publication unknown], 5 Aug. 1992.
432
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (4 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Party Youth Riot; 4 Reported Killed”).
Paul Rwarakabije, then the operational commander of the Rwandan Gendarmerie, has since echoed these sentiments,
saying, “It was clear to me that the militia was an alternative force for those who opposed Arusha.” See Interview by
LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
433
The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, art. 5, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992). The RPF had prodded the
Rwandan government for more than a year to agree to establish a “broad-based government of national unity.” See
Cable from John Burroughs to US Secretary of State (12 Mar. 1991) (Subject: “RPF Pessimistic on Kinshasa Talks”);
Press Release, RPF, Negotiations Between RPF and Rwandese Government: Kinshasa (14 Sep. 1991). The
government finally acceded to the group’s demand during the Arusha negotiations in July 1992, agreeing to continue
negotiating on terms for the “[e]stablishment of power-sharing within the framework of a broad-based transitional
government.” The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, art. 5, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992); see also Joint
Communique Issued at the End of the Negotiations Between the Rwandese Government the Rwandese Patriotic Front,
Arusha, 10 - 12 July 1992 (12 July 1992).
434
Protocol of Agreement between the Government of the Republique of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front
on the Rule of Law (18 Aug. 1992).
435
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni.
436
Interview by LFM with Protais Musoni.
437
Protocol of Agreement between the Government of the Republique of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front
on the Rule of Law (18 Aug. 1992).
438
Protocol of Agreement between the Government of the Republique of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front
on the Rule of Law (18 Aug. 1992); Press Release Issued at the End of the First Phase of Political Negotiations
Between Delegations of the Rwandese Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, Held in Arusha from 10th – 18th
August, 1992 (18 Aug. 1992).
439
Press Release, RPF (29 Aug. 1992); Memorandum from James Gasana to Dismas Nsengiyaremye (23 Aug. 1992);
Radio Muhabura, Rebels Claim MRND ‘Undermines’ Negotiations (27 Aug. 1992) (partial transcription by the US
Government); RWANDAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND COOPERATION, DIVISION OF INFORMATION,
ACTUALITES NATIONALES [National News] 31 (31 Aug. 1992).
440
Press Release, RPF (29 Aug. 1992); Radio Muhabura, Rebels Claim MRND ‘Undermines’ Negotiations (27 Aug.
1992) (partial transcription by the US Government).
441
Radio Muhabura, Rebels Claim MRND ‘Undermines’ Negotiations (27 Aug. 1992) (partial transcription by the
US Government); see also Pasteur Bizimungu, Opening speech at the Arusha negotiations (7 Sept. 1992).
442
Letter from A. Mulindabigwi et al. to foreign diplomats in Rwanda (18 Sept. 1992) (appended to cable from Johan
Swinnen to Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (13 Oct. 1992)). The list of government officials reads like a list of
ICTR defendants (plus others who have been accused of planning the Genocide but either died or managed to
otherwise escape international justice), including Zigiranyirazo, Bagosora, Rwabukumba, Nsengiumva, Pascal
Simbikangwa (convicted in a French court), Kangura publisher Hassan Ngeze (convicted by the ICTR), ORINFOR
director Ferdinand Nahimana (convicted by the ICTR), CDR leader Martin Bucyana, Managing Director of OCIRTea Michel Bagaragaza (convicted by the ICTR), bourgmestre of Murambi Jean-Baptiste Gatete (convicted by the
ICTR), and Kigali Prefect Tharcisse Renzaho (convicted by the ICTR).
443
Letter from A. Mulindabigwi et al to foreign diplomats in Rwanda (18 Sept. 1992) (appended to cable from Johan
Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (13 Oct. 1992)).
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444
Letter from A. Mulindabigwi et al to foreign diplomats in Rwanda (18 Sept. 1992) (appended to cable from Johan
Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (13 Oct. 1992)).
445
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha III”).
446
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha III”).
447
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha III”).
448
See Memorandum from Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Mathias Nsabimana (5 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport de la
Visite Du Chef Em Gd N en Communes Gishyita et Rwamatamu (Kibuye)”); Memorandum from Augustin
Ndindiliyimana and Leon Mpozayo (1 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Compte-Rendu de la Reunion des Offers D’em Gd N”)
(Subject: “Compte-Rendu”) (appended to Letter from Augustin Ndindiliyimana to James Gasana (undated)); Letter
from A. Mulindabigwi et al to foreign diplomats in Rwanda (18 Sept. 1992) (appended to cable from Johan Swinnen,
Belgian Ambassador to Rwanda, to Willy Claes, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (13 Oct. 1992)).
449
Memorandum from Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Mathias Nsabimana (5 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport de la
Visite Du Chef Em Gd N en Communes Gishyita et Rwamatamu (Kibuye)”).
450
Memorandum from Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Mathias Nsabimana (5 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport de la
Visite Du Chef Em Gd N en Communes Gishyita et Rwamatamu (Kibuye)”).
451
Memorandum from Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Mathias Nsabimana (5 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport de la
Visite Du Chef Em Gd N en Communes Gishyita et Rwamatamu (Kibuye)”).
452
Memorandum from Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Mathias Nsabimana (5 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport de la
Visite Du Chef Em Gd N en Communes Gishyita et Rwamatamu (Kibuye)”).
453
Letter from A. Mulindabigwi et al to foreign diplomats in Rwanda (18 Sept. 1992) (appended to cable from Johan
Swinnen to Willy Claes, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (13 Oct. 1992)).
454
Report from Alain Damy, Compte Rendu d’Activité: Periode du 1er Avril au 30 Septembre 1992” [Activity Report:
Period from 1 April to 30 September 1992] 17 (14 Oct. 1992).
455
Report from Alain Damy, Compte Rendu d’Activité: Periode du 1er Avril au 30 Septembre 1992” [Activity Report:
Period from 1 April to 30 September 1992] 17 (14 Oct. 1992).
456
Report from Alain Damy, Compte Rendu d’Activité: Periode du 1er Avril au 30 Septembre 1992” [Activity Report:
Period from 1 April to 30 September 1992] 17 (14 Oct. 1992).
457
Report from Alain Damy, Compte Rendu d’Activité: Periode du 1er Avril au 30 Septembre 1992” [Activity Report:
Period from 1 April to 30 September 1992] 17 (14 Oct. 1992).
458
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State 7-8 (5 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Draft Human Rights Report for
Rwanda”).
459
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State 7-8 (5 Oct. 1992) (5 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Draft Human Rights
Report for Rwanda”).
460
MIP Tome I 155.
461
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS
(1959-1994) [A BLACK WAR: INVESTIGATION OF THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE (1959-1994)] 206-07
(2007).
462
Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa mission au Rwanda (3 – 6 novembre
1992) [Report of Colonel Capodanno on his Mission in Rwanda (3 – 6 November 1992)] (10 Nov. 1992); MIP Report
Tome I 155.
463
Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa Mission au Rwanda (3 – 6 novembre
1992) [Report of Colonel Capodanno on his mission in Rwanda (3 – 6 November 1992)] (10 Nov. 1992).
464
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (17 May 1993) (Subject: “Poste d’Assistants Militares
Techniques Francais au Rwanda”).
465
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (17 May 1993) (Subject: “Poste d’Assistants Militares
Techniques Francais au Rwanda”).
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466
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRÈTES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 164-65 (2014).
467
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRÈTES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 164 (2014).
468
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRÈTES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 164 (2014).
469
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRÈTES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 164 (2014).
470
See LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 74, 76 (2012); Cable
from Bernard Cussac 4 (9 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Bilan de l’Assistance Militaire Technique Gendarmerie au Rwanda”).
471
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 74 & n.1 (2012).
472
See Excerpts from interview by Laure de Vulpian with Thierry Prungnaud (22 April 2005); LAURE DE VULPIAN &
THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 74 (2012).
473
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 76 (2012).
474
Excerpts from interview by Laure de Vulpian with Thierry Prungnaud (22 April 2005) (“I had information that the
guys I had trained had actually been involved in the massacres.”).
475
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 84 (2012).
476
See Press Release, RPF (signed by Shaban Ruta), La Présence militaire des français au Rwanda et l’intransigeance
du gouvernement au processus de paix [The Military Presence of the French in Rwanda and the Government’s
Intransigence in the Peace Process] (28 Nov. 1992) (discussing the 13 October 1992 visit of an unnamed French
general); Memorandum from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1992) (Subject: Mission du General Quesnot au Rwanda).
477
See Press Release, RPF (signed by Shaban Ruta), La Présence militaire des français au Rwanda et l’intransigeance
du gouvernement au processus de paix [The Military Presence of the French in Rwanda and the Government’s
Intransigence in the Peace Process] (28 Nov. 1992) (discussing the 13 October 1992 visit of an unnamed French
general); Memorandum from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1992) (Subject: Mission du General Quesnot au Rwanda).
478
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement [Half-yearly Report of Operation] (21
Oct. 1992).
479
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement [Half-yearly Report of Operation] (21
Oct. 1992).
480
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Ceasefire Continues to Hold”) (noting
that “both forces have used the ceasefire to reinforce their positions and restock weaponry”).
481
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement [Half-yearly Report of Operation] (21
Oct. 1992).
482
Memorandum from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Mission du General Quesnot au Rwanda”).
483
Memorandum from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Mission du General Quesnot au Rwanda”).
484
Memorandum from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Mission du General Quesnot au Rwanda”).
485
Memorandum from Georges Martres (15 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Mission du General Quesnot au Rwanda”).
486
Letter from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (29 Oct. 1992).
487
Letter from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (29 Oct. 1992).
488
Memorandum from unknown author (28 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Mise en place du DAMI/GENIE en Rwanda”). This
letter appears under the letterhead of the French état-major headed by Admiral Jacques Lanxade and notes, with
apparent dismay, that the état major had not received advance notice of the proposed mission.
489
Letter from Deogratias Nsabimana and Anatole Nsengiyumva to James Gasana (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Demande
de decorations a l’equipe DAMI Genie”).
490
Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa Mission au Rwanda (3 – 6 novembre
1992) [Report of Colonel Capodanno on his Mission in Rwanda (3 – 6 November 1992)] (10 November 1992).
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491
Press Release, RPF (signed by Shaban Ruta), La Présence militaire des français au Rwanda et l’intransigeance du
gouvernement au processus de paix [The Military Presence of the French in Rwanda and the Government’s
Intransigence in the Peace Process] (28 Nov. 1992); Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
492
Cable from Robert Houdek to US Embassy in Kigali and US Embassy in Paris (10 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “French
Military Involvement in Rwandan Ceasefire Process”) (describing the digging of foxholes as “a blatant disregard for
the ceasefire line”).
493
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Ceasefire Continues to Hold”).
494
The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, art. 3, Rw. – RPF (12 July 1992).
495
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Ceasefire Continues to Hold”); see
also Press Release, RPF (signed by Shaban Ruta), La Présence militaire des français au Rwanda et l’intransigeance
du gouvernement au processus de paix [The Military Presence of the French in Rwanda and the Government’s
Intransigence in the Peace Process] (28 Nov. 1992).
496
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “NMOG Reports Ceasefire Violation”).
497
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “NMOG Reports Ceasefire Violation”).
498
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “NMOG Reports Ceasefire Violation”).
499
Cable from Robert Houdek to US Embassy in Kigali and US Embassy in Paris (10 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “French
Military Involvement in Rwandan Ceasefire Process”).
500
Letter from Deorgratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (9 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Visite au sect OPS BYB”).
501
Letter from Deorgratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (9 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Visite au sect OPS BYB”).
502
Letter from Deorgratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (9 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Visite au sect OPS BYB”).
503
Letter from Deorgratias Nsabimana to James Gasana (9 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Visite au sect OPS BYB”). The
GOMN had other reasons for being frustrated with the FAR, and with Nsabimana in particular. During his 3 December
visit to Byumba, Nsabimana learned that members of the GOMN team there had heard about the controversial
document he had circulated to the Rwandan Army troops (the one defining the enemy as Tutsi). See id. at 7. The rumor
among the GOMN officers was that the document called for Rwandan soldiers “to continue fighting” in spite of the
cease-fire. Nsabimana told the GOMN’s team leader in Byumba “that the document was an ordinary official document
defining ENI which was fighting against us,” and authorized the FAR’s Byumba sector commander “to show him the
document so that he could see for himself that there was no mention anywhere of the fact that our men must continue
with the hostilities at all cost.”
504
Cable from Raymond Ewing to US Secretary of State (5 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha IV: Opening Notes”). There
had been an earlier round of talks in September 1992, with three French delegates participating as observers. Notably,
this group of supposedly neutral French observers included Col. Dominique Delort, who had helped Col. Rosier
deliver the armaments and training necessary for the FAR to deploy the 105 mm howitzers against the RPF. See
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (3 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Instructions de la Delegation Qui Participera
a la Phase III Des Negotiations D’Arusha (7 – 16 Septembre 1992)”).
505
Cable from Raymond Ewing to US Secretary of State (5 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha IV: Opening Notes”).
506
Cable from Raymond Ewing to US Secretary of State (5 Oct. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha IV: Opening Notes”).
507
Letter from Martin Bucyana to Juvénal Habyarimana and Dismas Nsengiyaremye (8 Oct. 1992).
508
Letter from Martin Bucyana to Juvénal Habyarimana and Dismas Nsengiyaremye (8 Oct. 1992).
509
Letter from Josee [last name unknown] to Ndoba Gasana (20 Oct. 1992).
510
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 163 (1995).
511
Letter from Josee [last name unknown] to Ndoba Gasana (20 Oct. 1992).
512
Letter from Josee [last name unknown] to Ndoba Gasana (20 Oct. 1992).
513
See Anne Dulphy & Christine Manigand, Entretien avec Jean-Marc de La Sablière, vol. 24, no. 3
HISTOIRE@POLITIQUE 180 (2014); Decree from François Mitterrand, Décret du 10 août 1992 portant nomination d'un
ambassadeur extraordinaire et plénipotentiaire de la République française au Mexique, [Decree of 10 August 1992
appointing an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the French Republic to Mexico] (10 Aug. 1992).
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Chapter V
1992
514
Memorandum from Jean Marc de La Sablière (21 Oct. 2019) (Subject: “Politique de la France au Rwanda”).
515
Memorandum from Jean Marc de La Sablière (21 Oct. 2019) (Subject: “Politique de la France au Rwanda”).
516
Memorandum from Jean Marc de La Sablière (21 Oct. 2019) (Subject: “Politique de la France au Rwanda”).
517
Memorandum from Jean Marc de La Sablière (21 Oct. 2019) (Subject: “Politique de la France au Rwanda”).
518
Protocol of Agreement on Power-Sharing within the Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government, arts.
13 - 15, Rw. – RPF, 30 Oct. 1992.
519
Protocol of Agreement on Power-Sharing within the Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government, arts.
13 - 15, Rw. – RPF, 30 Oct. 1992; Press Release, Communique Conjoint publie a l’issue de la deuxième partie des
negotiations politiques entrée le gouvernement de la republique Rwandais et le Front Patriotique du Pouvoir dans le
Cadre d’un gouvernement de transition a base elarge [Joint Communique Issued at the End of the Second Part of the
Political Negotiations Between the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on PowerSharing Within the Framework of an Enlarged Transitional Government] (30 Oct. 1992); Cable from US Secretary of
State to US Embassy in Kampala (7 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Letter to Museveni on Rwandan Negotiations”).
520
Protocol of Agreement on Power-Sharing within the Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government, art.
23, Rw. – RPF, 30 Oct. 1992.
521
Press Release, Communique Conjoint publie a l’issue de la deuxième partie des negotiations politiques entrée le
gouvernement de la republique Rwandais et le Front Patriotique du Pouvoir dans le Cadre d’un gouvernement de
transition a base elarge [Joint Communique Issued at the End of the Second Part of the Political Negotiations Between
the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on Power-Sharing Within the Framework
of an Enlarged Transitional Government] (30 Oct. 1992).
522
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 170 (1995).
523
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech delivered in Ruhengeri (16 Nov. 1992) (Note that several other sources indicate this
speech actually occurred 15 November 1992). See, e.g., Persons Displaced Following Interahamwe Attacks, 73 ISIBO
3 (29 Nov. 1992); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Delays”).
524
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech delivered in Ruhengeri (16 Nov. 1992) (partial transcript).
525
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech delivered in Ruhengeri (16 Nov. 1992) (partial transcript).
526
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech delivered in Ruhengeri (16 Nov. 1992) (partial transcript).
527
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 284-85 (2019).
528
Persons Displaced Following Interahamwe Attacks, 73 ISIBO 3 (29 Nov. 1992).
529
Press Release, Communiqué Conjoint publie a l’issue de la deuxième partie des negotiations politiques entrée le
gouvernement de la republique Rwandais et le Front Patriotique du Pouvoir dans le Cadre d’un gouvernement de
transition à base élargie [Joint Communiqué Issued at the End of the Second Part of the Political Negotiations Between
the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on Power-Sharing Within the Framework
of an Enlarged Transitional Government] (30 Oct. 1992); see also Cable from US Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam to US
Secretary of State (20 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha V – Going Ahead on Nov. 23, Military Integration to Top
Agenda”).
530
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Delays”).
531
Dismas Nsengiyaremye, Speech delivered in Gikongoro (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 9 (29 Nov. 1992).
532
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
533
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (27 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Prime Minister Takes Steps to
Improve Internal Security”).
534
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992);
see also Prosecutor vs. Protais Zigiranyirazo, ICTR-01-73-T, Expert Report by Dr. Alison Des Forges, 16 (15 Aug.
2005).
535
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
536
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
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Chapter V
1992
537
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
538
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
539
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
540
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
541
See Radio Interview with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, transcription by INFORDOC-MINAFFET (11 May 1992).
542
Leon Mugesera, Speech delivered at MRND meeting in Kabaya (22 Nov. 1992), in 77 ISIBO 5-9 (29 Nov. 1992).
543
William E. Schmidt, Troops Rampage in Rwanda; Dead Said to Include Premier, N.Y. TIMES, 8 Apr. 1994.
544
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 289-90 (2019) (citing L’Ere des escadrons de la mort [The Era of the Death
Squads], LA CITÉ, 22 Nov. 1992).
545
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (27 Nov. 1992) (Subject: “Prime Minister Takes Steps to
Improve Internal Security”).
546
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State 7 (Dec. 2, 1992) (Subject: “Canadian Missionary Killed”);
Memorandum from Stanislas Mbonampeka to the National Security Court, Kigali (25 Nov. 1992) (Subject:
“Injonction de pooursuivre” [Injunction to persecute]).
547
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State, 7 (Dec. 2, 1992) (Subject: “Canadian Missionary Killed”).
548
Marie-France Cros, Le Ministre rwandais de la Justice démissionne [Rwandan Minister of Justice Resigns], LA
LIBRE BELGIQUE, Dec. 2, 1992; see also Memorandum from Robert Pringle to Herman Cohen (2 Dec. 1992) (Subject:
“Update on Rwandan Conflict”). Mbonampeka, who had been a human-rights activist, would switch allegiances,
propagandizing internationally for the genocidal interim Rwandan government during the slaughter, and ultimately
serving as the minister of justice of the self-appointed government-in-exile created in Zaire. Eventually, he fled to
France, and he remains at large. See Phillip Gourevitch, After the Genocide, NEW YORKER, 11 Dec. 1995; France
Ignores 39 Arrest Warrants for Genocide Suspects, NEWS OF RWANDA, 5 Feb. 2018.
549
Letter from Ubalijoro Bonnventureto to Juvénal Habyarimana (2 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Massacre des innocents,
venalisme et pilage en Commune Shyorongi par les Interahamwe (malice du MRND)”).
550
Letter from Ubalijoro Bonnventureto to Juvénal Habyarimana (2 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Massacre des innocents,
venalisme et pilage en Commune Shyorongi par les Interahamwe (malice du MRND)”).
551
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 24 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
552
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE:
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 24 (2 June 2014); see also Letter from Boniface Ngulinzira to Juvénal
Habyarimana (Subject: “Demande d’ordres de mission de la delegation du Gouvernement Rwandais pour les
negociations avec le FPR prevues a Arusha du 23 Novembre au 20 Decembre 1992”) (identifying Kanyarushoki and
Bagosora as part of the delegation of which Ngulinzira was the chief).
553
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE:
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 24 (2 June 2014); see also MIP Tome III Audition of Jean-Christophe
Belliard, French Representative to the Arusha Negotiations (2 July 1998).
554
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE:
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 25 (2 June 2014); see also Letter from Boniface Ngulinzira to Juvenal
Habyarimana (Subject: “Demande d’ordres de mission de la delegation du Gouvernement Rwandais pour les
negociations avec le FPR prevues a Arusha du 23 Novembre au 20 Decembre 1992”) (identifying Kanyarushoki and
Bagosora as part of the delegation of which Ngulinzira was the chief).
555
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 25 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
556
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 25 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
557
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 25 (2 June 2014).
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Chapter V
558
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 25 (2 June 2014).
1992
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
559
See Cable from Walter Curley Jr. Jr. to US Secretary of State (16 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “A/S Cohen’s Discussions
with the French on Rwanda, December 14”) (“Rwandan President Habyarimana is nervous and feels like he is in
trouble.”).
560
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Consultations with French on
Rwanda”).
561
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992) (observing that pro-Hutu right-wingers
seemed “to take a very negative view of any concession” that would secure for the RPF a “prominent place” in the
government).
562
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
563
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
564
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
565
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
566
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
567
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
568
Notes on Georges Martres, End of Mission Report September 1989 - January 1993 (April 1993).
569
Notes by David Rawson, July 1991 through December 1992 (entry on 11 Dec. 1992).
570
Notes by David Rawson, July 1991 through December 1992 (entry on 11 Dec. 1992); see also Cable from Walter
Curley Jr. to US Secretary of State (15 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Discussions with the Quai on Rwanda: Arusha III and
the Visit of PM Nsengiyaremye to Paris) (referencing to Rawson’s position as “U.S. observer”); David P. Rawson,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, OFFICE OF THE HISTORIAN, https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/rawsondavid-p (indicating Rawson was appointed Ambassador to Rwanda on 22 November 1993).
571
Notes by David Rawson, July 1991 through December 1992 (entry on 11 Dec. 1992).
572
Notes by David Rawson, July 1991 through December 1992 (entry on 11 Dec. 1992).
573
Cable from Walter Curley Jr. to US Secretary of State (16 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “A/S Cohen’s Discussions with
the French on Rwanda, December 14”).
574
Cable from Walter Curley Jr. to US Secretary of State (16 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “A/S Cohen’s Discussions with
the French on Rwanda, December 14”).
575
Cable from Walter Curley Jr. to US Secretary of State (16 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “A/S Cohen’s Discussions with
the French on Rwanda, December 14”).
576
Cable from Walter Curley Jr. to US Secretary of State (16 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “A/S Cohen’s Discussions with the
French on Rwanda, December 14”).
577
MIP Tome III Audition of Jean-Christophe Belliard, French Representative to the Arusha Negotiations (2 July
1998).
578
MIP Tome III Audition of Jean-Christophe Belliard, French Representative to the Arusha Negotiations (2 July
1998); Notes on TD Diplomatie (6 January 1993) (Subject: “Negotiations in Arusha, on CDR participation in the
enlarged transition government”) (“The Department is sympathetic to the arguments you make in support of the
Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) participating in the expanded transitional government. It seems that
a solution to the portfolio allocation problem is only conceivable in that scenario.”).
579
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Agreement: Kigali Reaction”).
580
Meeting of Belgian House Foreign Relations Committee (6 Jan. 1993) (enclosed to Memorandum from Pierre
Beaufays to Emmanuel Bahyana Songa and J. Bihozagara (9 Jan. 1993)).
581
Meeting of Belgian House Foreign Relations Committee (6 Jan. 1993) (enclosed to Memorandum from Pierre
Beaufays to Emmanuel Bahyana Songa and J. Bihozagara (9 Jan. 1993)).
582
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Agreement: Kigali Reaction”).
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Chapter V
1992
583
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Agreement: Kigali Reaction”).
584
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Agreement: Kigali Reaction”).
585
Press Release, MRND National Secretariat (23 Dec. 1992).
586
Press Release, MRND National Secretariat (23 Dec. 1992).
587
Press Release, MRND National Secretariat (23 Dec. 1992).
588
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Arusha Agreement: Kigali Reaction”).
589
Letter from Théoneste Bagosora, et al., to Boniface Ngulinzira (23 Dec. 1992).
590
MIP Tome III Audition of Jean-Christophe Belliard, French Representative to the Arusha Negotiations (2 July
1998).
591
Letter from Théoneste Bagosora, et al., to Boniface Ngulinzira (23 Dec. 1992).
592
Letter from Boniface Ngulinzira to Juvénal Habyarimana (31 Dec. 1992).
593
Letter from Boniface Ngulinzira to Juvénal Habyarimana (27 Dec. 1992).
594
Letter from Boniface Ngulinzira to Juvénal Habyarimana (27 Dec. 1992).
595
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora, et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence ¶ 213 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
596
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora, et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence ¶¶ 213 and 218 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
597
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora, et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence ¶ 213 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008). The international tribunal that tried Bagosora found that the prosecution, having presented
only one confidential witness able to provide direct evidence about the encounter, had not proven the incident “beyond
reasonable doubt.” See id. ¶ 222. The court based this determination on the “significant discrepancy” between the
witness’s insistence that the encounter took place in October 1992 and the defense’s evidence that Bagosora
participated in the Arusha negotiations only in December 1992. Id. ¶¶ 217-18. The court did not conclude that the
incident could not have happened; on the contrary, it stated that the discrepancy “could be explained if [the witness]
was simply mistaken about when this exchange occurred,” as both the witness and Bagosora had been in Arusha in
December 1992. ¶ 218. The witness, later revealed to be Patrick Mazimhaka, the RPF’s commissioner for diplomatic
affairs and a member of its delegation in Arusha (see JACQUES MOREL, LA FRANCE AU COEUR DU GENOCIDE DES TUTSI
[FRANCE AT THE HEART OF THE TUTSI GENOCIDE] 662 n.69 (2nd ed. 2018)), has continued to maintain that he was in
the elevator with Bagosora and heard the remark. See LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED (2nd ed. 2009) (citing
Linda Melvern interview with Patrick Mazimhaka (Sept. 2009)); LINDA MELVERN, CONSPIRACY TO MURDER 40
(2004); THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE:
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript, 59-60 (2 June 2014). Supporting Mazimhaka’s account is an MDR press
release dated 15 January 1993 that reported on Bagosora’s pledge to plan the “apocalypse.” Press Release, MDR,
Itangazo No. 34. It is unclear, however, whether the MDR’s account initially came from Mazimhaka.
Page | 185
CHAPTER VI
January – March 1993
French Officials Foretold That Habyarimana’s Dissatisfaction with a Peace Agreement
Signed in Early January 1993 Would Translate into More Unrest by Anti-Tutsi Extremists.
President Habyarimana believes that the prime minister and the minister of
foreign affairs did not take into account his observations during the
negotiation, and that the RPF “negotiated with friends.” He finds himself,
he told our Ambassador, faced with “a fait accompli,” which he won’t be
able to get his supporters to accept.
The President feels that he has been cheated, and that preparations are being
made for his removal. He could reject the arrangement reached in Arusha.
All this is a sign of new unrest in Rwanda, by Hutu extremists in particular.1
– Dominique Pin, Deputy Chief of the Élysée Africa Cell
(1992 – 1995)
As Rwandans settled into the new year, all eyes were on the MRND and its ally, the CDR.
The former, through its national secretary, Matthieu Ngirumpatse, was continuing to threaten to
boycott the coalition government so long as the MRND felt marginalized within it.2 The latter was
threatening much worse, fueling fears that its members would disrupt the peace process—through
violence, if necessary—unless the negotiators in Arusha acceded to its demands for representation
in the new government.3 The two parties had closed out 1992 with a day of demonstrations that
shut down key roadways between Kigali and various northern prefectures,4 and there was ample
reason to anticipate more disruptions to follow. Tensions were high enough that, on 6 January
1993, when a loud explosion rocked the neighborhood near the US embassy, the Americans
immediately suspected that the MRND or CDR was announcing its rejection of the protocol.5
“What a relief to discover the next morning that it was a simply a grenade thrown by a disgruntled
client at a businessman’s house,” Ambassador Flaten quipped in a US cable.6
The weeks following the announcement in late December 1992 of a tentative agreement in
Arusha had been disquieting. On Christmas Day, in Kigali, a bomb exploded in a crowded
nightclub owned by one of President Habyarimana’s sons.7 The club was a known hangout for
MRND party members, as well as off-duty French soldiers, four of whom were reportedly injured
in the blast.8 Authorities soon arrested two suspects, who, in a twist, turned out to be members of
the MRND Interahamwe.9 A few days later, ethnic violence broke out in Gisenyi prefecture, as
assailants set houses on fire, slaughtered livestock, and attacked Bagogwe Tutsi residents of the
area abutting the Gishwati Forest.10 The attacks presaged many more reprisals to come over the
ensuing three months, a spate of ethnic violence that would claim hundreds of lives, spread terror,
and visit terrible suffering on Bagogwe Tutsi and opposition Hutu victims.
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Chapter VI
January – March 1993
To their surprise, Western ambassadors found President Habyarimana “amazingly relaxed
and jovial” when they joined him for dinner on 7 January 1993.11 (The dinner was billed as a
farewell gathering for French ambassador to Rwanda George Martres.12 Habyarimana, though, had
lobbied Mitterrand in December to extend Martres’ tour,13 and Mitterrand complied, authorizing
Martres to remain in Kigali for an additional three months.14) At the dinner, Habyarimana offered
no opinion on the draft protocol then circulating in Arusha, and, according to US Ambassador to
Rwanda Robert Flaten, none of the ambassadors at the table felt comfortable advising
Habyarimana to accept it.15 Flaten explained:
As Western observers, we are in a very delicate position. It is very difficult for us
to openly reject a peace agreement signed by the foreign minister of Rwanda with
the authorized representatives of the RPF under the aegis and urging of the
government of Tanzania. On the other hand, to urge the president to accept this
accord as written is in essence a recommendation that he abdicate. At least that
would be his perception of our recommendations.16
Two days later, on 9 January 1993, Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Boniface
Ngulinzira (MDR) and the chief of the RPF delegation, Pasteur Bizimungu, signed an accord that
was not much different than the one they backed in December 1992.17 The MRND still retained
the presidency and still received the same number of cabinet posts as the RPF, at five apiece.18 The
MDR received four posts, including prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, while the PL
and PSD received three cabinet posts each.19 The sole remaining spot, which might conceivably
have gone to the CDR, did not. The negotiators handed that portfolio to a new beneficiary, the
Christian Democratic Party,20 leaving the CDR unrepresented, not only in the cabinet, but in the
transitional national assembly as well.
The MRND, as it happens, had previously scheduled a rally for 10 January 1993 at the
regional stadium in Kigali, and had dispatched trucks all through the weekend to publicize the
event via loudspeaker.21 The turnout, though, proved disappointing, with an estimated crowd of
less than 5,000.22 “Those MRND faithful, who hoped that a large show of force would give them
leverage, must be disappointed,” a US cable commented.23 Those who came heard speakers slam
Ngulinzira and an agreement that, among other perceived failings, excluded the CDR from the
new government.24 The speakers threatened, yet again, that they would not participate in a
government in which they would not have a significant role to play, though Ngirumpatse, the
MRND national secretary, made clear that Habyarimana would not be resigning as president.25
Privately, Habyarimana vented his frustrations to Martres, complaining that the delegation
in Arusha had presented him with a fait accompli—one “which he won’t be able to get his
supporters to accept.”26 “The President feels that he has been cheated and that preparations are
being made for his removal,” Dominique Pin, Bruno Delaye’s new assistant at the Élysée’s Africa
Cell, reported in a 14 January 1993 note to President Mitterrand, based on information from
Ambassador Martres.27 Pin warned that Habyarimana might reject the deal.28 “All this is a sign of
new unrest in Rwanda, by Hutu extremists in particular,” he cautioned, foretelling that
Habyarimana’s dissatisfaction would translate into more killing. Mitterrand evidently took the note
under advisement, scribbling at the top: “Deal directly with Habyarimana,”29 that is, without
Martres as an intermediary.
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Chapter VI
January – March 1993
When Mitterrand wrote to Habyarimana a few days later, he voiced his support for the
Arusha process generally, without expressly endorsing the new power-sharing agreement.30
Mitterrand assured Habyarimana that he, personally, remained committed to the stability of
Rwanda, but Mitterrand did not respond to Habyarimana’s plea, one month earlier, for an
intensification of French military support.31 That subject remained delicate, in part because the
July 1992 cease-fire agreement had called for the withdrawal of foreign troops (not present under
bilateral cooperation agreements) upon the effective establishment of the Neutral Military
Observer Group.32 Mitterrand, in his letter, said he had “made note of the terms” of that
agreement.33 Even still, he was not prepared to pull the remaining Noroît company, at least not
without Habyarimana’s consent. “I do not want anyone to blame France for undermining the
proper implementation of the [Arusha cease-fire] agreement,” he wrote, “but I wish to confirm
that, on the question of the presence of the Noroît detachment, France will act in agreement with
the Rwandan authorities.”34
Massacres Began Anew on the Same Day an International Commission Investigating
Previous Massacres Left the Country. That Commission Would Deliver Its Preliminary
Findings Directly to French Officials, Specifically That Officials at the Highest Levels of
the Rwandan Government Were Responsible for Massacres and Targeted Killings.
[T]he report that the mission will deliver at the end of January in Belgium
will only add horror to the horror we already know.
– Georges Martres, French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993)
The violent backlash to the agreement would come to pass, as Dominique Pin had predicted
on 14 January 1993. First, though, came a pause in the bloodshed, as a team of experts in social
sciences, law, and medicine from eight countries representing four international human rights
NGOs traveled to Rwanda between 7 and 21 January 1993 to investigate alleged ethnic violence
and human rights abuses dating back to 1 October 1990.35 The group, led by the organization
Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme (International Federation of Human Rights) and
known as the “FIDH Commission,” initiated their investigation at the request of a coalition of
Rwandan human rights groups called the Liaison Committee of Associations in Defense of Human
Rights in Rwanda (“CLADHO”).36 Although a number of Rwandan officials loyal to the MRND
fiercely opposed the investigation and attacked it as a hitjob launched by their political
opposition,37 the investigation went ahead. The Commission collected evidence by reviewing
documents, speaking to hundreds of witnesses, and excavating mass graves; its members visited
five prefectures, being blocked from the others by political demonstrations.38 The investigators
focused on massacres in Kibilira (October 1990), massacres of Bagogwe in the area around
Ruhengeri (January – March 1991), and massacres in Bugesera (March 1992), but collected
information on other violence that had occurred in communes throughout the country over that
time period.39 During its mission, FIDH commission members witnessed the specter of violence
hanging over the country, having been stopped themselves by Interahamwe manning a roadblock
who threatened to kill their Tutsi interpreter.40
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Chapter VI
January – March 1993
Before leaving Rwanda, Jean Carbonare, a member of the FIDH investigative team and
president of French NGO Survie, previewed the Commission’s findings for Ambassador Martres
at an in-person meeting, on 19 January 1993.41 Martres then reported the FIDH’s grim—but hardly
surprising, given what France already knew—preliminary findings to the head of the Élysée Africa
Cell, Bruno Delaye:
[The mission] has collected an impressive amount of information about the
massacres that have occurred since the beginning of the October 1990 war and, in
particular, on the Bagogwe (Tutsi ethnic group) after the [RPF’s] Ruhengeri attack
in January 1991. As for facts, the report that the mission will deliver at the end of
January in Belgium will only add horror to the horror we already know. However,
Mr. Carbonare says the mission was able to obtain the confessions of a “repentant”
member of the [Hutu] “death squads,” Janvier Africa [sic], currently detained in
jail in Kigali for different crimes. These confessions contradict the official thesis
until recently accepted and according to which ethnic violence had been provoked
by the population’s reaction to [RPF military] attacks seen above all as coming
from the Tutsi. According to Janvier Africa [sic], President Habyarimana himself
apparently ordered the massacres during a meeting with his collaborators. Mr.
Carbonare showed me a list of attendees (the President’s two brothers‐in‐law [likely
referring to Protais Zigiranyirazo and Colonel Elie Sagatwa—ed.], Casimir
Bizimungu, Colonels Bagasora [sic], Nsengiyumva, Serubuga, etc. . . .). During
this meeting, the operation was apparently planned, including the order to carry out
a systematic genocide using, if necessary, assistance from the Army and involving
local populations in the assassinations, probably to create a sense of national
solidarity in the fight against the ethnic enemy.42
Ambassador Martres continued:
[T]he report will not fail to emphasize the “neutrality” of the French Army in those
massacres, considered as proof of French “complicity.” Mr. Carbonare himself is
quite hostile to our military presence in Rwanda and would hope this presence be
justified by a humanitarian action larger than the mere protection of expatriates. . .
Mr. Carbonare would like to meet Mr. Bruno Delaye after January 25. It seems to
me that President Mitterrand’s adviser for African Affairs would do well to accept
this meeting, given the seriousness of the charges the mission is able to make.43
Carbonare did meet with Delaye on 29 January 1993,44 and the two corresponded again on
1 February 1993.45 While the French government has not released a report of their meeting (if one
exists), Carbonare’s 1 February letter thanking Delaye for the meeting attached excerpts of Janvier
Afrika’s testimony, suggesting that Carbonare had covered the same preliminary conclusions with
Delaye that he did with Martres.46 In a book published in 2005, former French DAMI would claim
to have investigated Afrika’s claims sometime in early 1993 and found them not credible.47 The
timing and methodology of this purported investigation are unclear, and the reports of investigation
are unavailable. But any investigative conclusion that Afrika was unreliable could not have
undermined the FIDH’s findings, based on “oral and written testimony from several hundred
witnesses,” that “[t]he Rwandan government [had] killed or caused to be killed about 2,000 of its
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citizens,” that “[t]he majority of the victims [had] been members of the minority group, the Tutsi,”
and that “they [had] been killed and otherwise abused for the sole reason that they [were] Tutsi.”48
Based on Martres’ reaction that the FIDH findings only “add[ed] horror” to “the horror we already
know,” French officials did not doubt them. Indeed, more horror quickly followed.
Between 19 and 20 January 1993, the CDR and the MRND organized massive
demonstrations against the Arusha agreement,49 and those protests rendered large parts of Kigali
impassable.50 On the next day, the day the FIDH fact-finding mission departed Rwanda, anti-Tutsi
violence resumed. As Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye later wrote: “With the backing of
local authorities, the MRND organized violent protests across the country from 20 to 22 January
1993.”51 According to a representative from Africa Watch, one of the NGOs that participated in
the FIDH investigation, “several [Rwandan] officials had ordered a temporary halt to the violence
during the commission’s stay in Rwanda, but had asserted that the violence would resume once
the investigation was completed.”52 After the FIDH Commission left Rwanda, “young Hutus from
the [MRND] attacked members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group and members of opposition
parties,” injuring and killing dozens.53 Moreover, “several houses and cars belonging to particular
members of opposition parties were ransacked and looted in Kigali.”54 In response to reports of
this violence, “Habyarimana offered no condemnation of the violence and treated it as the result
of popular displeasure with the most recent version of the Arusha Accords.”55
During this new wave of violence, the FIDH was particularly concerned about reprisals
against “the many Rwandans who have assisted its work, either by providing testimony or by
collaborating in its research.”56 On 27 January 1993, Africa Watch reported:
The father of one witness is dead, either by suicide or murder, after a crowd attacked
his house in retribution for his son’s assistance to the Commission. Many others
associated with the Commission have been threatened with death, including one
who was menaced in full view of Commission members as they boarded their plane
to leave Rwanda. At the church of Nyamata [a site where Tutsi seeking refuge were
gunned down during the Bugesera massacres—ed.] where the Commission was
taking testimony, witnesses awaiting their turn to speak were photographed by an
agent of the secret service.57
One of the Commission’s partners wrote in a private letter, two days after leaving Rwanda, that
she had been threatened by Captain Pascal Simbikangwa—relative of the Habyarimanas and
member of the Akazu,58 who in 2014 would become the first Rwandan génocidaire to be convicted
in France—as the Commission members were departing.59 Simbikangwa, she wrote, warned her
at the airport that “if he’s included in the Commission’s report, he was going to kill us.”60
The resurgence of violence was well reported in France. On 28 January 1993, Le Monde
republished an AFP article reporting that “at least 53 people, mostly members of the Tutsi ethnic
group, were killed in a week . . . in northwestern Rwanda.” The prime minister “implicated young
Hutu militants” connected to the MRND.61 The next day, Le Monde published a longer article,
updating the number of deceased to 80 and placing the number of wounded at “several hundred.”62
(The numbers would continue to rise with Le Monde publishing a third article on 5 February 1993,
estimating the number killed between 120 and 150,63 and Libération, on 8 February 1993,
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estimating the number at 300 in “killings . . . orchestrated by those close to the President.”64 The
French external intelligence service, the General Directorate of External Security (Direction
Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE), would eventually put the number at 300 or more.65)
The FIDH report had urged “both the Rwandan government and the RPF to halt the[ir]
abuses and to bring to justice those guilty for past violations,” having assessed that the RPF had,
on various occasions, “attacked civilian targets and . . . killed and injured civilians.”66 The
Commission did not, however, equate the alleged misconduct of some RPF troops with the
organized massacres of Tutsi perpetrated by the government. There was no equivalence. In a 28
January 1993 interview on the French TV channel France 2, Jean Carbonare compared the killings
of Tutsi in Rwanda to the ethnic cleansing taking place in the Balkans. “What we have discovered,
too, and this is just like [what happened in] Yugoslavia: all the women from the Tutsi minority see
their husbands, their brothers, their fathers being killed. [T]hey then become like abandoned
animals: raped and abused.”67 Carbonare insisted on the organized nature of the violence:
[T]here was talk of ethnic confrontation[s], but in reality, there is much more than
ethnic confrontation; it is an organized policy . . . because in several regions of the
country incidents are breaking out at the same time . . . in the preliminary report
that our committee has prepared, we spoke of ethnic cleansing, of genocide, of
crimes against humanity, and we highly insist on these words.68
Carbonare exhorted France to use its influence in Rwanda to stop these massacres: “Our country,
which militarily and financially supports this system, has a responsibility . . . Our country can, if
it wants, influence this situation.”69
The next day, Ambassador Martres sent a cable copied to the Armée Paris (the abbreviation
used in official French cables referring to the French Armies chief of staff—land, air, and marine)
in which he discussed the French diplomatic ongoing monitoring of the violence in Ruhengeri.70
According to Martres, while the violence that began the week previous had slowed, killings that
took place on the night of the 27 January 1993 caused 400 Tutsi refugees to flee their homes and
leave everything behind them.71 Martres’ cable detailed examples of destruction perpetrated
against Tutsi in the area. Martres relayed a conversation his colleague had with the bishop of
Gisenyi in which the bishop estimated that the number of deaths in January 1993 came to about
120.72 The bishop had been accosted by Interahamwe who threatened to push him in his car into a
ravine.73
The US State Department threatened diplomatic action against the Rwandan government.
Washington instructed Ambassador Flaten to remind President Habyarimana that it was his
responsibility “to control the violence, particularly that part of which is carried out by the MRND
youth” and to warn him that “such violence if continued could jeopardize our ability to carry out
economic assistance work in Rwanda.”74 A week later—after French-embassy staff coordinated a
fact-finding mission in the northwest with their American and Belgian counterparts, which
produced a scathing report, according to Belgian Ambassador to Rwanda Johan Swinnen75—
France joined a joint demarche from diplomats from Belgium, the United States, Canada,
Germany, Switzerland, and the European Community, urging the Rwandan government to stop
the violence and noting that the climate of insecurity and violence threatened international
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humanitarian and development assistance.76 The “donor countries” delivered the demarche in
person during a meeting on 5 February 1993 with President Habyarimana, who pledged to replace
officials complicit or negligent.77 At the meeting, Ambassador Martres told Habyarimana that “if
he did not change some officials immediately, his response would not be understood overseas.”78
“We have seen for two years,” Martres continued, “that there have been incidents of this sort, and
no one has been punished.”79 Martres would, in fact, send a cable to Paris that same day with
information about recent “inter-ethnic massacres” in Gisenyi. The cable explained that the attacks,
which had been instigated by the CDR and “MRND/Interahamwe,” were in keeping with a long
history in Rwanda of fomenting “ethnic quarrels for political purposes.”80 Throughout that history,
he wrote, “[t]he local authorities have been, with a few exceptions, deficient or complicit.”81
Even though French officials joined other Western diplomats in expressing their
displeasure through the joint demarche, they demanded nothing further of the Rwandan
government and continued to support the Rwandan president for the remainder of the year and
beyond.
Following the demarche, Habyarimana took cosmetic steps to address the violence.82 As
Bruno Delaye told the MIP, after the 5 February meeting:
The [Rwandan] President. . . announced the arrest of [150] perpetrators. . . their
bringing to justice and sanctions against the failing local authorities, and on
February 8, the Rwandan Government announced the suspension of the prefect of
Gisenyi [where a significant part of the violence had taken place—ed.], a subprefect and six mayors.83
During his MIP hearing, Bruno Delaye emphasized these and similar efforts, presumably to
explain why France felt enough was being done. While eleven MRND and CDR officials were
suspended—including Leon Mugesera, the counselor in the Ministry of Family who had incited
violence with his fiery 22 November 1992 speech—the core extremist leaders who would lead the
Genocide—like Simbikangwa and Bagosora—remained in place.84 And, as the DGSE would
conclude in an 18 February note, there were two possible explanations for the massacres:
According to the first, it is one element in the vast “ethnic purification” program
directed against the Tutsi, the planners of which are allegedly individuals close to
the Head of State, or at least influential MRND and CDR figures, and which was
taken over by prefects and mayors.
The second explanation lies in the opposition to the democratic process by those . .
. in power, who do not hesitate to rekindle old ethnic demons in order to derail any
progress in the democratic process.85
Either way, Habyarimana’s supposed crackdown on the perpetrators of anti-Tutsi violence
was just theater; the people most responsible for the massacres remained at large, and their work
was far from done. In late February 1993, opposition leaders in Rwanda would be alarmed to learn
that the Rwandan Army, not long after a Habyarimana speech warning that the RPF was sending
spies to Kigali and was preparing to massacre civilians,86 had begun distributing weapons to
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communal-level “civil defense units.”87 Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye, a moderate, told US
diplomats he feared the arms had been given to the CDR and MRND Interahamwe in Ruhengeri
and would be used for ethnic or political killings.88 The Americans pressed the Rwandan military
authorities about it and confirmed, on 2 March, that the Army had handed out 300 weapons (G3
battle rifles, apparently) and 18,000 rounds of ammunition, mostly to MRND and CDR
supporters.89 Defense Minister Gasana, who soon received orders to confiscate the illegally
distributed weapons,90 at first defended the operation by telling US Ambassador Flaten its purpose
“was to protect against RPF infiltrators and against deserters who pillage and kill civilians as they
proceed from the battle front.”91 He later told the ambassador that the order to distribute the
weapons had been issued under false pretenses by his cabinet director, Colonel Bagosora.92
When the RPF Launched Its 8 February 1993 Counter-Offensive in Response to the
January 1993 Ethnic Killings, the French Government Increased Military Support of the
FAR with Another 120 French Troops and More Weaponry.
This situation is disastrous: it provides an avenue to the RPF, which, with
Ugandan military support, Belgian sympathy for the Tutsis, [and] an
excellent system of propaganda emphasizing the wretched abuses
committed by extremist Hutu, . . . continues to score points militarily and
politically.93
– Bruno Delaye, Head of the Élysée Africa Cell (1992 – 1995)
The RPF, for its part, was losing faith in its agreements with the government. In Kampala,
during a 27 January 1993 meeting with US Ambassador to Uganda Johnnie Carson, one of the
RPF’s representatives warned that “the option of ceasefire [was] increasingly becoming more
expensive in terms of human loss. . . . We think we can no longer sit back and watch Habyarimana’s
regime kill our people indiscriminately.”94
From the RPF’s perspective, President Habyarimana’s ridicule of the peace negotiations
(having referred to them in November 1992 as “mere pieces of paper”) and the massacres of Tutsi
civilians in January 1993 broke the cease-fire.95 On 8 February 1993, the RPF took action.
Responding not only to the recent anti-Tutsi massacres, but also to the Rwandan government’s
role in enabling them, the RPF countered the state’s facilitation of the massacres with an offensive
into northern Rwanda.96 In the early morning hours on the 8th, the RPF troops circled past the
demilitarized zone and initiated their attack behind FAR lines,97 first advancing into three sectors
in northern Rwanda, then entering the town of Ruhengeri, and finally attacking two more sectors
in Byumba.98
The RPF troops would advance quickly over the coming days, nearly doubling their
territory in the initial offensive.99 The advance stopped only once it reached the tactically
advantageous position in the mountains overhanging the capital, about 30 kilometers from
Kigali.100 By 18 February 1993, RPF troops had conquered more than a dozen strategic positions
including bridges, roads, and hills, effectively gaining control of two axis roads to Kigali.101
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In an interview with a Christian Science Monitor reporter embedded for four days with the
RPF troops during the second week of the offensive, Paul Kagame, chairman of High Command
of the RPF forces, would explain the move as a reaction to the massacres, which he saw as a
political tool used by Habyarimana to repudiate an unsatisfactory agreement in Arusha:
MONITOR: What were the Objectives of your latest offensive, and did you
achieve them?
KAGAME: The objectives were limited. They were to send a strong signal to
the government that while we are pursuing a peace process they must respect it.
They have been repudiating the agreements that we reached in Arusha. You must
have heard about the recent massacres [in Gisenyi and Ruhengeri districts] that
were instigated by the government.
MONITOR:
Yes. What are your figures of the people massacred?
KAGAME: Anything between 300 and 400. This is not the first time they have
done this, they killed people in Bugyesira, and Kibilira near Gisenyi and also killed
the Bagogwe people in the Gisenyi area. We thought these killings would die out
as we pursued the peace process but they did not. So we could not be indifferent;
just stand by and watch.
MONITOR:
What was the political motive for these killings in your view?
KAGAME: It was intimidation. During the power sharing negotiations in
Arusha, President Habyarimana’s party (Republican National Movement for
Democracy and Development—MRND) was trying to include an extremist Hutu
party (Coalition for the Defense of the Republic—CDR) in the government. That
would have resulted into a pro-Habyarimana majority in the cabinet, so we refused
on the basis that we could not allow a sectarian party in the government. So, when
the agreement was signed leaving CDR, the MRND was trying to show its strength,
combined with CDR’s, could make things go wrong in the country; that there would
be no stability hence the massacres. The government instigated MRND and CDR
supporters to kill members of the opposition parties and fanned ethnic violence
against the Tutsis.102
Four days after the RPF launched its offensive, the spokesperson of the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs pushed back on the RPF narrative by expressing firm support for the Habyarimana
government, accusing the RPF of breaking the cease-fire,103 and rejecting the deterrence of statesponsored massacres of Tutsi civilians104 as a legitimate basis for the resumption of hostilities:
We are aware of the reasons invoked by the RPF to explain the attack. France does
not consider the given reasons [to be] a justification for the resumption of fighting,
even if France condemns, in Rwanda as elsewhere, all violations of human rights.
We have taken note of the measures taken by the Rwandan authorities to restore
security in the north of the country.105
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Yet, four days after the statement, a 16 February 1993 US cable reported ongoing state-sponsored
human rights abuses in northern Rwanda, suggesting that the measures taken by Rwandan
authorities had been inadequate. This included unlawful arrests of “suspected RPF supporters . . .
linked with severe beatings and reports of extrajudicial killings;”106 the abduction by Rwandan
soldiers of three students from a Seventh Day Adventist University Campus north of Gisenyi (The
bodies of the students, all Bagogwe Tutsi, would later be found near the school.107); the FAR arrest
of 24 suspected RPF accomplices in Gisenyi and Gitarama, twelve of whom were severely beaten
before being released;108 and “unconfirmed reports” of “suspects” taken to the Kigali Military
Camp where three to five may have been killed.109
For senior French officials, an RPF military advance always summoned urgency that ethnic
massacres did not. Late in the morning on the first day of the offensive, 8 February 1993, French
officials held a crisis meeting at the Foreign Ministry.110 General Quesnot and Bruno Delaye
submitted their proposal for approval to President Mitterrand:
1 - On the diplomatic level:
- reminder of our support of the Arusha process and condemnation
of this unilateral breaking of the cease-fire (statement from the Quai spokesperson)
- warned Museveni (President of Uganda): Mr. Dumas [minister of
foreign affairs] should call him on the phone.
We will also alert Washington, London, and Brussels.
2 - On the military level:
- reinforcement of our support for the Rwandan Army, with the exception
of any direct participation of French forces in the confrontations;
- delivery of ammunition and equipment;
- technical assistance, especially with artillery;
- one company was put on alert at six o’clock in case the security of the
French community requires its intervention.111
Mitterrand recorded his response by hand: “Agreed. Urgent[.]”112 The same day, France dispatched
a company of approximately 120 soldiers from the 21st regiment of the marine infantry
(“RIMa”),113 commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe Tracqui since 1992114 and stationed in
Bouar, Central African Republic at the time.115 Lt. Col. Tracqui’s company landed in Kigali on 9
February 1993 to reinforce the single Noroît company remaining after the departure of a company
in November 1992, raising the number of Noroît troops from 170 to 291.116
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More aircraft would soon follow, bearing weapons for the Rwandan Army. On 12
February, a Douglas DC-8 jet airliner delivered fifty 12.7 mm machine guns and 100,000
cartridges for the FAR—gratis from the French Ministry of Defense.117 Five days later, when
another French plane landed, members of the FAR “discreetly” unloaded from it a delivery of 105
mm shells and 68 mm rockets.118
These shipments were among 8.4 million French francs (approx. $1.5 million) worth of
weapons and military equipment the French government provided free-of-charge to the Rwandan
military in 1993, much of it arriving in the weeks following the 8 February offensive.119 For
example:
-
On 24 February, the French Ministry of Cooperation donated 200 68-mm helicopter rockets
to Rwanda.120
On 5 March, the French Ministry of Defense authorized the no-cost transfer of 2,000 81mm shells and 1,000 60-mm shells to Rwanda.121
On 9 March, the French Ministry of Cooperation donated 1,000 shells for 120-mm mortars
to Rwanda.122
France provided another 6 million French francs (approx. $1.1 million) in direct, forpayment shipments over the course of the year.123
Despite the assistance provided by the French government, General Quesnot remained
pessimistic about the FAR’s viability. “The Rwandan Army,” Quesnot wrote in a 13 February
1993 letter to President Mitterrand “will not be able to resist the [RPA]. Our logistical aid,
otherwise rather weak with respect to needs, will not compensate for the existing balance of
power.”124 Bruno Delaye also seemed to view weaknesses in the Habyarimana regime as more
concerning than abuses committed against Tutsi: “This situation is disastrous,” he wrote regarding
discord amongst Rwandan leadership in a 15 February 1993 letter to President Mitterrand. “It
provides an avenue to the RPF, which, with Ugandan military support, Belgian sympathy for the
Tutsis, [and] an excellent system of propaganda that is based on the wretched abuses committed
by extremist Hutu, . . . continues to score points, militarily and politically.”125
The cause of the RPF’s military response—the government’s role in ongoing anti-Tutsi
massacres—did not merit mention in the notes written to the President by either General Quesnot
(a military leader) or Bruno Delaye (a diplomat). It did not merit mention even in 1998, when
Bruno Delaye described the moment to the MIP.126 In his testimony, Delaye focused on what he
characterized as the RPF’s violation of the cease-fire and their quick advance by choosing to cast
the events as unjust on the side of the RPF and urgent with respect to the FAR.127 He said that
Mitterrand deemed it necessary to augment the FAR’s fighting power in order to “compel the RPF
to renounce the armed fight, but also because it was feared that its [the RPF’s] offensive might
trigger a logic of ethnic reprisals on the part of the FAR, replacing a conventional military defense
strategy.”128 Foreshadowing its policy during the Genocide, French senior leaders—rather than
press their allies in the Rwandan government to stop the massacres—developed a strategy to defeat
the RPF as a round-about means of discontinuing the mass murder of Tutsi civilians.
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French decisionmakers seemed indifferent to even the practical (to say nothing of moral)
value of prioritizing the prevention of massacres. Such “a humanitarian action larger than the mere
protection of expatriates”—in the words of French Ambassador to Rwanda Georges Martres,
referring to the hopes of Jean Carbonare, the head of the FIDH mission—might have not only kept
the RPF at the negotiating table, but revived its trust in French intentions. But France’s agreement
was to provide military support to its ally, and honoring that agreement was its priority both to
protect its interests in the region and to signal its fidelity to allies around the continent. Intervention
against the government to protect human rights might have scrambled the message President
Mitterrand and his advisors wanted to send. As a result, his government met massacres with “tut
tuts” and met the RPF with force.
Even a Mission to Evacuate Foreign Nationals from Ruhengeri Served the Unstated French
Goal of Deterring the RPF.
The same morning the RPF launched its advance on Ruhengeri, 8 February 1993, French
forces stationed in and around Ruhengeri initiated a mission, known as Operation Volcan, to
evacuate French nationals and other expatriates from the southern limits of Ruhengeri.129 Stepping
into the combat zone would invite accusations of taking part in the fight. Whether or not those
accusations were true, the presence of French forces in the field of battle would remind the RPF
that their new offensive could draw French troops into the fight.
On 8 February, DAMI soldiers participating in Volcan were following FAR soldiers toward
Ruhengeri when they encountered heavy opposition by the RPF military.130 Upon the DAMI’s
counsel, a FAR company launched about a dozen 60 mm mortar shells on the perceived RPF
targets.131 Even so, the RPF Army kept the French forces from reaching the city. In Kigali, the
next day, 9 February, French officials conferred with Rwandan commanders and concluded that,
given RPF military positions around Ruhengeri, “a force action to recover foreign nationals could
not be considered without serious fire support from the 105 FAR cannons and, if possible, a patrol
of French jaguars [fighter jets].”132
Late in the afternoon of 9 February, the French commanders learned that the RPF Army
had made “courteous contact” with French forces to indicate the RPF was ready to let foreign
nationals safely leave the city.133 The French commanders passed the information to Paris, where,
by midnight, officials in the Army état-major, who had considered and rejected more belligerent
options, such as a warning pass by French fighter jets, opted to attempt to broker an agreement
between the RPF and the FAR in order to allow a Noroît detachment to exfiltrate foreign
nationals.134
Following negotiations held on 10 February 1993, French troops, accompanied by Major
General Opaleye, commander of the OAU-led GOMN, successfully extracted 67 expatriates from
an agreed-upon meeting point.135 Opaleye was the same GOMN commander who had in December
1992 accused DAMI forces of a cease-fire violation,136 and Col. Bernard Cussac, who commanded
both Noroît and the DAMI, quickly alerted Paris that Opaleye had been accompanied by a
cameraman who had photographed, amongst other scenes, “Noroît in gathering position on the
road 3km south of Ruhengeri in the middle of a FAR attack device.”137 Indeed, on 16 February
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1993, AFP and Reuters would jointly report a statement from the OAU, which oversaw the
GOMN, as follows:
“French troops have bombed rebel positions south of Ruhengeri,” said the OAU
representative, a member of an international military mission charged with the task
of upholding the bilateral ceasefire signed last year in Arusha, in Tanzania. “The
French troops are stationed in Nyakinama, about 80 kilometers from the capital
Kigali,” the spokesman said. A second testimony, from someone close to the
Rwandan government, said that French troops bombed rebel positions with
“sophisticated weapons.”138
Rwandan Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye, who presumably had received similar
information days before the AFP and Reuters articles broke, reportedly remarked to Belgian
Ambassador Johan Swinnen on the day of the evacuation that “there are among these French some
soldiers who like to shoot.”139
France denied direct engagement in the fight, telling Reuters that “the highest (French)
political authority is categorically opposed to French troops getting involved on the ground,” and
that “[w]e did not take part in the fighting.”140 But whether French soldiers shot at the RPF forces
during Operation Volcan, or, instead, simply trained FAR soldiers to shoot and then directed them
on when and how to shoot, is of little moral significance. As the MIP report acknowledged, French
troops
intervene[d] very closely with the FAR in the field[,] . . . continuously participated
in the development of battle plans, provided advice to the chief of staff and to the
sectors’ commands, proposing restructuring and new tactics . . . dispatched advisers
to instruct the FAR in the use of sophisticated weapons[,] . . . [and] taught
techniques of laying traps and mines, suggesting the most appropriate locations for
them.141
French troops, whether or not they ever pulled a trigger, were co-combatants with their FAR allies.
Even a mission, like Volcan, devoted to the French intervention’s stated goal of protecting
French nationals in Rwanda, furthered the unstated goal of stopping the RPF. To Bruno Delaye,
this was intentional. In a 15 February 1993 note to President Mitterrand, Delay referred to the
“ambiguity” of French troop deployment in Rwanda “as necessary for a good deterrent”—i.e.¸ if
the RPF did not know France’s true mission, it would have to assume the mission was to stop the
RPF.142
Disregarding His Defense Minister’s Objections, Mitterrand Ordered the French Army to
Reinforce Noroît.
While the FAR had managed to regain much of the city of Ruhengeri by 11 February
1993, the RPF retained large gains throughout northern Rwanda.144 During the initial phase of
its offensive, the RPF nearly doubled the land it controlled.145 With RPF forces in the mountains
overhanging the capital roughly 30 km north of Kigali,146 General Quesnot described, in a brief
143
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note to President Mitterrand on 11 February 1993, the situation at the front as “worrying.”147 Or,
as Bruno Delaye put it in a message to President Mitterrand a few days later, “According to our
officers in KIGALI, the RPF is militarily in a position to take KIGALI.”148
On 15 February 1993, a week after the RPF launched its offensive, Bruno Delaye advised
Mitterrand that France was “at the limit of the strategy of indirect support to the forces of the
Rwandan Army.”149 He worried that the FAR could not resist an RPF attempt to take Kigali,
leaving France with “no other choice than to evacuate KIGALI (the official mission of our two
infantry companies is to protect expatriates), unless we become co-belligerents.”150 Mitterrand
would decide that, rather than evacuate, France should become a co-belligerent.
By 15 February, the RPF was fighting the FAR 30 kilometers from the capital city.151 And
by 18 February, panic in Kigali and Paris reached a fever pitch. A cable sent that day from the
Rwandan embassy in Kampala warned that the “Inkotanyi [RPF] are determined to go up to the
end and to grab power by force. They are saying they have reached a point of no return.”152 The
cable warned of reinforcements coming from Uganda and pleaded for “an emergency mobilization
of all volunteers in order to be able to contain the RPF advance and to force them to return to their
known positions before [8 February 1993].”153 To General Quesnot, the stakes were clear. In an
18 February note to Mitterrand, Quesnot reminded the president of what France stood to lose in
the event of an RPF victory: “If we do not find sufficient pressure to stop Museveni, who has
implicit British support, the French-speaking front will be permanently damaged and compromised
in the region.”154
That evening, in Paris, a meeting was held with Admiral Lanxade, General Quesnot, and
the secretary general of the Quai d’Orsay. Delaye’s deputy, Dominique Pin, reported on the
meeting to Mitterrand, setting out the same choice Delaye had presented on 15 February: withdraw
or join the fight by sending 1,000 men to protect Kigali “mainly.”155
Pin showed his distaste for evacuation, emphasizing the message evacuation would send
to other allies in Africa: “President Habyarimana’s power should not survive this departure, which
will be interpreted as the failure of our policy in Rwanda. All this will not be without
consequences for our relations with other African countries.”156 In closing his note, Pin again
emphasized the role of French interests elsewhere in Africa: “[I]t would also be good if we could
obtain the support of Presidents Houphouet-Boigny (Ivory Coast), Abdou Diouf (Senegal), and
[Omar] Bongo (Gabon) before any intervention in Rwanda.”157
By the next morning, 19 February, Habyarimana had called Paris to say that “Ugandan
involvement in the RPF is such that, according to cross-checked information, the Rwandan forces
will not be able to hold the present lines near KIGALI for much longer.”158 He requested “a rapid
intervention by French troops to stop the rebel offensive and prevent the RPF from taking
Kigali.”159
Habyarimana’s urgent plea was out of step with what other observers were seeing, which,
by and large, was simply more of the same, and not the imminent fall of Kigali. France’s
intelligence service, the DGSE, predicted no imminent attack in the report it had drafted the day
before (18 February).160 It did not mention Ugandan support and even noted that the RPF forces
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could retake Ruhengeri “if they wanted to,” but had not yet done so—a restraint inconsistent with
the bloodthirsty opponent portrayed in the cable from the Rwandan embassy in Kampala.161
What France seems not to have known is that the RPF forces were running low on
ammunition and were having trouble replenishing their supplies. In an interview, Paul Kagame
recalled that the RPF had purchased a large quantity of ammunition that, though acquired from
sources outside Uganda, would need to be transported through Ugandan territory to reach the RPF
troops in Rwanda.162 President Museveni refused, however, to release the shipment to the RPF.163
As Kagame recalled, Museveni, who was under tremendous pressure from the international
community (including France) to use his leverage to stop RPF forces from taking Kigali,164
demanded that the RPF stop its advance.165 Kagame, as previously noted, said in February 1993
that the objectives of RPF’s offensive were “limited” and intended to “send a strong signal” to the
Habyarimana regime to respect the peace process.166 Agreeing to Museveni’s demand, which
Kagame did,167 was consistent with these objectives. Museveni withheld the shipment long enough
to ensure the RPF honored its promise.168
French leaders continued to see an emergency, and their information appears to have come
directly from President Habyarimana. Determined to act, Pin and Quesnot presented Mitterrand
with three options.169 The first was to evacuate French nationals.170 The second involved sending
two companies to protect French and other foreign nationals, which had the added benefit of
sending “a clear message to the RPF to curb its appetite.”171 The third was to “dispatch a larger
contingent, de facto prohibiting the RPF from taking Kigali and allowing [FAR] units to reestablish
their positions along the previous cease-fire line.”172 This third option would require a request from
the Rwandan government specifying “that the country [was] the victim of external aggression.”173
Pin and Quesnot blatantly counseled mission creep: “For now, we support solution 2, which, in
case of failure, could form a base structure for solution 3. These two solutions, each accompanied
by intense diplomatic action, could, at the opportune moment, allow us to withdraw under more
dignified conditions.”174 As Pin had done in his earlier note, he and Quesnot again invoked
relations with Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Gabon:
[Solution 3] would require both an external Rwandan request stating that the
country is a victim of external aggression and consultation with Presidents
HOUHOUET-BOIGNY, ABDOU DIOUF, and BONGO. It would have the
advantage of showing our determination to resolve the Rwandan crisis solely by
political means. However, it would be the signal for semi-direct involvement.175
A handwritten note by Hubert Vedrine, the President’s principal advisor, indicates that
Mitterrand chose Solution 2.176 And an official note by Quesnot confirmed this choice to the chief
of staff for the minister of defense, stating misleadingly that the President had decided to send two
companies to Rwanda to “ensure the immediate security of our nationals and if necessary other
expatriates.”177
The message was not well received by Defense Minister Pierre Joxe. The same day, 19
February, he pushed back in a note to President Mitterrand: “[I]n the absence of an immediate
threat to Kigali the two companies that are present, one of which holds the airport, should be
sufficient.”178 France had already reinforced Noroît with a second company on 9 February.179 Joxe
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continued: “I remain convinced that we must strictly limit ourselves to the protection of our
nationals.”180 He warned, “If we let ambiguity shroud the meaning of this movement, the Rwandan
presidency will not fail to present it as support from France.”181 Thus, Joxe not only questioned
the need to send more French troops to Rwanda, but also suggested that doing so could embolden
Habyarimana.
President Mitterrand did not heed Joxe’s warning. Over the next two days, 20 and 21
February 1993, 279 additional French troops arrived in Kigali, swelling the number of Noroît
troops to 570.182 The new arrivals included paratroopers dispatched from the French base in
Bangui, Central African Republic and a heavy mortar section stationed in Libreville, Gabon.183
The order given these troops was to protect French citizens.184 “Concerning the use of Noroît,”
Lanxade wrote, “it is a question of clearly showing our determination to oppose any threat against
our nationals in Kigali.”185 (Noroît’s numbers would continue growing over the ensuing weeks,
rising to 688 troops as of 16 March.186)
Admiral Lanxade named Col. Dominique Delort commander of operations in Kigali,
placing him in charge of all French troops in Rwanda—effectively replacing Col. Cussac’s
command.187 By superseding Cussac, Delort’s appointment effectively stripped authority from
General Varret, because Cussac reported to the French Army’s chief of staff and also to General
Varret, while Delort reported only to the Army chief of staff (headed by Admiral Lanxade). That
said, Varret had already been sidelined, for all intents and purposes, since July 1991.188
French Soldiers Manned Checkpoints Alongside Rwandan Gendarmes, Despite a History
of Abuses.
Lanxade ordered Delort to “set up a deterrent system at the northern exits of Kigali” on
the roads toward Ruhengeri and Byumba.”189 These positions, according to Lanxade, would buy
the French forces enough time to retrieve and evacuate French nationals if need be.190 Lanxade
also placed under Delort’s command about 20 special forces of the RAPAS (Airborne Research
and Special Action) company of the 1st RPIMA (infantry paratroopers), newly arrived in Kigali on
22 February 1993 with a mission “intended to strengthen our assistance to the RWANDAN
command . . . and to ensure advanced guidance of aerial actions.” 191 (See discussion of Operation
Chimère below.) Lanxade warned Delort, “You could be called upon to open fire. Whenever
possible, if time permits, you will first ask for my authorization.”192
Col. Delort placed a heavy mortar section and checkpoints at the outskirts of Kigali.193
French soldiers manned the checkpoints alongside Rwandan gendarmes, providing “limited action
in support” of their Rwandan counterparts.194 “Suspects” were to be delivered to the Gendarmerie,
while GOMN observers were to be restricted from entering the Noroît zone, and French soldiers
were not to speak to the press without approval.195
French activities at checkpoints, in early 1993 and before, have been the subject of a good
deal of controversy. Rwanda is known as the “land of a thousand hills,” and getting from one place
to another typically requires travel along the few roads that wind their way through the valleys of
those hills. Thus, checkpoints—which typically involved blocking the road and stopping travelers
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to check their papers and/or interrogate them—were an effective way of controlling travel, one
that had been used before and throughout the war in the early 1990s.196
By 1993, however, abuses by Rwandan gendarmes at checkpoints was a problem that had
been well known to French officials for years.197 In August 1992, for instance, a collection of
French officers, including Col. Bernard Cussac and Lt. Col. Michel Robardey, told Colonel
Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the Gendarmerie chief of staff, that the French had received reports of
“abuses” at roadblocks manned by Rwandan forces.198 Robardey highlighted specific roadblocks
between Ruhengeri and Gisenyi where, according to the meeting notes, he said Rwandan “soldiers
engage in strange behaviour that is not conducive to the public peace they should be striving
for.”199 He posited an excuse for the reports to Ndindiliyimana: in his opinion, Robardey
suggested, “such abuses are observed at roadblocks held by [F]AR soldiers” as opposed to the
Gendarmerie.200 If the Gendarmerie takes control over roadblocks from the FAR, he continued, “it
will be easy to find out if it is the gendarmes who are holding people to ransom or not.”201 Also
present at this meeting was Col. Alain Damy, who had recently been assigned as the technical
advisor to Ndindiliyimana and the head of the French DAMI assistance.202 Damy informed the
Rwandan officer that he intended to visit all of the Gendarmerie units “to have an accurate idea of
the reality on the ground.”203
Past reports were reinforced on 19 February 1993, the day President Mitterrand decided to
send additional troops to Rwanda who would, among other things, fortify Rwandan gendarmes at
checkpoints. During a meeting of the Gendarmerie état-major that day, Col. Ndindiliyimana
intoned that gendarmes manning roadblocks should conduct themselves with “more seriousness”
and “respect people.”204 Col. Damy attended the meeting and would have certainly understood that
Ndindiliyimana was responding to reports of abuses at roadblocks because Damy had been aware
of such accusations from the beginning of his deployment months earlier and, perhaps, from what
he saw during his planned tour of gendarme positions around Rwanda.205 (Damy also oversaw the
French trainers stationed in the Fichier Central where, according to Gen. Paul Rwarakabjie, a
member of the Gendarmerie état-major, Tutsi were taken for interrogation after being arrested at
roadblocks.206 The Fichier Central, Rwarakabije noted, was commonly referred to as an
“abattoir.”207) A 1 March 1993 cable from Georges Martres reported on a reduction in the number
of abuses at roadblocks when French soldiers were present and explained that “there is no more
ransoming of passers-by and there are much fewer thefts.”208
Additional accounts have placed French soldiers as eyewitnesses to abuses against Tutsi at
checkpoints throughout the war beginning in 1990,209 with some accusing French soldiers of
facilitating the abuses. Several such accounts were provided to the Mucyo Commission established
in 2004 by the Rwandan government to investigate the role of France in the preparation and
implementation of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.210 For example, one witness, Emmanuel
Nshogozabahizi, recounted:
In 1992, I was in a minibus coming from Kigali with my cousin Mudenge JeanBaptiste who worked at the Kicukiro Brewery. When we arrived in Mukamira,
around 7pm, the French stopped the minibus and asked us for our identity cards.
Seeing that my cousin was Tutsi, they took him out and kept him. Since then, I have
not seen him again. However, I immediately started searching for him, and my
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status as an Interahamwe allowed me to go everywhere, which means that if he had
stayed alive, I would certainly have found him, but I never knew what his fate
was.211
Another example, not from the Mucyo Commission’s report, comes from Pierre Damien
Habumuremyi, the prime minister of Rwanda from 2011 through 2014. Habumuremyi has
recounted traveling home to Rwanda in December 1990 for the holidays from Lumbumbashi,
Zaire, where he was studying as a university student. At the northeast border town of Gisenyi, he
approached a checkpoint “manned by five French officers and two Rwandan soldiers, all armed to
the teeth.”212 Habumuremyi did not have a Rwandan ID card, only a passport that did not list his
ethnicity, so the frustrated soldiers told him to return the following day. The next day,
Habumuremyi was allowed into the country and boarded a bus to travel the final 80 km home, but
his bus was stopped again at a checkpoint outside of Ruhengeri manned by four “combat-armed
French soldiers.”213 The French soldiers ordered all of the passengers to disembark and proceeded
“through the gruesome drill of identifying and sorting the passengers along ethnic lines as
indicated on the national IDs with the Tutsi being targeted.”214 While Habumuremyi remembered
these encounters in chilling detail, he noted that the experience of other Tutsi was much worse
because “[t]hey were either imprisoned, tortured or both and even killed.”215
In February and March 1993, French soldiers checked identification at checkpoints outside
Kigali.216 And, per operational orders, they were expected to turn over “suspects” to the
Gendarmerie, 217 despite French officials’ knowledge of the rich and recent history of abuses at the
hands of the Gendarmerie at checkpoints. Testimony given before the Mucyo Commission and in
recent interviews suggests that the Gendarmerie continued to abuse Tutsi travelers detained at
roadblocks in February and March 1993.218 For example, Gen. Rwarakabije told the Mucyo
Commission:
In 1993, the French soldiers had a position at Mount Jali in the Gendarmerie camp
for the Mobile Intervention Group, which they trained in road security techniques.
I remember holding in my hands a report by the camp commander on the screening
and arrests carried out at this roadblock by French soldiers. It was in 1993, at the
time of the capture of Ruhengeri. The report pointed out that if someone was a
Hutu, they let him pass, and when it was a Tutsi, they kept him, abused and insulted
him in such humiliating terms: “you stupid Tutsi, cockroach!,” etc. Tutsis
underwent very tight questioning there. I even think that the Rwandan gendarmes
sometimes beat them up.219
In its 1998 report, the French Parliamentary Commission acknowledged the presence of
French soldiers at Rwandan Gendarmerie checkpoints. But the report failed to appreciate that
when, in February and March 1993, French soldiers manned checkpoints alongside the Rwandan
Gendarmerie, French officials knew of the abuses that some Rwandan gendarmes had committed
at checkpoints throughout the war. A 2 March 1993 operational order instructed French soldiers
not to allow international observers from the GOMN to access the French observation posts at the
checkpoints.220 The order also instructed soldiers manning the checkpoints not to speak to the
press.221 The Parliamentary Commission observed that this secrecy reflected a preference “not to
highlight” that French troops were performing a law enforcement function typically reserved for
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Rwandan authorities.222 More specifically, however, French officials likely sought to hide from
the international community French participation in checking identification for ethnicity. Although
reports from Col. Delort and Lt. Col. Tracqui do not suggest that French soldiers turned anyone
suspected of being an RPF collaborator over to the Gendarmerie,223 accounts of abuses against
Tutsi detained at checkpoints in February and March 1993 (cited above) suggest there was good
reason to emphasize secrecy.
Bernard Kayumba224
Bernard was born on 4 September 1969 in former Kibuye Prefecture.
The first time I had an encounter with the French that was harmful to me
personally was in 1993. This was after the 8 March 1993 RPF Inkotanyi attack on the
outskirts of the capital city. At the time, I was a student at the Major Seminary in
Kabgayi. I had left my school, boarded a public transport vehicle on my way to visit
family friends in Kigali. When I got to Nyabarongo, there was a roadblock manned
by French soldiers and Rwandan gendarmes. The taxi was stopped. A French
soldier asked me “Tutsi/Hutu?” I kept quiet. He asked me again and I gave him my
student ID that did not have my ethnicity. He refused to take it and asked for my
national ID. I gave it to him, and he lifted my photo in the ID to read my ethnicity
and said “Tutsi.” He added that he knew I was Tutsi because Tutsis were tall with
small noses and ordered me to step aside before letting the vehicle continue to
Kigali without me.
At the side of the road where I was forced to sit, I found about six other
Tutsis. They had similarly been taken out of vehicles. We heard rumors that the
soldiers were waiting for our number to increase before transporting us in military
trucks to be killed. As luck would have it, a Red Cross vehicle came, and its
occupants saved us. They asked why we were sitting by the side of the road. A
Rwandan gendarme said we did not have IDs. We heard him say this, and we
contradicted him. A white man who worked for the Red Cross came and looked at
our IDs. He told the soldiers manning the roadblock that they had lied to him, and
that we did have IDs. The man from the Red Cross asked the soldiers to release us.
I found a vehicle heading back to Gitarama and boarded it in the presence of the
Red Cross staff. I have no doubt if the Red Cross vehicle had not come at that
moment, bad things would have happened.
I was very hurt by the French soldier’s actions. How could a foreign soldier
deny me my rights in my own country? It was very humiliating that a French
soldier, a foreigner in my country, could forcibly remove me from the taxi I was
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traveling in because of my ethnicity. All my life, I had been harassed by fellow
Rwandans for being Tutsi. I could not understand why a foreigner felt he had to
visit the same humiliation upon me. The French identified more with our
tormentors than with their victims.
When the Genocide began, I spent many weeks trying to survive and ended
up in Bisesero. After fleeing my home following the deaths of my entire family, I
ended up in Bisesero with four friends that survived the journey.
When the French came to Kibuye, we saw their helicopters fly over Gishyita,
a mere five kilometers from Bisesero. We were hopeful we would be saved. On 27
June, French soldiers came towards Bisesero with trucks and military hardware.
Some of the refugees, among them Eric Nzabihimana, a teacher who hailed from
Gisovu, stopped the convoy. He was able to communicate in French, and he spoke
to the soldiers.
The other refugees and I all left our different hiding places in the bushes and
converged around the French convoy by the roadside because we all thought we
were about to be rescued by the French. The French soldiers were in the company
of Interahamwe who were supposed to show the French that there were no
problems in Bisesero and take them to Gisovu. We pleaded with the French to
protect us, but they said they would not stay.
For the three days that followed the French soldiers’ departure from
Bisesero, the attacks became more vicious and sustained, and survivors were
massacred. We had all been hiding in the bushes but when we came out to speak
with the French soldiers by the side of the road, our hiding places were exposed to
our attackers. On 30 June 1994, the French soldiers came back and took us to a camp
in Bisesero.
Because I was one of the leaders of the camp, the French had asked me and
the other camp leaders to build a tent next to theirs so they could access us anytime
to give instructions to other refugees. I said to one of the French soldiers, “why are
you leaving our killers to flee with their weapons? Won’t they continue killing us?” He
said to me, “you are no longer the priority; the priority are the Hutus fleeing the war.”
Another painful thing is that even after the French came back to Bisesero on
30 June 1994, Tutsis continued to die in Kibuye. I lost two of my aunts, both named
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Felicita, one who was my mother’s older sister, who was killed with her daughter‐
in‐law, her granddaughter and her son in the Bisesero area.
French Special Forces Embarked on a Secret Mission to Direct the War Effort for the
Rwandan Government.
I am to take indirect command of the FAR, an army of 22,000 men.225
– Didier Tauzin, Commander of the 1st RPIMa (1992 – 1994)
The secrecy surrounding Noroît checkpoints in February 1993 paled in comparison to a
secretive mission run parallel to Noroît and initiated the same day: Operation Chimère.226 On 22
February 1993, Colonel Didier Tauzin arrived in Kigali with 20 special forces of a RAPAS
(Airborne Research and Special Action) company of the 1st RPIMa (infantry paratroopers).227 The
1st RPIMa, heir to the World War II Special Air Service of the Free French, is a special forces unit
that is known for conducting air-to-land missions.228 Since 1970, the paratroopers of the 1st RPIMa
had been participating in all major deployments in Africa, and in Rwanda, they participated in
Operations Noroît, Chimère, Amaryllis,229 and Turquoise.230 Col. Tauzin succeeded Col. Rosier
as commanding officer of the 1st RPIMa in July 1992, while Rosier was in Rwanda standing up
the 105mm howitzer battery following the RPF offensive in Byumba (see discussion above).231
Tauzin, who wrote a book on his missions in Rwanda, handpicked 20 men and was given
orders by the head of the Army Operational Center, to “at least save Kigali, stop the RPF, and
allow the diplomatic process to resume, or at best send the RPF back to where it came from,
Uganda.”232 The MIP’s account of the mission was more specific:
-
Enhance the technical operation level of the FAR chief of staff and of the
commands of at least two sectors;
Participate in the remote safety of the Noroît operation, whenever the
situation requires it;
Complete the level of training of FAR personnel on scientific equipment;
Train FAR specialists on new equipment;
Be able to guide air support.233
As the MIP summarized, “the detachment’s objective was to indirectly supervise and command
an army of about 20,000 men.”234 Or, as Tauzin put it, “I am to take indirect command of the FAR,
an army of 22,000 men.”235
But “indirect” may not fully capture the extent of his control. According to Tauzin, the
FAR’s chief of staff, Col. Déogratias Nsabimana (who would perish in President Habyarimana’s
plane at the outset of the Genocide) “was obviously ready to accept whatever I ask him to do. He
will put himself de facto under my command and will carry out without fail all the orders that will
be prepared for him by Chéreau [Tauzin’s deputy—ed.] who, with two or three officers, will take
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over the direction of his staff.”236 Tauzin teamed French officers with FAR commanders located
in the same operational sectors; for example, pairing Augustin Bizimungu, the operation sector
commander in Ruhengeri (who would later lead the FAR during the Genocide and be sentenced in
the ICTR to 30 years for committing genocide) with Gilles Chollet, the former DAMI commander
whose near-appointment in February 1992 as advisor to both the FAR état-major and President
Habyarimana had created a furor amongst the Rwandan opposition and in the international
press.237 Pairing other French officers with FAR commanders in Byumba and Rulindo (north of
Kigali), Tauzin established “a hierarchy parallel to the Rwandan one,” which allowed him to
“effectively direct all Rwandan operations on the entire front, without ever directly engaging my
paratroopers in combat, and while remaining incognito because all orders will apparently be
written by Rwandan officers.”238
This last point was critical because Operation Chimère was conducted under strict
confidentiality. In providing Tauzin with his orders, the head of the French Army Operational
Center emphasized the need to keep the mission out of the press:
There are five of us in confidence: the Head of State, his chief of staff, the Chief of
Army Staff (CAS), me . . . and you! Apart from your “Operations” Officer and your
Chief of “rens” [intelligence—ed.], no one must know anything before boarding
the plane. The press must not know anything, before, during and after!239
In Tauzin’s appraisal:
It is obvious that this confidentiality was primarily intended not to announce our
arrival in the field to the RPF through the press! It is equally obvious that it was
intended to preserve the necessary freedom of action of the head of state, President
François Mitterrand. Indeed, it’s an understatement to say that abroad we did not
only have friends in this venture.240
In other words, President Mitterrand was well aware that providing operational assistance to the
FAR would be unpopular in the press and unpopular with other Western governments, so he
proceeded in secrecy.
On 21 February 1993, Tauzin and his men left Parma airport in Biarritz, France, arriving
in Kigali around noon the next day, following a short stopover in Bangui.241 Col. Delort placed the
DAMI detachments currently in Rwanda under Tauzin’s command, 69 men in total.242 And, on his
first day in Rwanda, Tauzin flew by helicopter to Ruhengeri to meet with Lt. Col. Augustin
Bizimungu,243 whom he would see several times over the next few weeks.244 In his 2011 memoir,
Tauzin described Bizimungu—sector chief in Ruhengeri at the time of their first meeting and later
commander of the FAR during the Genocide, who ultimately was convicted of genocide before
the ICTR—as “a remarkable man of the field as I have met few in my 35-year military career
marked by many operations. I have always considered it an honor to have known him and to have
fought alongside him.”245 (By contrast, General Roméo Dallaire, who would command the United
Nations peacekeeping mission later that year and into the Genocide, would describe Bizimungu as
“a brutal, hard-drinking tyrant who commanded through fear.”246) Tauzin continued with his
recollection of FAR leaders:
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Nsabimana, Bizimungu and Kabiligi [acquitted of genocide charges before the
ICTR—ed.] . . . are among the small number of Hutu who have almost completely
freed themselves from the psychological and intellectual oppression that the Tutsi
have subjected them to for centuries.247
On 25 February 1993, Tauzin, the now de facto leader of the FAR, drew up a plan to stop
the RPF’s offensive north of Kigali and to execute a counter-offensive in Byumba.248 Tauzin later
recounted the ensuing operation in his book:
It is true that for a few days we gave the RPF a hard time! With local counteroffensives, concentrations of artillery fire on entire units on the move, also thanks
to a better organization of the ground in defense, we broke their momentum towards
Kigali. In fact, we estimated the RPF’s losses at about 800 killed and therefore,
according to the usual proportions in this kind of conflict, about 2,500 wounded, or
nearly 15 percent of the troops it had committed, which is considerable in 8 days
of fighting.249
Tauzin clarified that French soldiers never fired unless fired upon.250 He noted that it might have
been tempting to order a direct assault, which would “have solved the military problem by an
assured defeat of the RPF,” but
would not have been consistent with the political context and with the French
strategy in Rwanda, a strategy whose main line of force was the desire to bring
about a “national reconciliation” of Hutus and Tutsis by leading President
Habyarimana to democratize his regime, in the logic of the speech made by
President Mitterrand in La Baule in June 1990.251
“We have remained in our role as advisers,”252 Tauzin proudly concluded. But “advisors”
here seems a bit too narrow and sanitized a description in light of Tauzin’s self-described “indirect”
command over the Rwandan Army.253 Again, whether French soldiers in Chimère engaged the
RPF themselves or through their command of the FAR is a distinction without a difference.
Instead, the issue of direct engagement seems more relevant to public relations. As Tauzin put it,
had France directly engaged the RPF, “[t]he national and global media and political outcry would
most likely have put France in a very delicate situation.”254 In roughly one month—28 March
1993—French voters would be returning to the polls for national elections.255
To prevent such an outcry, Mitterrand and his administration continued to insist, including
on the day Chimère forces landed in Kigali, that the sole mission of French forces in Rwanda was
the protection of expatriates.256 Steven Smith, writing for Libération the same day, was skeptical
of the official line, pointing out that the number of French troops in Rwanda exceeded the number
of French civilians.257 Even when pushed by RPF statements that French troops had fought
alongside government forces, French officials maintained their false narrative line.258 On 1 March
1993, a Quai d’Orsay spokesperson defended French military intervention in the strongest, but
false, terms:
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As for the presence of French forces, I make it my duty to remind you that it has no
other objective than to ensure the security of the French community and that of the
expatriates who are in Rwanda. I have already had the opportunity to say that any
other interpretation of this presence was fallacious or biased.259
But the Mitterrand administration’s media strategy was not only to conceal France’s true
intentions in Rwanda, but also to demonize the RPF—justifying the French commitment required
it. Bruno Delaye had complained about the RPF’s “excellent system of propaganda emphasizing
the wretched abuses committed by extremist Hutus,” presumably referring to the willingness of
certain journalists in Belgium and France, rightly, to take seriously RPF reports of human rights
abuses by the Rwandan government.260 He acknowledged in a 15 February 1993 note to President
Mitterrand, “Our isolation in this case at the international level (the Belgians, English, and
Americans do not like HABYARIMANA) must lead us to deploy an even more offensive
diplomatic effort to obtain the diplomatic support necessary for implementation.”261
Three days before Delaye penned his note to Mitterrand, the Quai d’Orsay released a
statement that emphasized the plight of Rwandan civilians displaced by the resumption of
hostilities:
We deplore and are particularly concerned by the new suffering imposed on the
civil populations as a result of fighting and violence. These new victims . . . [are]
in addition to the approximately 350,000 people displaced by the war, who have
been driven from their land, who cannot, due to the various offensives, return to
their homes, and who, despite the efforts of the Rwandan government, live in
conditions that in many ways pose human rights problems.262
The poor conditions of internally displaced people was indeed a humanitarian disaster and threat
to stability,263 which had started with the October 1990 war and had only grown worse as the DMZ
remained empty, fields remained fallow, and production plants ground to a halt.264 Compounding
the instability, according to a report in Libération, the FAR stole food aid intended for the refugees,
and the Government of Rwanda had begun to distribute arms throughout the refugee camps,
allegedly to prepare for further massacres.265
French officials deflected attention away from their aid to a government that was presiding
over mounting massacres of Tutsi by elevating the war’s displacement of Rwandans as the focus
for the French public.266 These French officials disproportionately blamed the RPF for the
displacement of people in a two-sided war, in which France itself had become a co-belligerent.
In addition to unfairly blaming only the RPF for the problem of internal displacement, the
French government further spun the French public by co-opting and promoting partisan reports of
human rights abuses purportedly carried out by the RPF—in particular the FAR’s claim that the
RPF had attacked a refugee camp in Rebero, in northeastern Rwanda, supposedly massacring 500
people.267 That international aid organizations on the ground in Rebero could not confirm the
FAR’s accusations did not stop the deputy spokesman for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, from declaring on 19 February 1993 that according to “indications”
of which he did not specify the origin, “massacres [had been] perpetrated in areas currently
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controlled by the RPF.”268 Three days later, a cable from US Ambassador Flaten to Washington
would observe that the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Rwanda (the Nonce Apostolic) had not
received any reports of massacres in RPF-controlled areas, and that a member of the White Father
Catholic missionary group, who was “reportedly the last person to have left the Rebero displaced
persons camp,” had “told people that he saw no . . . bodies there. These reports cast doubt on
reports of RPF massacres both at the Rebero camp and at the Nemba church.”269
Despite the Mitterrand government’s media campaign, voices in the French press remained
skeptical of the President’s Rwanda policy. For example, a 17 February 1993 article in Le Canard
Enchaîné, titled, “Mitterrand is hiding an African war from us,” declared, “Morality according to
the Élysée: the sole mission of the French contingent is to protect Kigali, its airport and 400 or so
nationals residing in the country. That’s the official version. In reality, it provides the Rwandan
Army with advisors and instructors, particularly in artillery.”270 Even French politicians began to
join in the criticism, with Gérard Fuchs, the French Socialist Party national secretary, releasing a
statement on 28 February 1993 that he “question[ed] the decision to send new French troops to
Rwanda, when human rights violations by the Habyarimana regime continue[d] to multiply.”271
He continued, “I hope that either our minister for cooperation will find convincing reasons in
Kigali for a military presence which today appears to be a help to a hard-pressed dictatorial regime,
or that this [military] presence will be ended.”272
As the FAR Flailed, Mitterrand Hatched a Plan to Disengage from Rwanda while, in the
Short Term, Keeping Pressure on the RPF.
It is not in our interest for the Tutsis to advance too quickly. We must buy
time, delay [things] by all diplomatic means and continue to support the
Rwandan Army by supplying it with the munitions it needs.273
–
François Mitterrand, President of France (1981 – 1995)
The surge in French military support for the government forces between 9 and 22 February
1993 showed President Mitterrand had not, to that point, lost confidence in his administration’s
power to turn around the war effort. Patience, though, was wearing thin. Just one week after the
launch of Operation Chimère, his ministers and advisors seemed dismayed to find that reports from
Kigali remained grim: the RPF military was still gaining ground, the FAR was still in disarray,
and Habyarimana was “out of breath.”274 Those who had consistently advocated for expanding aid
to the FAR were forced to acknowledge that, for all the financing, equipment, and manpower
France had provided, it was still not enough.275
This sudden reckoning with the reality on the ground would lead the Mitterrand
administration to settle on a new strategy, one whose ultimate goal was to extricate France from
Rwanda without having to admit its policy of backing the government had been a failure.276 The
strategy had two components, in effect: first, a lobbying campaign in New York to persuade the
United Nations to send a peacekeeping team as soon as possible; and, second, maintaining a
continued overt deterrent presence in Kigali as well as covert support for the Rwandan Armed
Forces, to stave off a military defeat in the interim. It was a strategy that aimed, in the short term,
to ward off bad press ahead of the March 1993 French legislative elections and, in the long term,
to spare Mitterrand the embarrassment of a foreign-policy failure.
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1. As Prospects of a FAR Victory Dimmed, the French Government Sought a UN
Lifeline.
The FAR’s flatfooted response to the 8 February 1993 offensive had been revealing in
more ways than one. It exposed, above all else, a Rwandan government in deep distress, with a
disgruntled and increasingly feckless president as its head.277 Habyarimana, sensing the opposition
parties were conspiring to marginalize him, had become increasingly recalcitrant and, since midDecember 1992, had barely spoken with the MDR-affiliated prime minister,278 whom, according
to a 13 February 1993 note by General Quesnot, Habyarimana suspected of “complicity with the
aggressors.”279 The air of distrust at the highest levels of the Rwandan government had already
sabotaged one round of Arusha negotiations and was threatening to torpedo the next one, assuming
there would even be a next round.
France’s message to the governing coalition, in the weeks following the 8 February 1993
offensive, was that the in-fighting had to stop—not only because it was weakening the Rwandan
government’s bargaining position in Arusha, but because it was threatening to undermine the
Habyarimana regime’s war effort. In a 14 February cable, Ambassador Martres said he urged
President Habyarimana to recognize “that, more than ever, the military situation—about which he
has brought before me increasingly alarming information—required a common front of all
Rwandans.”280 French envoys, visiting Kigali on 12 February, went so far as to keep the Rwandan
president and the prime minister up until 2 a.m. preparing a joint declaration condemning the RPF,
calling for a renewed cease-fire, and espousing their commitment to the Arusha process.281 Even
then, tensions between the president and prime minister persisted.282 “We have maintained the
feeling,” Ambassador Martres wrote after the joint declaration’s release, “that both [the president
and the prime minister] remained, both of them, more sensitive to the defense of their respective
political positions than to the immediate military danger represented by the RPF.”283
France’s efforts to keep the governing coalition from unraveling were not faring much
better than its efforts to prop up the FAR. Where, once, there had been hope of besting the RPF
Army on the battlefield, now the best the French government could hope for was that the FAR,
with its support, could hold off enemy forces long enough for the two sides to achieve a peace
deal. The French government’s gravest concern was that Kigali would fall: the threat, by Defense
Minister Joxe’s account, did not appear imminent,284 but Rwandan authorities, including President
Habyarimana, often spoke as if it were just a matter of time before RPF forces marched into the
capital,285 and the prospect evidently troubled President Mitterrand’s advisers.286 (Dominique Pin
and General Quesnot would characterize the threat, in a 19 February memo, as “very
worrisome.”287)
Despite all the assistance they had provided the FAR, French officials were under no
illusions about the poor state of the FAR and could see that it was ill-equipped to stop a potential
assault on Kigali.288 The French intelligence agency, the DGSE, characterized the FAR in late
February 1993 as “not very combative and demoralized.”289 FAR soldiers—particularly those from
southern Rwanda—were refusing to go to the front and, in many cases, had deserted; one US cable
estimated the Army had lost the equivalent of three to four battalions due to desertions.290 Those
who continued to wear the uniform were, in many cases, unreliable and poorly behaved. “The
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Army has spent more time looting and attacking civilians than fighting the RPF,” Foreign Minister
Ngulinzira told US embassy officials.291 It seemed, too, that the MRND and CDR had riled up
many of the troops with their incendiary rhetoric, to the point that some soldiers were killing FAR
comrades they viewed as RPF sympathizers.292
The FAR still had numbers on its side, with a force ranging from three to six times larger
than the RPF’s,293 but it had squandered this advantage by scattering its units across the long
battlefront.294 A US cable, attributing its information to “French sources,” reported there were “not
many troops left to defend Kigali.”295 Even Defense Minister Joxe, after saying he saw no
“immediate threat” to Kigali,296 had trouble imagining the RPF would not reach out for a prize that
appeared to be within its grasp.297 “I don’t see the RPF abandoning such a close victory, which
probably does not even call for a general offensive on their part,” he wrote in a 26 February 1993
note to Mitterrand.298 Joxe warned: “If the RPF retakes the offensive, our soldiers could, in a matter
of hours, find themselves faced with the rebels.”299
The RPF profited from the Rwandan and French fears that its troops might, at any moment,
plow onward toward the capital. Its show of force strengthened its hand in upcoming peace talks
in Arusha, where negotiators hoped to decide, among other things, how many FAR and RPF
troops, respectively, to integrate into the post-war armed forces.300 All the while, though, RPF
leaders were adamant that they would strongly prefer to resolve the conflict peacefully.301 Twice,
in mid-February, they offered a truce.302 For all of the predictions that an attack on Kigali was
imminent, no attack ever came.
The first of the two RPF cease-fire proposals that month proved to be a non-starter.303
Rwandan authorities viewed the offer as unacceptable because, as they understood it, it would
have allowed the RPF troops to remain in place, keeping all of the territory they had taken over
the previous two days of fighting.304 A second cease-fire declaration, on 21 February 1993, had
more traction. The RPF promised to pull its troops back to the pre-8 February cease-fire line, the
government forces would remain in their current positions, and the ground that the RPF Army had
gained would serve as a buffer zone controlled by GOMN.305 The government issued its own
statement, accepting the RPF’s terms, the next day: 22 February 1993.306
The RPF had proven its capabilities and was in a position of strength when its delegation
arrived in Bujumbura, Burundi that week. They were there to meet with representatives from the
four main Rwandan opposition parties: the MDR, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the Liberal
Party (PL), and the Christian Democratic Party (PDC).307 The opposition parties had pitched the
meeting in hopes of striking a deal that would recommit both sides to the Arusha process, but the
MRND undermined the endeavor by refusing to participate.308 (The MRND had declared weeks
earlier that it would not meet with the RPF until RPF troops returned to the positions they held
before the 8 February offensive,309 and the MRND did not soften its stance even after the RPF
promised, in its latest cease-fire declaration, that its troops would do just that.310)
The RPF sensed an opportunity and seized it. When the discussions turned to whether its
troops would, indeed, return to the cease-fire line, the delegation said they would, but only if
France agreed to withdraw the Noroît troops from Rwanda.311 The demand would have met MRND
resistance, but the president’s party had not shown up to hear it. The opposition parties found the
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idea acceptable, in light of the RPF’s assurances that it would pull its troops back to their previous
positions and would take part in the next round of peace talks in Arusha.312
The joint communiqué that emerged from Bujumbura on 2 March 1993 was an astonishing
document.313 It showed, first, just how intensely leaders of the opposition parties had come to
resent President Habyarimana following the MRND’s rejection of the 9 January 1993 powersharing accord, and how free they felt to speak ill of him in public.314 The communiqué denounced
both Habyarimana and his party for their “racist regionalistic, war-mongering dictatorial policies,”
and said the party’s refusal to participate in the Bujumbura talks “confirms its opposition to the
peace process, to the principles of national unity and reconciliation.”315 Habyarimana readied a
response that same day, gathering a group of representatives from various minor parties, as well
as dissenters within the ranks of the MDR, PSD, PL, and PDC, to speak out against the “RPF
Inkotanyi” and to praise France for its military assistance.316
There was nothing new about the RPF’s demand that the French government withdraw its
forces. RPF leaders had been pressing this point for years—not because they viewed France as a
threat, but because they believed French support gave the FAR “false confidence” and made its
leaders less willing to compromise.317 (“Habyarimana’s regime behaved better when they were
pressured,” explained RPF Commander Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.318) The Rwandan government
had, in fact, twice before conceded to the demand: first in the March 1991 N’Sele cease-fire
agreement and then again in Arusha, in July 1992, both times contingent on “the deployment
establishment of the [GOMN].”319 The French government, though, had not abided by either
agreement. Ambassador Martres had brushed off the N’Sele agreement’s troop-withdrawal
provision in 1991, telling a reporter that France, as a non-party to the agreement, was not bound
by it.320 The French government was equally dismissive when the same provision reappeared in
the Arusha accord in July 1992, even after the OAU established the GOMN in late summer 1992,
in theory triggering the country’s obligation to withdraw Noroît. While President Mitterrand had,
according to an 18 January 1993 letter to President Habyarimana, “made note of the terms” of the
July 1992 accord and did “not want France to be blamed for undermining the proper
implementation of the agreement,” he nonetheless agreed “to act in agreement with the Rwandan
authorities” on whether to keep Noroît forces in Rwanda.321 “It is just sad that all the agreements
signed have not been respected,” RPF Commander Karake said in a March 1993 interview
published in Rwanda Rushya.322
The RPF—when the parties reached agreements in 1991 and 1992—had been under no
pretense that Habyarimana’s government or the FAR would adhere to the agreements or take them
seriously. But circumstances changed in 1993. The difference this time was that the RPF had never
been stronger, and the governing coalition never more fractured. This shift in fortunes for the two
belligerents put more weight behind the RPF’s demands. More than that, though, it forced
President Mitterrand to confront a hard reality: that after two and a half years of combining
pressure for political liberalization with military support against the RPF, his policy had conjured
a democratic opposition in Rwanda more closely aligned with the RPF than with the Habyarimana
regime it sought to protect. French military support had also emboldened Habyarimana to eschew
compromise and had drawn him closer to hardliners who sought to undermine the peace process.
Rwanda had become a quagmire, and the authorities in Paris would, at last, have to consider
whether the time had come to find a way out.
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This realization registered earliest with Defense Minister Joxe. “We are at an impasse. I
recommend that we leave,” he said, bluntly, at a 24 February 1993 “restricted council” meeting.323
(The Élysée had begun hosting these weekly meetings shortly before the March 1993 legislative
elections, when the prospect of a cohabitation government appeared likely.324 The meetings served
as a forum for Mitterrand to discuss matters of defense and foreign policy with the prime minister,
other key ministers, and various high-level advisors.) Joxe would reiterate his concerns in writing
a few days later, telling Mitterrand: “I am still concerned about our position in Rwanda and by the
role into which our . . . soldiers could find themselves drawn since the Rwandan Army is de facto
no longer fighting.”325 Joxe argued the 20 February deployment of two additional Noroît
companies had, regrettably, led Habyarimana “to feel he is one of the African leaders best
protected by France. This is not the best way to persuade him to make the necessary
concessions.”326 What was needed, Joxe said, was an ultimatum: “Our only serious remaining
leverage—excluding direct intervention—seems to me to be the possibility of our
disengagement.”327 Joxe argued this could make Habyarimana more flexible in negotiations and,
if presented to the RPF and Museveni, “would make them give up a military victory for a solely
political victory.”328
Mitterrand knew, by the time of the 24 February 1993 Restricted Council meeting, that the
RPF was on the cusp of “a political-military victory.”329 Two of his advisors, General Quesnot and
Africa Cell Deputy Chief Dominique Pin, had warned him of this probability in a note the day
before the meeting, lamenting that, in the face of the RPF’s determination and power, “our indirect
strategy of support to the Rwandan armed forces no longer seems sufficient.”330 Quesnot’s and
Pin’s note presented three options. First, they said, France could evacuate its nationals out of
Rwanda and withdraw its troops—but, they warned, its departure would likely precipitate the end
of Habyarimana’s rein, and “will be interpreted as a failure of our policy in Rwanda.”331 Pin and
Quesnot did not recommend this option.332
The second option—better than the first, in their opinion—was to maintain the status quo
and keep France’s present contingent of roughly 600 soldiers (including Noroît as well as the
DAMI and MAM cooperants reinforced by the Chimère special forces) in Rwanda.333 This, at
least, would preserve “a certain ambiguity” about France’s intentions in the country, which “may
seem temporarily desirable,” they wrote.334 Pin and Quesnot made clear, though, that they would
prefer a more assertive response. They championed a third option: to “strongly intervene in support
of the Rwandan Army.”335 This would not necessarily mean sending French soldiers out onto the
battlefield to join the FAR as co-combatants; direct military intervention, though “technically
possible,” would not be justifiable, they explained, absent “irrefutable evidence of direct Ugandan
military intervention, which is not the case now.”336 Rather, they said, what France could, and
should, do was boost its military presence in the combat zone, without actually firing any weapons.
“It is a question of reversing the balance of power by increasing our assistance to the Rwandan
Army through a strong logistical contribution and a commitment of advisers and artillery [that
matches] the level of our determination,” they wrote.337
Mitterrand’s remarks at the 24 February Restricted Council meeting show he remained
ambivalent about how to proceed, but he was certain of one thing: “Withdrawing from Rwanda is
out of the question.”338 To withdraw, he said, would send “a bad signal.”339 His prime minister,
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Pierre Bérégovoy, was of the same mind: “It is politically impossible for us to withdraw from
Rwanda at this time.”340 As the meeting progressed, Mitterrand mused, as he often did, about
Uganda’s role in the war. The thought perplexed him: He was sure that Uganda had been behind
the RPF’s invasion in 1990, but he could not understand why President Museveni would support
what, in Mitterrand’s mind, would amount to a Tutsi takeover of Rwanda. “If the RPF . . . wins,
there will be revenge,” Mitterrand said. “What is Museveni looking for [?]”341 Convinced that
Uganda remained the key to the whole affair, Mitterrand decided to send French Minister of
Cooperation Marcel Debarge to meet with authorities in both Kigali and Kampala at the end of the
month.342
Mitterrand, to be sure, had not sworn off diplomacy; his advisors, Quesnot and Pin, had
been in agreement that however much military support France might provide the Rwandan
government, it ought to be accompanied by “firm diplomatic action.”343 This meant continued
support for a revival of the Arusha talks, but it also meant leaning on the OAU and United Nations
to step up the role of international observers.344 This latter option raised some intriguing
possibilities for President Mitterrand, as it just might take some heat off of his administration, and
perhaps provide it with the cover it needed to disentangle itself from Rwanda.
The OAU already had a presence in Rwanda. Officers of the GOMN, formed under its
auspices, had been on the ground since August 1992.345 France had initially welcomed the group
as an “essential element” of the 12 July 1992 cease-fire agreement, but complained that the effort
to launch the group’s work of monitoring the cease-fire was taking too long.346 The group would
soon become a thorn in France’s side: FAR leaders complained that the group was biased toward
the RPF and that some of its officers were hounding FAR units on the front in hopes of catching
French troops working alongside them.347 (The GOMN did, in fact, observe the involvement of
DAMI officers in a cease-fire violation in December 1992, as discussed in Chapter 5.348) French
officials worried that with just 50 observers,349 the GOMN was not up to the task of effectively
surveilling the cease-fire line.350 “The operational utility of the GOMN is seriously questioned by
most observers and by the Rwandan government,” Catherine Boivineau, the Quai d’Orsay’s
director of East and Central Africa, wrote in a March 1993 telegram.351 “The very fact that they
did not see coming, or signal, the general offensive the RPF launched on 8 February is a telling
testimony.”352
A movement to enlist the United Nations to supplement, or perhaps take over for, the
GOMN in the demilitarized zone began, curiously enough, with a pair of letters, both dated 22
February 1993, from the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, respectively, to the president of the
UN Security Council.353 The letters pleaded for the deployment of a team of UN military
observers—not to the demilitarized zone, but to the Rwandan-Ugandan border.354 Rwanda’s letter,
signed by its permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Jean-Damascène
Bizimana, argued that such a team would help “promote respect for the cease-fire and the search
for a negotiated solution” to the conflict by “ascertaining that no military assistance, in men or in
equipment, reaches Rwandese territory from Ugandan territory.”355 The letter from the Ugandan
permanent representative sought the same, but for a different reason: “to forestall any accusations
as has happened in the past, against Uganda of any involvement in the internal conflict in
Rwanda.”356
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France embraced this idea. Quesnot and Pin stated without reservation, “We support this
initiative,” in their 23 February note to Mitterrand, though they did not elaborate on how, exactly,
placing a team of international observers along the Rwandan-Ugandan border would help resolve
the conflict.357 One observes, though, that in the same note to the president, Quesnot and Pin
explained that French direct military participation in combat would not be possible without
“irrefutable evidence of a direct Ugandan military intervention”—evidence that, by their own
admission, France did not have,358 but that a UN observer team might, in theory, uncover.
Pin, offering Minister of Cooperation Debarge a list of talking points for his upcoming trip
to Kigali and Kampala, advised the minister to explain to President Museveni that a “military
resolution” to the conflict in Rwanda was “unacceptable.”359 “[A]sk him to use his (obvious)
influence on the RPF to get [the RPF] to implement, on the ground, the cease-fire that it claims to
accept. We want solid proof of the RPF’s willingness to put an end to its current offensive,” Pin
wrote.360 The memo encouraged Debarge to “leave [Museveni] worried about our [France’s]
degree of commitment” in the FAR’s war effort. (The message was apparently received. A news
report following Debarge’s encounter with Museveni on 1 March described a contentious meeting,
stating that the two men “differed on a number of issues[,] with the Ugandan leader accusing
France of interfering in the Rwandan conflict.”361)
Debarge struck a different tone in Kigali. There, as Belgian Ambassador Swinnen reported
in a cable, the French minister reassured Rwandan authorities that France stood in solidarity with
the Rwandan people—and that the French Army stood in solidarity with the Rwanda.362 “Minister
Debarge’s message is a clear political and military endorsement offered by France to Rwanda
against the RPF,” Swinnen assessed.363 Debarge’s one plea to the Rwandan president and prime
minister was that they and their factions must bury their disagreements and “present a united front
against the RPF”364—who, Debarge insisted, were not the liberators they claimed to be,365 and who
would all but certainly rule as totalitarians, were they to succeed in toppling the government.366
Habyarimana agreed to work with the opposition in preparations for the upcoming talks
with the RPF in Dar es Salaam, then just a few days away.367 Pin, though, had his doubts. In a
remarkably candid assessment, Pin intimated in a 2 March 1993 memo to Mitterrand that France’s
recent decision to send two additional Noroît companies to Rwanda had “[r]eassured”
Habyarimana in a way that may have been counterproductive.368 “[H]e no longer seeks a political
compromise with the opposition,” Pin wrote.369 “Convinced of our commitment to him, he cannot
believe that we will let the RPF seize Kigali.”370
Pin was just as concerned about the prime minister and opposition parties, who appeared
to him “more worried about driving Habyarimana from power than opposing the RPF, despite the
fear [the latter] inspires in them.”371 (The Bujumbura joint communiqué, issued the same day as
Pin’s note to Mitterrand, was so laden with disdain for the Rwandan president,372 it could only
have confirmed this view.) Pin suspected that the opposition parties in the governing coalition
viewed themselves as a potential “third force” in Rwandan politics which could seize power as a
more acceptable alternative to the RPF following the government’s collapse.373
Pin’s prescription, as it had been before, was to increase French aid to the FAR “so that
Kigali remains standing.”374 General Quesnot, a fellow advocate for expanding military assistance
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to Rwanda, argued in a memo the next day that France should, at a minimum, maintain its current
military presence, even as he acknowledged, “Our military and technical assistance to the
Rwandan forces is still not sufficient to reverse the balance of power.”375 (Nor, he wrote, had it
achieved France’s political objectives, “which seems more serious to me.”376) He preferred, too,
that the French government do more to strengthen the FAR.377
Debarge poured cold water on this talk when President Mitterrand and roughly a dozen
ministers and advisers gathered at noon of 3 March 1993.378 Notes of the meeting indicate that
when Mitterrand turned the discussion over to Debarge to recount his findings during his visit to
Kigali a few days earlier, the minister’s report was bleak.379 “President Habyarimana is disoriented
and gasping for breath,” he said.380 While the FAR continued to fight “unevenly,” the RPF had
reinforced its positions and “can now pursue its political and military offensive.”381 “The question
everyone is asking,” Debarge said, “is: what will the French Army do?”382
One option, certainly, would have been to send more troops. This, in fact, is precisely what
France’s commander of operations in Kigali, Col. Delort, had recommended in a proposal just one
day earlier.383 In a 2 March 1993 memo, Delort had sought to roughly double the number of men
in the Chimère detachment, from 65 to 126.384 The new men would include an adviser to the FAR
chief of staff, Col. Nsabimana; another adviser to the FAR état-major, this one specializing in
intelligence and operations; an adviser to the commanders of three of the most active operational
sectors; and several dozen trainers and instructors, some specializing in firearms training.385 Delort
also recommended that the French government dedicate some Noroît troops to intelligencegathering operations, an area in which he perceived the FAR as “still weak.”386
Delort’s proposal was only one day old and was still working its way up the chain of
command in the Ministry of Defense when President Mitterrand and the team of ministers and
advisers he had gathered for the 3 March 1993 council meeting took up the question Debarge had
posed: “what will the French Army do?”387 It is notable, though, that no one at the meeting urged
the president to consider placing more troops at the FAR’s disposal, as Delort had just
recommended. Instead, the discussion rather quickly turned to recent developments at the UN
Security Council, which was then considering two proposals: first, to send a team of observers to
the Rwandan-Ugandan border, and, second, to augment the observer team (the GOMN) in the
demilitarized zone.388 French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas let it be known that he supported
these initiatives, saying, “[The situation] is clearer now. We must jump at these opportunities.”389
Mitterrand needed no more convincing. “We must be replaced by international forces from
the UN as soon as possible,” he announced.390 The notion of internationalizing the conflict seemed
to energize him. “[I]f our soldiers become UN soldiers, that changes the nature of things,” he
said.391 “But,” he said, “we must not be alone.”392 To simply put blue helmets on the heads of
French soldiers already in Rwanda would not be enough; other countries would have to send troops
as well.
Not wanting to waste time, Mitterrand urged the Quai d’Orsay to get ahold of France’s
permanent representative to the UN Security Council, Jean-Bernard Mérimée, “within the hour”
in order to “hurry up to get the system in place.”393 The message evidently was received; according
to a US cable, Mérimée reached out at once to all of the other permanent representatives to the
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Security Council and urged them to support a resolution authorizing an inter-positional force
situated between the RPF and the Rwandan government of 500 to 1,000 UN soldiers “as soon as
possible.”394 He framed the proposal as urgent, noting that RPF troops were just outside Kigali and
arguing that “the council needs to tackle this situation to prevent possible massacres.”395 He told
his colleagues that, if asked, France could make 600 of its own troops available to the United
Nations.396 Twenty-four hours later, a Rwandan diplomat formally requested an “immediate
meeting” of the Security Council to discuss the Rwandan crisis,397 a plea that Mérimée seconded
in a letter that same day.398
The French government’s interest in replacing Noroît with UN forces was, in effect, an
acknowledgement that France’s intervention in Rwanda had not been the cakewalk that
Mitterrand’s son, Jean-Christophe, had forecasted at the outset of the war, when he reportedly
predicted “the whole thing will be over in two or three months.”399 “Today, the French presence
is unanimously opposed,” a former Matignon advisor wrote in a 15 March 1993 note to Michel
Rocard, who had been France’s prime minister when the war first started. “That is why Paris has
just asked that the baton be taken up by UN peacekeepers and hopes to be able to get out very
quickly.”400
Mitterrand’s perspective, as he explained during the 3 March meeting, was that a handoff
to the United Nations would not be without some risk,401 but it would, in any event, be “wise.”402
“To stay,” the president said, “would be to risk being helpless spectators of the victors’ arrival.”403
(This, to be sure, was not an image Mitterrand would have welcomed,404 especially with his party’s
grip on power in the National Assembly on the line. The elections were just a few weeks away,
with a first round of voting scheduled for 21 March and a second round for 28 March.) The United
Nations, however, would not send troops to Rwanda overnight. Meanwhile, RPF troops were
within reach of Kigali and could, perhaps, conquer the city in just “a few days,” in Mitterrand’s
estimation.405 “It is not in our interest for the Tutsis to advance too quickly,” he stated at the 3
March meeting.406 “We must buy time, delay [things] by all diplomatic means and continue to
support the Rwandan Army by supplying it with the munitions it needs.”407 Delaye, who took notes
during the meeting, understood this to mean that the French government must do what is necessary
to keep the FAR in the fight long enough for the peace talks to run their course.408 “We can neither
leave nor engage militarily any further,” Delaye wrote. “So if we want Kigali to remain standing,
we must increase the Rwandan Army’s defensive means (equipment and assistance).”409
2. Mitterrand’s Decision to Pursue a Handoff to the United Nations Disrupted
French Special Forces’ Preparations for a Major Counter-Offensive against the
RPF.
French military officials came to understand, soon enough, that the winds had shifted.
Delort received evidence of this on 5 March 1993, when the Special Operations Command (COS)
in Paris responded to his recent proposal to expand Operation Chimère.410 COS did not reject the
proposal outright; it said a temporary reinforcement of Chimère was only “conceivable” due to the
urgent operational situation on the ground.411 It noted, though, that there were reasons to be wary.
“The implementation of this reinforcement comes late, in the context of a crisis rather than
prevention, and amidst much international media hostility,” the memo stated.412 “We may wonder
if, in light of the risks of compromise that have become substantial, the near doubling of the force
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is timely in a local, military, and political context that has become unfavorable.”413 Chimère had
always been risky; now, with French legislative elections just two weeks away, decision-makers
in Paris had even more reason to fear the bad press that the secret operation, if discovered, might
generate. Those fears proved too much, apparently, because, based on our review of French and
Rwandan government documents, it appears the French government did not, in the end, send
Delort the troops he had requested.
Col. Tauzin’s reaction to the Mitterrand administration’s reassessment of France’s strategy,
once word of it reached his post in Kigali, was tinged with “a strong sense of bitterness and
immense disappointment.”414 Tauzin, the leader of Operation Chimère, had been planning a “major
counter-offensive to try to send the RPF back to Uganda.”415 The FAR’s chief of staff, Col.
Nsabimana, had approved the operation, nicknamed “Miyove.”416 The plan, as initially drafted,
was for a team of commandos, specially selected by French officers, to steal into Byumba at night
in preparation for a FAR attack at dawn on 2 March.417 The operation, though, was delayed because
of a logistical snag, which proved fateful.418 The day before it was to launch, Delort delivered
some surprising news to Tauzin: “Paris was wondering if this offensive was really timely.”419 The
top priority, Delort said, was to protect Kigali. Peace talks were expected to resume soon. A
counteroffensive, at this time, would be questionable—“especially since it is not certain that it will
succeed!”420
Tauzin felt blindsided. Recounting the episode in his memoir, years later, he wrote that he
had been “absolutely certain” that the offensive would succeed and “change the course of events”
in Rwanda.421 Lt. Col. Maurin, then heading Delort’s intelligence office, had shared his frustration,
at one point throwing his arms up in the air and shouting, “We have to go! You will surely
succeed!”422
Tauzin’s understanding was that the final decision rested with him.423 In the end, according
to his memoir, he agreed with his deputy, Lt. Col. Chéreau, that the operation could not proceed if
political leaders in Paris did not stand behind it.424 He promptly broke the news to Nsabimana:
I will never forget his despair. . . . Like me, infinitely better than me, he knows
intimately that the war is lost; it was only a matter of time now. He also knows,
infinitely better than I do, what the final consequences of the Hutu defeat [by] the
Tutsis will be. . . . As I leave his office alone at dusk, I cry with rage against
“Paris”!425
Tauzin, in self-aggrandizing fashion, framed this moment in his memoir as a point of no
return. He imagined that, had the operation gone forward, the FAR might have recovered much of
the territory the RPF had gained over the previous two years, precipitating more FAR victories to
come and strengthening the Rwandan government’s hand in the Arusha negotiations.426 And then?
“I have often thought that the ‘genocide’ would probably not have taken place at that time,” he
wrote. Untold lives—most of them Hutu, he was quick to point out—might have been spared.427
Tauzin cursed himself for falling in line with the new directive from Paris. “[A]bove all,” he wrote,
“when the so-called ‘Genocide of the Tutsis’ began, I deeply regretted being so disciplined! And
this is the only regret I have about my decisions and actions during this conflict.”428
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3. Relenting under Pressure, the French Government Withdrew Two Noroît
Reinforcement Companies.
The RPF may not have known just how close France came to orchestrating a major
counteroffensive in early March 1993, but it did suspect plans to that effect were in the works.
“The rebels were convinced that France was preparing a real plan of attack that aimed to drive
them out of Rwandan territory altogether. . . . The deterrent effect of our determination was
significant, and the prime minister is well aware of it. The Rwandan delegation would not have
gained anything if it didn’t have this card in its hand,” Ambassador Martres reported in a cable on
9 March, shortly after the conclusion of a three-day summit between the RPF and Rwandan
government delegations in Dar es Salaam.429 As Tauzin’s memoir confirms, the RPF had not been
wrong. The Rwandan government delegation, though, denied it, going to lengths “to persuade their
interlocutors that [France’s] only objective was to foster a negotiated solution.”430
The Dar es Salaam summit, whose purpose, ostensibly, was to seek assurances from the
two sides in hopes of steering the Arusha process back on course,431 would leave little doubt about
the RPF’s priorities in early March 1993. RPF leaders did not know exactly how many troops
France had sent to Rwanda—the delegation apparently believed there were at least 1,500 French
soldiers on the ground (when in fact there were less than half that number)432—but they knew full
well that the French government was not telling the truth when it repeatedly insisted its men were
there only to protect French nationals. (Delaye’s notes following the 3 March restricted council
meeting in Paris acknowledged that the stated mission of protecting expats had always been a
“pretext”—one that now, with fears of an RPF military assault on Kigali mounting, was “no longer
illusory.”433 ) They had no doubt that the true mission of the French troops was, as Major Kagame
put it, “to prop up the Habyarimana regime,”434 and they correctly surmised that French officers
were helping coordinate the FAR’s military tactics.435 Rwandan authorities, suspecting the RPF
Army still hoped to launch an attack on Kigali, assumed that the group viewed Noroît as an
impediment and was determined to secure their expulsion from the country.436 For this reason, a
French Ministry of Defense memo, dated 9 March, stated, “Thus, all of the RPF’s efforts are now
focused on making us evacuate our forces from Rwanda.”437
The talks in Dar es Salaam began auspiciously enough. Within the first 24 hours, the RPF
announced it had agreed to a partial retreat to the pre-8 February cease-fire line, on two conditions:
first, the OAU must take control of the evacuated positions and, second, the government must
respect the cease-fire.438 The expectation was that the meeting would wrap up the next day, but,
according to an AFP report, the RPF forced a delay by issuing a “last minute demand” for an
immediate withdrawal of French troops.439 The gambit frustrated some observers, who had hoped
to save more contentious issues for a later date,440 but it worked. On 7 March, the delegations
signed two agreements. The first, which was public, called for a cease-fire to begin at midnight on
9 March, required the RPF forces to retreat to the old cease-fire line between 14 and 17 March,
and set a date (15 March) for the resumption of talks in Arusha.441 A second agreement, deemed
“confidential,” called on France to scale back its military presence.442 The key provisions stated,
in particular:
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1. The French troops which arrived in Rwanda on 8th February 1993 (2 companies)
should pull out from the country within a period of eight (8) days effective from 17
March 1993.
2. The French troops which arrived in Rwanda before 8 February 1993 (2
companies) shall be confined in Kigali with effect from 17th March, 1993 until they
are replaced by a neutral international force to be mutually agreed upon by the two
parties.443
French officials noted that the agreement referred only to Noroît. It had entirely glossed over
Chimère (whose presence, of course, had been kept secret), as well as the dozens of French
advisers and technicians whose work with the FAR was authorized by a 1992 amendment to the
1975 Franco-Rwandan military assistance agreement.444
Even still, for French officials, there was a clear risk in reeling back two of the four Noroît
companies. France had long viewed Noroît as a deterrent, believing its presence was all that
stopped the RPF from seizing Kigali.445 An adviser in the French Ministry of Defense predicted
on 9 March that the RPF military would attack Kigali “at the first opportunity.”446 This prospect
was particularly concerning because the RPF, at that moment, was just 30 kilometers outside
Kigali. If it did launch an attack, the Defense Ministry advisor wrote, it would be impossible for
France to send reinforcements in time.447 Kigali, in this hypothetical scenario, would fall, ending
the war before the French government could succeed in taking what General Quesnot, in a
handwritten note also written 9 March, called “the honorable and favorable way out”—that is,
lining up UN troops to take the place of its own (or placing French troops under UN authority).448
Quesnot abhorred the thought, arguing an RPF military victory at this point, with French boots
still on the ground, “would not be without consequences for the credibility of our engagements in
Africa.”449
French officials recognized, though, that as long as the Rwandan authorities were standing
behind the Dar es Salaam agreements, it would be awkward for the French government to
protest.450 And, for the moment, at least, it seemed they were: President Habyarimana told
Ambassador Martres that he did not object to the confidential agreement’s most critical provisions
(those calling for the withdrawal of the two Noroît reinforcement companies and requiring the
remaining companies to confine themselves to Kigali).451 Delaye, the head of the Élysée Africa
Cell, accentuated the positive for France, arguing in a note to President Mitterrand that the 7 March
agreement could prove to be France’s “exit ticket”—provided, he said, “that everyone plays
along.”452 That was far from a certainty. Habyarimana, in his conversation with Martres, had said
he doubted the RPF would honor its own commitments under the 7 March joint communiqué
(referring, presumably, to its promise to withdraw its troops from the positions they had occupied
since 8 February).453
In one respect, at least, France was getting what it wanted: Habyarimana had not
undermined the government delegation or its chief, Prime Minister Nsenginyaremye. The “united
front,” which Cooperation Minister Debarge had urged the two leaders to forge at the end of
February 1993, appeared, temporarily, to be holding. At one point, not long after the summit, the
Rwandan president and prime minister held a joint meeting with senior military leaders, and a
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radio broadcast reported that Habyarimana “expressed his appreciation to the prime minister for
participating in the meeting.”454 A US cable remarked, “This is the first time we can remember the
president saying anything nice to the prime minister in public.”455
Predictably, though, not everyone was pleased. On 10 March, members of the president’s
own party (the MRND) and the CDR organized demonstrations in front of the French embassy to
protest the Dar es Salaam accords and to demand that French troops stay put.456 The CDR issued
a press release blasting Habyarimana, saying, “This shows clearly that Mr. Habyarimana Juvénal,
President of the Republic, is no longer concerned with the interests of the nation; he has other
interests to defend instead.”457 Its statements spurred speculation that the CDR might soon sever
ties with the president’s party,458 as, in fact, it did, on 27 March.459
The growing tensions within the MRND-CDR alliance fueled rumors of a possible coup.460
A US cable on 22 March reported that the rumors had been “floating around Kigali” for a couple
of weeks and took a variety of forms, though all ended the same way: with Habyarimana “departing
gracefully for some foreign shore.”461 The “alleged chief plotter,” according to the cable, was
Colonel Théoneste Bagosora.462 The cable, however, dismissed the rumors as “probably farfetched in current circumstances.”463 Defense Minister Gasana acknowledged he had heard such
rumors, but insisted “that no coup could succeed at this time, even if some officers were dumb
enough to try.”464
Habyarimana encountered dissension within the ranks of the FAR, as well.465 On 10 March,
unit commanders at Camp Kayuya formalized their concerns about the pending departure of
French troops in a memo addressed to the Rwandan Army état-major.466 The commanders were
notably critical of the FAR leadership for their complacency, asking why the FAR was “staying
silent” in the face of grave problems threatening to tear the country apart.467
More and more, Habyarimana seemed tired. On 30 March, he announced his resignation
as chairman of the MRND, the party he had created and led for nearly two decades.468 Speaking
with unusual frankness to Ambassador Martres shortly before this announcement, the president
“implied that . . . he would not look unfavorably on the prospect of relinquishing the presidency
of the Republic,” once the peace process was completed and a new government installed.469
Habyarimana confided, though, that he worried his opponents would seek to have him prosecuted
for alleged human rights abuses (allegations he vociferously denied). “He only asks to live in peace
in his country,” Martres wrote.470 The president pressed Martres to relay this message to President
Mitterrand “with the greatest discretion,” suggesting the French government might help him secure
“a formal promise from his opponents not to take legal action against him and his family” after the
end of his presidency.471 Mitterrand’s response to this request, if indeed he did respond, has not
been made public.
The French government, meanwhile, was making strides in its effort to spur the United
Nations to take action in Rwanda.472 On 12 March, the Security Council unanimously approved a
resolution inviting Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali to “examine” the possibility of sending troops
to the region.473 The resolution envisioned dispatching one multinational force to monitor the
cease-fire and protect civilians, and a second force to surveil the Rwandan-Ugandan border.474 The
French representative, the first to speak after the vote, framed the resolution as an urgently needed
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response to a “very serious humanitarian crisis,” saying, “The French Government felt that resolute
action had to be taken to reach an effective and lasting cessation of hostilities, to promote the
intensification of humanitarian assistance, and to enable the peace efforts to continue.”475 Suffice
it to say, he did not mention that the French government had only decided to push for the resolution
after President Mitterrand resolved that French forces in Rwanda “be replaced by international
forces from the UN.”476
The confidential Dar es Salaam agreement had called for France to begin withdrawing two
Noroît reinforcement companies by 17 March and to complete the process within eight days.477
However, as the deadline approached, President Habyarimana signaled the drawdown may not
happen quite so soon. In a national broadcast on 14 March, the Rwandan president said French
soldiers would not leave until the RPF honored its commitment to retreat to the agreed-upon ceasefire line.478 French officials likewise viewed the two commitments as linked. “The problem,”
General Quesnot wrote in a 17 March memo, “is whether we should begin the withdrawal of these
two [Noroît] companies on the scheduled dates, even if the RPF has not previously withdrawn to
the cease-fire line agreed upon in the Dar es Salaam agreement.”479 Quesnot, saying he was
“certain of the RPF’s bad faith,” recommended that France start by withdrawing only one of the
two reinforcement companies, while, at the same time, “maintain[ing], if not reinforc[ing], our
indirect help to the Rwandan Army, which is in the process of pulling itself together.”480
When President Mitterrand presided over a restricted council meeting later that day,
Admiral Lanxade confirmed that the RPF was, indeed, “making arrangements for withdrawal,”
but was, at the same time, “playing a double game and leaving troops in position.”481 Lanxade
agreed with Quesnot—and with Rwandan authorities—that France could reasonably withdraw one
company as a first step.482 Mitterrand consented.483 “I agree,” he said, according to notes from the
meeting. “We asked for an agreement, we have it. It must be applied. Only, we must be vigilant.”484
Lt. Col. Tracqui, the commander of the Noroît forces, issued the order on 19 March,
announcing that the RPF Army “seems to be withdrawing its first elements” to the cease-fire line
and that the French government, in return, had decided to withdraw the motorized infantry
company, the lighting and support company, and the heavy mortars section, starting on 20
March.485 The order cautioned the remaining French companies: “This measure is more political
than military in nature and should not imply any loosening of the surveillance system.”486
President Mitterrand was forced to confront the issue again several days later, as the
deadline to withdraw the second reinforcement company approached. In a 24 March briefing,
General Quesnot made it known he remained unsatisfied.487 The RPF military had still only
partially retreated.488 Nevertheless, he wrote, it was the recommendation of both the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense that France withdraw the second Noroît reinforcement
company—if only, he said, “to avoid any polemic against us.”489 Mitterrand, presiding once again
over a meeting of the restricted council, deferred to Admiral Lanxade: “Your final position on this
topic—are we withdrawing a company?”490 Lanxade’s answer was yes.491 “Agreed,” Mitterrand
said.492 The order went out later that day,493 leaving France with two companies in Kigali
prefecture—more, still, than it had had before the 8 February offensive, but not enough, it was
believed, to beat back an RPF assault on Kigali.
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As Col. Dominique Delort’s command over all French forces in Kigali came to a close, he
summed up France’s military response to the RPF’s 8 February counter-offensive with a
declaration of mission accomplished. In a 25 March 1993 “Ordre Du Jour”—a daily agenda drafted
by a commanding officer announcing the day’s priorities—he credited a reinforced Noroît
protecting Kigali and “support in the areas of advice and training” to the FAR with preventing the
fall of “the capital of a friendly state” at the hands of “an armed rebellion.”494 “For 45 days the
French forces in Rwanda both presented a credible deterrent and a know-how that was equally
decisive.”495 On 1 April 1993, Col. Tauzin and “most” of his detachment, which had helped
provide much of the “know-how” that Delort praised, returned to France, ending Operation
Chimère.496 Yet, while units were leaving Rwanda, the work of French forces in Rwanda
continued, as Delort added in his 25 March note: “Noroît, a DAMI [contingent] and the AMT
continue on a mission that is always very delicate.”497
To Col. Cussac, however, who remained in his role as defense attaché and chief of the
Military Assistance Mission in Rwanda and returned to commanding Noroît in April,498 the future
looked bleak. The FAR had not acquitted itself well on the field (save the French-trained units that
had preserved Byumba and Ruhengeri); the President and the opposition remained divided,
“underestimating an enemy whom they too naively believed could become an ally;”499 and
Habyarimana, who feared that the FIDH report would become the “centerpiece of a criminal
charge” against him,500 might “soon find himself alone, deprived of the C.D.R. and diehard Hutus
who are abandoning him on the right, while his former single party will collapse when he no longer
holds on to it tightly.”501 “Inexorably,” Cussac bemoaned, “‘Tutsiland’ is taking shape.”502
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Notes to Chapter VI
1
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (14 Jan. 1993) (capitalization in original).
2
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Impasse Again”).
3
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Progress Toward Political
Compromise”).
4
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Party Demonstrations Block Roads,
Bottle Up Kigali; Ethnic Violence in Gisenyi Prefecture”).
5
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Kigali Awaits Protocol”). Although the
cable identified significant evidence supporting the arrest of the two Interahamwe members, including that they were
found at the scene with a hand grenade, it separately raised some doubt as to their connection to the detonated
explosive.
6
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Kigali Awaits Protocol”).
7
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Two Terrorist Attacks in Kigali Leave
20 Injured”).
8
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Two Terrorist Attacks in Kigali Leave
20 Injured”).
9
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Two Terrorist Attacks in Kigali Leave
20 Injured”).
10
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Party Demonstrations Block Roads,
Bottle Up Kigali; Ethnic Violence in Gisenyi Prefecture”).
11
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Kigali Awaits Protocol”).
12
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Kigali Awaits Protocol”).
13
Letter from Juvénal Habyarimana to François Mitterrand (5 Dec. 1992).
14
See Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (18 Jan. 1993).
15
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Kigali Awaits Protocol”).
16
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Kigali Awaits Protocol”).
17
Protocole d’accord entre le gouvernement de la republique rwandaise et le front patriotique rwandais sur le partage
du pouvoir dans le cadre d’un gouvernement de transition à base élargie [Memorandum of Understanding between
the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the Sharing of Power within the
Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government], Rw. – GOR & RPF, 17, 9 Jan. 1993.
18
Protocole d’accord entre le gouvernement de la republique rwandaise et le front patriotique rwandais sur le partage
du pouvoir dans le cadre d’un gouvernement de transition à base élargie [Memorandum of Understanding between
the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the Sharing of Power within the
Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government], Rw. – GOR & RPF, 6-7, 9 Jan. 1993.
19
Protocole d’accord entre le gouvernement de la republique rwandaise et le front patriotique rwandais sur le partage
du pouvoir dans le cadre d’un gouvernement de transition à base élargie [Memorandum of Understanding between
the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the Sharing of Power within the
Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government], Rw. – GOR & RPF, 6-7, 9 Jan. 1993.
20
Protocole d’accord entre le gouvernement de la republique rwandaise et le front patriotique rwandais sur le partage
du pouvoir dans le cadre d’un gouvernement de transition à base élargie [Memorandum of Understanding between
the Government of the Rwandan Republic and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the Sharing of Power within the
Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government], Rw. – GOR & RPF, 6-7, 9 Jan. 1993.
21
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Reactions to Arusha Protocol”).
22
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Reactions to Arusha Protocol”).
23
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Reactions to Arusha Protocol”).
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24
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Reactions to Arusha Protocol”).
25
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Reactions to Arusha Protocol”).
26
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (14 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
27
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (14 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
28
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (14 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
29
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (14 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
30
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (18 Jan. 1993).
31
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (18 Jan. 1993).
32
The N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, art. II, Rw. – RPF, 12 July 1992. Specifically, Article II of the accord
called for “[t]he withdrawal of all foreign troops after the effective deployment of the Neutral Military Observer Group
(GOMN), with the exception of military cooperants present in Rwanda pursuant to bilateral cooperation agreements.”
This provision could be read to authorize the continued presence of the MAM advisers and technicians working with
the Rwandan Army and Gendarmerie, but not the Noroît troops.
33
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (18 Jan. 1993).
34
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (18 Jan. 1993) (original capitalization removed).
35
FIDH Report (1993). No allegations of violence during the FIDH Commission’s two-week stay in Rwanda were
included in its report. In its press release of 8 March 1993 upon releasing its final report, the Commission wrote: “The
Commission left Rwanda on 21 January 1993, when it completed its investigations. The following day, [the
Commission] was made aware of further new massacres in north-western Rwanda was brought to its attention, as well
as summary executions, including of one of its witnesses.” See Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme et
al., Communiqué de Presse (8 Mar. 1993).
36
FIDH Report 1 (1993).
37
Memorandum from Matthieu Ngirumpatse to Dismas Nsengiyaremye (4 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Enquête
internationale sur la violation des Droits de l’Homme au Rwanda”); see also Memorandum from Faustin Munyazesa
to Dismas Nsengiyaremye (17 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “Enquête internationale sur la violation des droits de l’ homme
au Rwanda”).
38
FIDH Report 3 (1993).
39
FIDH Report 3 (1993).
40
Press Release, Africa Watch, Outbreak of Violence Follows Human Rights Investigation in Rwanda (27 Jan. 1993).
41
Cable from Georges Martres to Bruno Delaye (19 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Mission d’enquete de la Federation
Internationale des Droits de l’Homme”).
42
Cable from Georges Martres to Bruno Delaye (19 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Mission d’enquete de la Federation
Internationale des Droits de l’Homme”). Some questioned the credibility of Janvier Afrika’s claims. See, e.g., Cable
from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (22 Jan. 1993) (reporting that “[a] Canadian member of
the commission told my American colleague that he doubted the credibility of Afrika's statements”).
43
Cable from Georges Martres to Bruno Delaye (19 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Mission d’enquete de la Federation
Internationale des Droits de l’Homme”).
44
Letter from Jean Carbonare to Bruno Delaye (1 Feb. 1993).
45
Letter from Jean Carbonare to Bruno Delaye (1 Feb. 1993).
46
Letter from Jean Carbonare to Bruno Delaye (1 Feb. 1993). While Martres and the FIDH Report spelled Janvier’s
name as “Africa,” the correct spelling, according to how it is listed in the magazine he published, Umurava, is “Afrika.”
47
PIERRE PÉAN, NOIRES FUREURS, BLANCS MENTEURS RWANDA 1990-1994 [BLACK RAGE, WHITE LIARS RWANDA
1990-1994] 190-94 (2005).
48
FIDH Report 3, 9 (1993).
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Chapter VI
January – March 1993
49
MRND Continues Demonstrations; Kigali Under Curfew, KIGALI RADIODIFFUSION NATIONALE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE
RWANDAISE, 20 Jan. 1993 (transcribed by US Foreign Broadcast Information Service).
50
Letter from Jan de Bekker to Mathieu Ngirumpatse (24 Jan. 1993).
51
Dismas Nsengiyaremye, La Transition Démocratique au Rwanda (1989-1993), in LES CRISES POLITIQUES AU
BURUNDI ET AU RWANDA (1993-1994) [THE POLITICAL CRISES IN BURUNDI AND RWANDA (1993-1994)] (André
Guichaoua ed. 1995).
52
Press Release, Africa Watch, Outbreak of Violence Follows Human Rights Investigation in Rwanda (27 Jan. 1993).
Before the Commission left Rwanda, its members met with President Habyarimana to “express concern for the security
of persons who cooperated with the Commission’s work.” According to the release, “[d]uring their visit to Rwanda,
two Commission members were stopped at an illegal roadblock set up by the MRND militia. The Tutsi interpreter
with them was threatened with death by the youth who were armed with machetes and who openly identified
themselves as Interahamwe, or members of the MRND militia.” The team protested the “threats [made] against those
who had helped with its work and called upon the President and Minister of Interior . . . to provide its witnesses and
collaborators with full protection.”
53
Quatre-vingt morts dans les violences au Rwanda, selon un nouveau bilan [Violence in Rwanda Leads to 80 Dead,
According to a New Report], AFP, 27 Jan. 1993; see also Deux morts et dix blesses graves dans des manifestations
au Rwanda [Two Dead and Ten Seriously Injured in Rwanda Demonstrations], AFP, 21 Jan. 1993.
54
Deux morts et dix blesses graves dans des manifestations au Rwanda [Two Dead and Ten Seriously Injured in
Rwanda Demonstrations], AFP, 21 Jan. 1993.
55
Press Release, Africa Watch, Outbreak of Violence Follows Human Rights Investigation in Rwanda (27 Jan. 1993).
56
Deux morts et dix blesses graves dans des manifestations au Rwanda [Two Dead and Ten Seriously Injured in
Rwanda Demonstrations], AFP, 21 Jan. 1993.
57
Press Release, Africa Watch, Outbreak of Violence Follows Human Rights Investigation in Rwanda 12 (27 Jan.
1993).
58
Fieulle de Motivation of Pascal Senyamuhara Safari alias Pascal Simbikangwa by Court of Assizes of Paris 3 (14
Mar. 2014); Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (12 Mar. 1992).
59
Maïa de la Baume, France Convicts Rwandan Ex-Officer of Genocide, N.Y. TIMES, 14 Mar. 2014.
60
Letter from Monique Mujawamariya to Fernand Boedts (23 Jan. 1993). Mujawamariya wrote on behalf of the
Association rwandaise pour la défense des droits de la personne et des libertés publiques [Rwandan Association for
the Defense of Human Rights and Public Freedoms], which was part of the CLADHO cohort of Rwandan human
rights associations that had requested the FIDH Commission come to Rwanda.
61
Rwanda: une cinquantaine de morts lors d’affrontements dans le Nord-Ouest [Rwanda: About 50 Dead in Clashes
in the North-west], LE MONDE, 28 Jan. 1993.
62
Rwanda: une cinquantaine de morts lors d’affrontements dans le Nord-Ouest [Rwanda: About 50 Dead in Clashes
in the North-west], LE MONDE, 28 Jan. 1993.
63
Rwanda: les affrontements entre Hutus et Tutsis, quatre-vingts personnes ont été tuées lors de nouvelles violences
tribales [Rwanda: Clashes between Hutus and Tutsi, Eighty People Killed in New Tribal Violence], LE MONDE, 29
Jan. 1993.
64
Stephen Smith, Paris renforce son dispositif militaire à Kigali [Paris Reinforces Its Military Apparatus in Kigali],
LIBÉRATION, 10 Feb. 1993.
65
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (18 Feb. 1993); see also Cable from US Secretary of State (6
Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Africa Bureau Friday Report, 2/5/93”) (“ICRC has confirmed over 300 killed and 4,000
displaced in January violence.”)
66
FIDH Report 4, 37-38 (emphasis added). The RPF’s response to allegations that it had targeted civilians was that
the FAR had “installed its posts too near civilian targets, thus making it likely that civilians would suffer in the course
of attacks.” Id. at 37. The Commission did not dispute this assertion but reported that eyewitnesses had described three
“deliberate RPF attacks” on a clinic where FAR soldiers were hospitalized. See id.
67
Interview by France TV 2 with Jean Carbonare (26 Jan. 1993).
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Chapter VI
68
January – March 1993
Interview by France TV 2 with Jean Carbonare (26 Jan. 1993).
69
Interview by France TV 2 with Jean Carbonare 26 Jan. 1993). Jean Carbonare would return to French television on
3 February, telling an interviewer for France’s TV5 that he believed “the murders had been organized by the
bourgmestres [mayors] and the Army,” adding “the French military must have been aware and are obligated to
intervene.”
70
Cable from Georges Martres (29 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Les evenements du Rwanda et la communaute Francaise”).
71
Cable from Georges Martres (29 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Les evenements du Rwanda et la communaute Francaise”).
72
Cable from Georges Martres (29 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Les evenements du Rwanda et la communaute Francaise”).
73
Cable from Georges Martres (29 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Les evenements du Rwanda et la communaute Francaise”).
74
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (27 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Demarche on President
Habyarimana”) (emphasis added).
75
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (5 Feb. 1993). Swinnen reported that amongst
the conclusions of the investigation were the following: “The victims are essentially Tutsi but are also Hutu affiliated
with Tutsi, people from other regions, and people from parties other than the MRND and CDR. The disturbances and
massacres are organized. The instigators and organizers have exploited the reflexes for fear of the other ethnic group,
other regions or other parties to mount the populations against each other.”
76
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Demarches to President and Prime
Minister”).
77
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Demarches to President and Prime
Minister”).
78
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Demarches to President and Prime
Minister”).
79
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Demarches to President and Prime
Minister”).
80
Duclert Commission Report 222-23 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/13, TD Kigali 103, 5 Feb. 1993. La situation en
préfecture de Gisenyi après les massacres inter ethniques).
81
Duclert Commission Report 222-23 (quoting SHD, GR 2003 Z 17/13, TD Kigali 103, 5 Feb. 1993. La situation en
préfecture de Gisenyi après les massacres inter ethniques).
82
See Cable from US Secretary of State (6 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Africa Bureau Friday Report, 2/5/93”) (“The
President was to have visited the areas of violence February 4 with the intention of suspending those local officials
implicated. We see this action as the essential minimum requirement to demonstrate Habyarimana’s good faith.”).
83
MIP Audition of Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1, 106.
84
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (9 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Back to Arusha”). PL leader Justin
Mugenzi told the US ambassador that Habyarimana had planned to replace only four officials, but increased that
number in response to the RPF offensive on 8 February. Simbikangwa continued in his role as an intelligence officer
until the Genocide, remaining close with President Habyarimana. See Memorandum from Marc Nees to Joseph Dewez
(15 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Liste des noms d’Interahamwe distribuant des armes et des munitions”); see also
Memorandum from Joseph Kavaruganda to Juvénal Habyarimana, (19 Mar. 1994).
85
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (18 Feb. 1993).
86
Rwandan President Warns of Civilian Massacre, AFP, 24 Feb. 1993.
87
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Minister of Defense on GOMN and
Civil Defense”).
88
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Minister of Defense on GOMN and
Civil Defense”).
89
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Minister of Defense on GOMN and
Civil Defense”).
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January – March 1993
90
Memorandum from Dismas Nsengiyaremye to James Gasana (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Illegal Distribution of
Weapons to Civilians”).
91
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Minister of Defense on GOMN and
Civil Defense”).
92
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Minister of Defense”).
93
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission a Kigali et
Kampala”).
94
Notes from C. Rusagara on Meeting at US Embassy in Kigali (27 Jan. 1993). These are handwritten notes, the
contents of which are corroborated by other sources. See, e.g., Cable from Johnnie Carson to US Secretary of State (1
Feb. 1993) (Subject: “RPF Comments on Recent Events in Rwanda and Urges American Statement and Support”).
Johnnie Carson, the US ambassador to Uganda, wrote a report of the same meeting indicating that the RPF
representative said that, the “RPF did not possess infinite patience and . . . if the political violence continued on a
major scale and was directed at one ethnic group (the Tutsis), the RPF would be forced to intervene militarily.” Carson
continued, “[Théogène] Rudasingwa explained that it would be a mockery to maintain a cease fire and to carry on the
talks in Arusha while Habyarimana and the MRND were killing people.”
95
Press Release, RPF, Resumption of Hostilities in Rwanda (8 Feb. 1993) (“The ceasefire agreement [of July 1992]
stipulated that, among other things, 1) the negotiations had to be conducted and concluded by the 10th of October
1992, 2) violations of human rights are violations of ceasefire, 3) withdrawal of the French troops in Rwanda is part
and parcel of the ceasefire agreement.”); see also Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga; Interview by LFM with
Richard Sezibera.
96
Press Release, RPF, Resumption of Hostilities in Rwanda (8 Feb. 1993).
97
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “New RPF Attack”).
98
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “New RPF Attack”).
99
Interview by Charles Onyango-Obbo with Paul Kagame, in CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR (26 Feb. 1993).
100
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba.
101
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité (18 Feb. 1993).
102
Interview by Charles Onyango-Obbo with Paul Kagame, in CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR (26 Feb. 1993).
103
Cable from Colonna (12 Feb. 1993).
104
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (18 Feb. 1993). Even the DGSE would conclude in a note dated
18 February 1993 that the RPF had attacked “because of ethnic massacres perpetrated in the East of the country (the
RPF considers them to violate the cease-fire).”
105
Cable from Colonna (12 Feb. 1993).
106
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Feb. 1993).
107
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (14 Dec. 1993).
108
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Feb. 1993).
109
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Feb. 1993). Separately, while this cable confirmed that the
French shared their intelligence with the Americans, it does not necessarily confirm an information flow in the
opposite direction. However, given the information sharing practices described by Swinnen and evidenced by this and
other US cables, it seems the French officials would have been informed of the contents of the 16 February 1993 US
cable as well.
110
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda
– offensive militaire du FPR”).
111
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda
– offensive militaire du FPR”).
112
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (8 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda
– offensive militaire du FPR”).
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Chapter VI
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113
Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération des ressortissants de Ruhengeri du
10 février 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993) (“The operation involved 7 officers, 16 non-commissioned officers,
95 master corporals and porpoises (soldiers) of the 21st Marine Infantry Regiment and the head of the detachment that
was deployed.”).
114
Brigadier
General
Philippe
Tracqui,
https://www.nato.int/KFOR/structur/whoswho/cv/bio_tracqui.htm.
NATO,
13
Mar.
2007,
115
MIP Tome I 167; Report from Philippe Tracqui, Noroît detachment, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération
des ressortissants de Ruhengeri du 10 février 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993); La France annonce l’envoi de
cent cinquante soldats supplémentaires au Rwanda [France Announces the Deployment of 150 Additional Troops to
Rwanda], LE MONDE, 11 Feb. 1993. Lt. Col. Tracqui had been stationed in Africa since 1989, beginning as the director
of the National Officers School in Thies, Senegal before moving on to Central African Republic. See Brigadier
General Philippe Tracqui, NATO, 13 Mar. 2007, https://www.nato.int/KFOR/structur/whoswho/cv/bio_tracqui.htm.
116
MIP Tome I 167; see also Report from Philippe Tracqui, Noroît detachment, Rapport concernant l’opération de
récupération des ressortissants de Ruhengeri du 10 février 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993); La France
annonce l’envoi de cent cinquante soldats supplémentaires au Rwanda [France Announces the Deployment of 150
Additional Troops to Rwanda], LE MONDE, 11 Feb. 1993.
117
See Chronologie Générale des Évènements (22 Apr. 1993); Memorandum from Michel Fruchard to François
Leotard (6 Apr. 1993) (noting the French Ministry of Defense on 10 February 1993 authorized a direct transfer of 50
12.7 mm machine guns and 100,000 cartridges at no cost to the FAR).
118
See Chronologie Générale des Évènements (22 Apr. 1993); Memorandum from Michel Fruchard to François
Leotard (6 Apr. 1993). Tauzin defined “‘discrete’ operations” as “official but conducted without the knowledge of all
if possible” and defined “‘secret’ operations” as “in fact clandestine.” See BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND,
L’ARMÉE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, THE FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 127 n.1 (2005).
119
MIP Tome I 181.
120
Memorandum from Michel Fruchard to François Lépine (16 Feb. 1993); Memorandum from Michel Fruchard to
François Leotard (6 Apr. 1993).
121
See Memorandum from Dominique Delort to French Ministry of Defense et al.; Memorandum from Michel
Fruchard to François Leotard (6 Apr. 1993).
122
Memorandum from Michel Fruchard to François Leotard (6 Apr. 1993).
123
MIP Tome I 181.
124
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (13 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
125
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission a Kigali et
Kampala”).
126
MIP Audition of Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1, 99-119.
127
MIP Audition of Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1, 106.
128
MIP Audition of Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1, 107. In similar testimony, Jean-Marc de La Sablière briefly
acknowledged the massacres in his MIP testimony but quickly pivoted to attack the RPF, insisting that they had
“committed abuses” as well. In his recollection of February 1993, he pinned the blame for breaking the cease-fire on
the RPF; the massacres, which preceded the rearmament of the RPA, did not register as a violation. To justify the
deepening French military involvement, he claimed that massacres would have been a consequence of the RPF taking
the capital in 1993. MIP Audition of Jean Marc de La Sablière, Tome III, Vol. 2, 153.
129
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (10 Mar. 1993). The date on the document, “10 February
1993,” is an error.
130
Report from Etienne Joubert, Sur les opérations d’évacuation des ressortissants á Ruhengeri (24 Feb. 1993).
131
Report from Etienne Joubert, Sur les opérations d’évacuation des ressortissants á Ruhengeri (24 Feb. 1993).
132
Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération des ressortissants de Ruhengeri du
10 février 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993).
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133
Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération des ressortissants de Ruhengeri du
10 février 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993).
134
MIP Tome I 163; Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération des ressortissants
de Ruhengeri du 10 février 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993).
135
Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de recuperation des ressortissants de Ruhengeri du
10 Fevrier 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993). The OAU (Organization of African Unity) was established in
1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It disbanded in 2002 and was replaced by the African Union. The OAU was, like the
United Nations, an intergovernmental organization. Unlike the United Nations, however, “where important decisions
are taken by the Security Council dominated by its five permanent members” (China, France, Russian Federation, the
United Kingdom, and the United States), the important decisions of the OAU were “taken by its Assembly of 52 Heads
of States.” ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE ¶ 11.3 (July 2000)
136
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “NMOG Reports Ceasefire Violation”).
137
Cable from Bernard Cussac (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Ruhengeri – general opaleye – press”).
138
L’Armée française accusée d’aider les forces rwandaises [French Army Accused of Helping Rwandan Forces],
APF/REUTERS, 16 Feb. 1993.
139
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (10 Feb. 1993).
140
France Denies Involvement in Rwanda Fighting, REUTERS, 15 Feb. 1993; see also Question de Jean-Pierre Brard:
il proteste contre le soutien militaire français au régime de Kigali [Question from Jean-Pierre Brard: He Objects to
French Military Support of the Kigali Regime], L’HUMANITÉ, 4 July 1992 (“In a question to the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Communist MP Jean-Pierre Brard protested against French military support for the Kigali regime. Roland
Dumas responded by saying that the only task of the expeditionary force is the protection of French and foreign
nationals in Rwanda.”).
141
MIP Tome I 171.
142
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission a Kigali et
Kampala”).
143
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update number 5: Ruhengeri seige
[sic] broken”); Memorandum from Rwandan Service de Renseignements (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Note de synthèse
au chef de service”).
144
See, e.g., Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (12 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number 6: Arusha
to Pause; Fighting Continues”) (“Government forces still hold Ruhengeri, but they have been unable to push the RPF
even as far north as the communal centers of Kinigi . . . and Nkumba . . . . shelling continued to the east in the contested
commune of Bwisigne . . . . The RPF is still in Tumba commune, southwest of Byumba town near the Kigali-Ruhengeri
road.”).
145
Logan Ndahiro, The 8th February 1993 Offensive by RPA Forces, THE NEW TIMES, 2 Feb. 2017; see also MIP
Tome I 110.
146
MIP Tome I 110.
147
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (11 Feb. 1993).
148
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission à Kigali et
Kampala”) (emphasis and capitalization in original).
149
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission à Kigali et
Kampala”).
150
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission à Kigali et
Kampala”) (capitalization in original).
151
L’Armée française accusée d’aider les forces rwandaises [French Army Accused of Helping Rwandan Forces],
AFP/REUTERS, 16 Feb. 1993.
152
Cable from Rwandan Embassy in Kampala to Rwandan Ministry of Defense (18 Feb. 1993).
153
Cable from Rwandan Embassy in Kampala to Rwandan Ministry of Defense (18 Feb. 1993).
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154
Notes on Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda –
situation militaire”).
155
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
156
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (emphasis added).
157
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
158
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
159
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Appel du President
Habyarimana”).
160
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (18 Feb. 1993).
161
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (18 Feb. 1993).
162
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
163
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
164
See Duclert Commission Report 256-257 (discussing a French delegation’s meeting with President Museveni in
Kampala on 13 February 1993).
165
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
166
Interview by Charles Onyango-Obbo with Paul Kagame, in CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR (26 Feb. 1993).
167
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame. Kagame said he insisted, though, that the RPF should not be forced to forfeit
the territory it had gained since the launch of the 8 February offensive, if that would permit the FAR to reconquer that
territory. The ensuing debate over this issue would ultimately lead to the creation of a demilitarized zone.
168
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
169
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
170
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
171
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
172
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
173
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
174
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
175
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
176
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
177
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
178
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
179
MIP Tome I 167; see also Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l opération de recuperation des
ressortissants de Ruhengeri du 10 Fevrier 1993 (Operation Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993); Report from Philippe Tracqui,
Compte rendu d’activités du détachement Noroît (20 Mar. 1993); La France annonce l’envoi de cent cinquante soldats
supplémentaires au Rwanda [France Announces the Deployment of 150 Additional Troops to Rwanda], LE MONDE,
11 Feb. 1993.
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180
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
181
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
182
MIP, Tome I 164, 167.
183
MIP, Tome I 164.
184
Cable from French Ministry of Defense (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Alerte pour Operation Noroît”).
185
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Directive pour le colonel
Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”).
186
Report from Philippe Tracqui, Compte rendu d’activités du détachement Noroît (20 Mar. 1993) (appended as
Annex 2, Subject: “Evolution des effectifs Noroît”); see also Bruce Jones, The Arusha Peace Process, in THE PATH
OF A GENOCIDE 141-42 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke eds. 1999).
187
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Directive pour le colonel
Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”).
188
See generally MIP Tome I 153-54. Cussac admitted to the French Parliamentary Mission that, in practice, for
matters concerning the DAMI, he reported to the Army état-major.
189
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Directive pour le colonel
Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”).
190
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Directive pour le colonel
Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”).
191
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Directive pour le colonel
Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”).
192
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Directive pour le colonel
Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”).
193
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Leotard (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Point de situation au Rwanda le
23 février 1993”) (mentioning the mortar company (“1 SML and six tubes”)); Excerpt of cable from Dominique Delort
(7 Mar. 1993).
194
MIP Tome I 175.
195
MIP Tome I 175-76; Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération des
ressortissants de Ruhengeri du 10 février 1993 (Opération Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993).
196
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
197
See, e.g., Cable from Georges Martres to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (29 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Les
evenements du Rwanda et la communaute francaise”) (noting that expatriates in Gisenyi had been hassled at
roadblocks); Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana)
(memorializing Col. Cussac discussing with Col. Ndindiliyimana the Gendarmerie’s hassling of foreigners and
Rwandans at roadblocks); Cable from Georges Martres (13 Nov. 1991) (Subject: “Situtation militaire et
renseignements divers”) (noting that Gendarmerie sentry at roadblock pointed his weapon at a driver who was with a
Belgian in a vehicle and fired at the vehicle after they had driven off in fear).
198
Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
199
Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
200
Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
201
Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
202
Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana); see also Fiche
recapitulative COOP / MMC en date du 23 mars 1994 (23 March 1994).
203
Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
204
Meeting Notes (19 Feb. 1993) (signed Mathias Nsabimana and Augustin Ndindiliyimana) (meeting occurred on
16 Feb. 1993).
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January – March 1993
205
Meeting Notes (19 Feb. 1993) (signed Mathias Nsabimana and Augustin Ndindiliyimana) (meeting occurred on
16 Feb. 1993); Meeting Notes (23 Nov. 1992) (signed Mugiraneza Ildephonse and Augustin Ndindiliyimana). Also
on 19 February 1993, a US Embassy cable from US Ambassador to Rwanda Robert Flaten reported to Washington
that: “Two Rwandan men who went by motorcycle to their home area just east of Ruhengeri to search for family were,
according to one who survived, treated politely at an RPF checkpoint and permitted to pass. Upon reaching their
destination, they were beaten severely by government troops; one died and the other sustained serious injuries and is
now in Kigali hospital.” Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number
10: Fighting continues; more RPF war crimes reported”).
206
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
207
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije. An “abattoir” is a slaughterhouse for animals.
208
Notes on Cable from George Martres (1 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Visite de M. Marcel Debarge au Rwanda”).
209
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Nshongozabahizi (10 Aug. 2017) (recalling, as a former Interahamwe, seeing
the French man a roadblock on the road from Kigali to Gisenyi in 1990); Interview by LFM with Charles Bugirimfura
(recalling, as a former FAR soldier, French soldiers manning a roadblock near the Kigali airport in late 1990, as well
as in Nyacyonga and Shyorongi from 1991 until the end of 1993).
210
See generally Mucyo Report Section 1.4 (2008) (summarizing witness testimony on various violent incidents
committed by French soldiers at roadblocks or committed by Rwandan soldiers at roadblocks or after arresting Tutsi
at roadblocks).
211
Mucyo Report Section 1.4 (2008).
212
Peter Mugabo, Ex-Rwandan PM Narrates Horrific Encounter with French Soldiers, NEWS OF RWANDA, 22 Nov.
2016.
213
Peter Mugabo, Ex-Rwandan PM Narrates Horrific Encounter with French Soldiers, NEWS OF RWANDA, 22 Nov.
2016.
214
Peter Mugabo, Ex-Rwandan PM Narrates Horrific Encounter with French Soldiers, NEWS OF RWANDA, 22 Nov.
2016.
215
Peter Mugabo, Ex-Rwandan PM Narrates Horrific Encounter with French Soldiers, NEWS OF RWANDA, 22 Nov.
2016; see also Testimony of Emmanuel Cattier to the Comite d’enquête citoyenne pour la vérité sur l’implication
française dans le génocide des Tutsi, 15 ème commémoration du génocide des Tutsi, Berlin (7 Apr. 2009).
216
See, e.g., MIP Tome I 176 (“This active surveillance, under the form of patrols and ‘checkpoints,’ even if it occurs
in conjunction with the Rwandan Gendarmerie, inevitably leads to exercising checks on persons. If the rules of
behavior at the ‘checkpoints’ refer to the ‘delivery of any suspect, weapon and document seized to the Rwandan
Gendarmerie,’ it is unclear how such a procedure can take place if there was no prior identity check or search.”);
Kigali, AFP, 3 Mar. 1993 (“French troops accompanied by Rwandan soldiers are manning roadblocks on the outskirts
of the capital. The French soldiers were checking identification papers of Rwandans travelling to and from Kigali on
Wednesday. They were also searching cars, apparently for guns.”); Makombe, Rwanda: Ubufaransa Burivanga!
[Rwanda: France Interferes!] KANGUKA NEWSPAPER 12 (23 Mar. 1993) (reporting that French soldiers asked the
population to show identity cards at Nyabarongo and Shyorongi checkpoints and asking people if they are either Hutu
or Tutsi); see also MIP Audition of Jean Hervé Bradol Tome III, Vol. 1, 390. Bradol, a French humanitarian worker
with Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda, told the MIP that he saw French soldiers at the northern entrance to Kigali
either carrying out the checks themselves or observing their Rwandan colleagues carrying them out from their posts.
217
MIP Tome I 176; Report from Philippe Tracqui, Rapport concernant l’opération de récupération des ressortissants
de Ruhengeri du 10 février 1993 (Opération Volcan) (17 Feb. 1993).
218
See, e.g., Mucyo Report Section 1.4 (2008) (summarizing witness testimony on violence against Tutsi at roadblocks
or Tutsi taken from roadblocks for interrogation elsewhere in 1993); see also Interview by LFM with Straton
Sinzabakwira (describing a group, assumed to be Tutsi, pulled aside at a French-FAR jointly manned roadblock at
Nyabarongo in February 1993); Interview by LFM with Kayiranga Wellars (describing Rwandan soldiers raping Tutsi
women in the tents of French soldiers at jointly-manned roadblocks near the Kabuye Sugar Factory, as well as verbal
and physical abuse of Tutsis by Rwandan soldiers in the presence of French soldiers); Interview by LFM with Djuma
Mbarushimana (describing French soldiers denying Tutsis passage at a roadblock in Giti Cy’Inyoni, Kigali); Interview
by LFM with Vital Mucanda (describing the detention and disappearance of his Tutsi family members at a FrenchPage | 234
Chapter VI
January – March 1993
manned roadblock in Shyorongi in 1993); Interview by LFM with Abdoul Maka Ntirenganya (describing being trained
to operate roadblocks by French and FAR soldiers at MRND Headquarters in Gisenyi in 1992 and noting the
harassment, beating, and detention of Tutsis at roadblocks).
219
Mucyo Report Section 4.1 (2008).
220
MIP Tome I 176.
221
MIP Tome I 176.
222
MIP Tome I 176.
223
See Excerpt of Cable from Dominique Delort (7 Mar. 1993) (reporting that Noroît’s “contribution to Rwandan
control at checkpoints in the last 15 days” was to hand over eight FAR deserters to the Gendarmerie as well as several
confiscated weapons, but saying nothing about the detention of alleged RPF collaborators); Report from Philippe
Tracqui, Compte rendu d’activités du détachement Noroît (20 Mar. 1993) (noting the arrest of “many deserters and
the seizure of many arms and ammunition” but nothing about the arrest of alleged RPF collaborators”).
224
Account taken from interview by LFM with Bernard Kayumba.
225
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
226
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 61 (2011). Gen. Didier Tauzin, who led the operation, has said that Chimère was not
the operation’s code name. Instead, he wrote, the operation was named Birunga (referring to the Virunga mountains),
and Chimère, the name given to the dragon on the 1st RPIMa insignia, was the name favored by a media that hoped to
evoke a shadowy association. That said, at least one contemporaneous French document refers to the operation as
Chimère, and since the name has been used widely, it will be used here to avoid confusion. Chronologie Générale des
Évènements (22 Apr. 1993) (identified as Annex 4).
227
MIP Tome I 165; Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Situation
au Rwanda”).
228
1er Régiment de parachutistes d’infanterie de marine [First Regiment of Marine Infantry Parachutists],
MINISTERES DES ARMEES (updated on 21 August 2020).
229
Letter from Survie Gironde to Alain Juppe (2 Apr. 1994).
230
1er RPMIa- Régiment parachutiste d’infanterie de marine [First Regiment of Marine Infantry Parachutists],
FORCES SPECIALES, http://le.cos.free.fr/1rpima.htm (last visited 13 Jan. 2021).
231
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 49 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
232
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 64 (2011).
233
MIP Tome I 165.
234
MIP Tome I 165. See also Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to Dominique Delort (20 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Directive pour le colonel Delort, ambassade de France au Rwanda”) (“As of the use of the RAPAS Unit is concerned,
its staff is initially intended to reinforce our assistance to the RWANDAN command, without going below the level
of sector commander, and to ensure advanced guidance of possible aerial actions.”).
235
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
236
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 71 (2011).
237
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 71-74 (2011); see also MIP Tome I 165 (“After a helicopter flyover of the threatened
zones, it is decided to send a team of officer-advisers to the FAR chief of staff and a team of advisers to each of the
sector commanders (Ruhengeri, Rulindo, Byumba). Elements of DAMI Engineering fulfill an advisory mission to the
sector commanders in terms of defensive organization of the field. An artillery DAMI performs an advisory role for
the use of 122D30 and 105 mm batteries.”).
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Chapter VI
January – March 1993
238
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
239
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 64 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
240
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 64-65 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
241
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 67-68 (2011).
242
MIP Tome I 165. Tauzin put the number at “67 men, including 5 senior officers, 9 junior officers, 30 noncommissioned officers and 23 master corporals, all very seasoned specialists and, for the most part, excellent
connoisseurs of Rwanda where they have already made one or more stays under the DAMI. With the exception of
about ten officers and NCOs, artillerymen coming from the 35th RAP (Parachute Artillery Regiment) or sappers, we
are all from the 1st RPIMa. I therefore command a detachment of exceptional military quality: remarkable cohesion,
a wide variety of military skills brought to the highest level, a composure that will stand the test of time, a perfect
understanding of the situation, and adaptability that will take my breath away every day.” DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA:
JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS]
68 (2011).
243
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
244
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
245
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
246
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 293 (2004).
247
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 71 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
248
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 75 (2011) (“On the morning of the 25th, two days after Chéreau took up his post at
headquarters, Nsabimana issued a coherent and pugnacious order of operations, probably the first in a long time. This
order was, of course, prepared by Chéreau according to the decisions that I made with him.”).
249
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 76 (2011). The exact timing of the counteroffensive is unclear. However, as a 2 March
1993 Order of Operation notes, “a counterattack to loosen Byumba’s grip is being prepared and could intervene in the
coming days.” Compte rendu d’activité du détachement Noroît (22 Apr. 1993).
250
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 76 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
251
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 77-78 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
252
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 77 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
253
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 70 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
254
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 78 (2011).
255
France Election 1993, PARLIAMENTS AND GOVERNMENTS DATABASE (last visited 21 Dec. 2020).
256
Cable from Colonna (22 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda – Declaration du porte parole”).
257
Stephen Smith, Les rebelles s’arretent aux portes de Kigali [The Rebels Stop at the Gates of Kigali], LIBÉRATION,
22 Feb. 1993.
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258
See, e.g., Adam Lusekelo, Rwandans Agree to Negotiate Peace, REUTERS, 8 Mar. 1993 (“The RPF says French
troops fought alongside government forces last month but France says its forces are in Kigali only to protect its
citizens.”).
259
Cable from Colonna (1 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Declaration du porte parole”); see also Une seconde
compagnie a été dépêchée à Kigali, annonce le Quai d’Orsay [A Second Company has been Dispatched to Kigali,
Announces the Quai d’Orsay], AP, 9 Feb. 1993 (quoting Quai d’Orsay spokesperson Daniel Bernard as saying, “[t]he
presence of these additional French forces has no other objective than to ensure the security of our nationals”).
260
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission a Kigali et
Kampala”).
261
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: Mission a Kigali et
Kampala”) (emphasis and capitalization in original).
262
Cable from Colonna (12 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda - Declaration du Porte Parole”).
263
Memorandum from Jean Carbonare to Bruno Delaye (1 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “document corrige”) (enclosing
excerpts from “Violations des Droits de l’Homme au Rwanda,” including discussion of the 20 January 1993 testimony
of Father Joaquim Vallmajo, who stated that “the suffering of displaced populations goes beyond the imagination:
murder, rape, pillaging etc. . . . committed by Rwandan soldiers in the region of the camps. To these, add hunger,
sickness (malaria, scabies . . .), lack of water, deplorable sanitary conditions, and also the painful separation of
families.”); see also U.N. Begins Airlift of Emergency Food to Rwanda, AFP, 24 Feb. 1993. David Chazan, Guerre
civile: déplacement de populations et menace de famine [Civil War: Populations Displaced and Risk of Famine], AFP,
8 Mar. 1993; U.N. Increases Food Deliveries to Displaced Rwandans, AFP, 10 Mar. 1993.
264
GUERRE AU PAYS DES MILLE COLLINES: RWANDA, LA MENACE D’UNE CATASTROPHE [WAR IN THE LAND OF A
THOUSAND HILLS: RWANDA ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER] (International Committee of the Red Cross 1993) (Directed
by Adrian Ulrich) (available at https://avarchives.icrc.org/Film/191. See 00:02:00-00:02:35 and 00:09:25-00:12:00).
265
Stephen Smith, Les Refugiés affluent vers Kigali [Refugees Flock Toward Kigali] LIBÉRATION, 8 Mar. 1993.
266
Cable from Colonna (12 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda – Declaration du Porte Parole”).
267
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number 10: Fighting
continues; more RPF war crimes reported”). Rwanda: L’Armée accuse les maquisards d’avoir massacré cinq cents
réfugiés [Rwanda: Army Accuses Guerrilla Fighters of Killing 500 Refugees], LE MONDE/AFP, 21 Feb. 1993.
268
Rwanda: L’Armée accuse les maquisards d’avoir massacré cinq cents réfugiés [Rwanda: Army Accuses Guerrilla
Fighters of Killing 500 Refugees], LE MONDE/AFP, 21 Feb. 1993; see also Rebels Massacre 500 Civilians: Report,
AFP, 19 Feb. 1993 (stating that the accusation came from “sources close to the Rwandan army high command” and
that the “French Foreign Ministry, without specifying the reported Rebero incident, said it had information that there
were massacres in rebel-held areas, and was checking”).
269
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update 11; Fighting continues but
positions stabilize”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda parties to
meet RPF in Bujumbura”). The 22 February 1993 cable did note reports by the human rights group CLADHO of RPF
targeting killings of MRND and CDR members in and around Ruhengeri. But these reports contrasted with NGO
reports noted in a 19 February 1993 US cable that it was Rwandan government troops, and not the RPF, who were
responsible for abuses in and around Ruhengeri. Some of these reports came from “French cooperants” (presumably
civil and not military cooperants) who “said the RPF they came in contact with were polite and provoked no fear.
Government forces subsequently trashed the homes of the cooperants following their departure.” The 19 February
cable also recounted the story of a group of secondary school students who were “accompanied throughout most of
their 60km walk from Ruhengeri to safety by RPF soldiers who aided rather tha[n] abetted the group. Government
soldiers, on the other hand, encountered at their destination, verbally abused the students, and threatened them saying
u[n]less they fully supported President Habyarimana they would be treated as the enemy.” Cable from Robert Flaten
to US Secretary of State (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number 10: Fighting continues; more RPF war crimes
reported”).
270
S. Maxime, Mitterrand nous cache une guerre africaine [Mitterrand is Hiding an African War From Us], LE
CANARD ENCHAÎNÉ, 17 Feb. 1993. Criticism also appeared in the Belgian press. See, e.g., Steven Smith & Dominique
Garraud, Les rebelles s’arretent aux portes de Kigali [The Rebels Stop at the Gates of Kigali], LIBÉRATION, 22 Feb.
1993. Steven Smith, L’Opposition rwandaise ignore la voie française [The Rwandan Opposition Disregards the
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January – March 1993
French Approach], LIBÉRATION, 3 Mar. 1993; S.M., Paris demande de l’aide à Londres pour sortir d’un guêpier
africain, [Paris Seeks Help from London to Get Out of an African Wasp’s Nest], LE CANARD ENCHAÎNÉ, 3 Mar. 1993;
Interview with Alison Des Forges by Monique Mas (9 Mar. 1993), in JOURNAUX AFRIQUE; Claude Kroes, Le Front
patriotique rwandais accuse Paris [The Rwandan Patriotic Front Accuses Paris], L’HUMANITÉ, 11 Mar. 1993
(interview with Jacques Bihozagara).
271
Letter from Gerard Fuchs to AFP (28 Feb. 1992).
272
Letter from Gerard Fuchs to AFP (28 Feb. 1992).
273
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
274
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
275
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (“Our military
and technological aid to the Rwandan forces has still not reversed the balance of power, nor has it achieved the political
objectives decided on October 22, which seems more serious to me.”); Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François
Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M. Debarge”) (“Our indirect strategy of supporting the
Rwandan armed forces has reached its limits.”).
276
Notes on Cable from French Embassy in Kampala (Subject: “Entretien de M. Debarge avec Museveni”) (1 Mar.
1993) (“[W]e do not want to get too involved, but we also refuse to lose face.”).
277
Cable from US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “INR/AA’s African Trends – 2/4/93 (No. 2)”).
278
Cable from US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “INR/AA’s African Trends – 2/4/93 (No. 2)”);
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (13 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
279
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (13 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
280
Notes on Cable from George Martres (14 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Voyage de MM. Delaye et de La Sablière au
Rwanda 2/2/”).
281
See US Memorandum (13 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Background”); Communiqué conjoint du president de la
Republique et du Premier Minister [Joint Communiqué of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister] (13
Feb. 1993).
282
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Mission de M. Debarge au
Rwanda et en Uganda – Éléments de langage”). Just two weeks later, a higher-ranking French official, Minister of
Cooperation Marcel Debarge, was holding his own meetings with Habyarimana and Nsengiyaremye and issuing the
same pleas for a rapprochement between the two leaders. Liste des Participants au diner qui sera offert par le Ministre
des Affaires Étrangères et de la Coopération, S.E. Mr. Nguilinzira Boniface, a l’occasion de la visite au Rwanda de
Mr. Marcel Debarge, Ministre Français délègue a la Coopération et au Développement (28 Feb. 1993); Cable from
Colonna (1 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Declaration du Porte Parole”); Cable from Johan Swinnen (1 Mar. 1993)
(Subject: “visite du ministre français de la coopération”).
283
Notes on Cable from George Martres (14 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Voyage de MM. Delaye et de La Sablière au
Rwanda 2/2/”).
284
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”); see also Cable from
US Secretary of State to American Embassy in London (27 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “INR Analysis – Rwanda: RPF
Goals”) (“An early RPF attack on Kigali is unlikely as long as some 500 French troops provide a deterrent.”).
285
See Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Reactions to Arusha
Protocol”); Rwandan President Warns of Civilian Massacre, AFP, 24 Feb. 1993.
286
See Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”); Memorandum
from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”); Bruce Jones,
The Arusha Peace Process, in THE PATH OF A GENOCIDE 141-42 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke eds. 1999).
President Mitterrand appears to have internalized their warnings, as evidenced by his declaration, in a 3 March
restricted council meeting, that “[i]f Uganda betrays us, Kigali will fall.” Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar.
1993).
287
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
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288
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
289
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (26 Feb. 1993).
290
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number 7: Military Situation
Worsens; Ceasefire Offers Remain on Table”).
291
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Meetings with the Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister”).
292
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Meetings with the Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister”).
293
A 26 February DGSE report estimated the FAR had 30,000 men, compared to 5,000 to 10,000 for the RPF. See
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (26 Feb. 1993).
294
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number 7: Military Situation
Worsens; Ceasefire Offers Remain on Table”).
295
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update Number 7: Military Situation
Worsens; Ceasefire Offers Remain on Table”).
296
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject “Rwanda”).
297
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
298
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
299
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
300
Bruce Jones, The Arusha Peace Process, in THE PATH OF A GENOCIDE 141-42 (Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke
eds. 1999) (“Negotiating strength on this issue would turn out to be a precise function of fighting strength on the
ground. In this interpretation, the RPF launched the offensive at this point to prove their fighting strength and thus put
them on firm ground for these most important negotiations.”).
301
See, e.g., Cable from Johnnie Carson to American Embassy in Kigali (27 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “U.S. Meeting with
RPF Military Commander”).
302
See Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Politics and a Ceasefire”)
(discussing the RPF’s 10 February cease-fire proposal); RPF, Declaration of Ceasefire (21 Feb. 1993) (signed Alexis
Kanyarengwe).
303
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Politics and a Ceasefire”).
304
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Politics and a Ceasefire”).
305
RPF, Declaration of Ceasefire (21 Feb. 1993) (Signed Alexis Kanyarengwe).
306
Government of Rwanda, Declaration on the Restoration of Ceasefire (22 Feb. 1993) (Signed Boniface Ngulinzira).
307
Final Communiqué Published at the End of the Bujumbura Meeting Held from 25 February to 2nd March 93
Between the Political Parties (2 Mar. 1993) (Signed Alexis Kanyarengwe (RPF), Faustin Twagiramungu and Ignace
Karuhije (MDR), Félicien Ngango and Théoneste Gafaranga (PSD), J. Népomucene and Michel Niyibizi (PDC), and
Justin Mugenzi and Stanislas Nyilinkwaya (PL)).
308
MIP Tome I 14-15.
309
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Politics and a Ceasefire”).
310
Notes of 24 Feb. 1993 Radio Rwanda broadcast of speech by Juvénal Habyarimana, RPF Archive (25 Feb. 1993).
President Habyarimana would later make different excuses for the MRND’s non-participation in the Bujumbura
summit, telling a visiting French official that he had objected to the summit “because he believed that the negotiation
should be led by the government and not by the parties and that in any case a meeting of the latter should have been
held under the aegis of a mediator or facilitator.” Notes on Cable from George Martres (1 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Visite
de M. Marcel Debarge au Rwanda”).
311
MIP Tome I 115 (quoting MDR President Faustin Twagiramungu as saying that the RPF delegation “proved
determined to only agree to withdraw its forces if the French forces agreed to do the same by leaving Rwanda. In other
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words, for the peace talks to continue, for the RPF forces to withdraw from the zone they occupied and that this zone
by demilitarized, the Noroît forces needed to leave”).
312
MIP Tome I 115.
313
See Final Communiqué Published at the End of the Bujumbura Meeting Held from 25 February to 2nd March 93
Between the Political Parties (2 Mar. 1993) (Signed Alexis Kanyarengwe (RPF), Faustin Twagiramungu and Ignace
Karuhije (MDR), Félicien Ngango and Théoneste Gafaranga (PSD), J. Népomucene and Michel Niyibizi (PDC), and
Justin Mugenzi and Stanislas Nyilinkwaya (PL)). The DGSE wrote, dryly, that the communiqué “will not facilitate
the resumption of negotiations.” Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (5 Mar. 1993).
314
See Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (5 Mar. 1993).
315
Final Communiqué Published at the End of the Bujumbura Meeting Held from 25 February to 2nd March 93
Between the Political Parties (2 Mar. 1993) (signed by Alexis Kanyarengwe (RPF), Faustin Twagiramungu and Ignace
Karuhije (MDR), Félicien Ngango and Théoneste Gafaranga (PSD), J. Népomucene and Michel Niyibizi (PDC), and
Justin Mugenzi and Stanislas Nyilinkwaya (PL)).
316
MIP Tome I 115.
317
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; see also Ikiganiro na Koimanda Karenzi wa GOMN
[Conversation with Commander Karenzi of GOMN], in RWANDA RUSHYA (1993).
318
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
319
See Ceasefire Agreement, Rw. - RPF, 29 Mar. 1991. The N’sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, Rw. - RPF 12
July 1992 and Proposal of the RPF for the Execution of the Ceasefire Agreement, Rw. – RPF 16 Sept. 1991. One
could say that the government conceded to it yet another time, when the two sides met for talks in Gbadolite, Zaire in
September 1991. That meeting did not result in a new cease-fire, but the parties did agree to amend the March 1991
N’Sele cease-fire agreement. Notably, while the amendment solely concerned the organization of the GOMN, the
parties left the N’Sele agreement’s other key provisions untouched, including the provision calling for the removal of
foreign troops. See REPORT ON POLITICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN RPF AND RWANDESE GOVERNMENT FROM 15TH SEPT17TH SEP 1991, RPF (17 Sept. 1991).
320
French Ambassador’s Interview, in RWANDA RUSHYA (Aug. 1991) (interview by Andereya Kameya with Georges
Martres).
321
Letter from François Mitterrand to Juvénal Habyarimana (18 Jan. 1993).
322
Ikiganiro na Koimanda Karenzi wa GOMN [Conversation with Commander Karenzi of GOMN], in RWANDA
RUSHYA (1993).
323
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Feb. 1993). Minister of Cooperation Marcel Debarge said he
agreed, “especially since a media campaign on the respect of human rights is going to be launched in Belgium.” His
explanation offers further evidence that officials in Paris understood that France was inviting criticism by continuing
to support Habyarimana in spite of his regime’s record on human rights.
324
See Duclert Commission Report 717-19; Jacques Lanxade: “Le Président suivait généralement mon avis, je dirais
même quasiment toujours,” AGONE, 17 Feb. 2020 (interview by François Graner with Jacques Lanxade (22 Aug.
2018)); see also MIP Tome I 367, 383. Participants included the prime minister, defense minister, foreign minister,
and minister of cooperation. President Mitterrand was frequently joined by Hubert Védrine, his secretary general, and
General Christian Quesnot, his chief military advisor. Admiral Jacques Lanxade, the chief of defense staff, was also
a regular attendee. See MIP Tome I 383; see also, e.g., Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 April 1993). The meetings
facilitated coordination between the president and prime minister and covered a range of subjects, Rwanda often
among them. See generally MIP Tome I 383; see also, e.g., Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 April 1993).
325
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
326
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
327
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
328
Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
329
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
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330
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
331
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
332
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
333
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
334
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”); see also Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (15 Feb. 1993) (arguing
that the “ambiguous” nature of French troop deployment in Rwanda was “necessary for a good deterrent”).
335
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
336
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
337
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”). French authorities did, indeed, consider upping their military support for the FAR at this
time. On 27 February 1993, four days after Pin and Quesnot penned their note to the president, command for French
jaguar fighter pilots stationed in Bangui received a briefing “to prepare a possible jaguar fire support for Noroît.”
Report from Philippe Tracqui, Compte rendu d’activités du détachement Noroît (20 Mar. 1993).
338
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Feb. 1993).
339
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Feb. 1993).
340
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Feb. 1993).
341
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Feb. 1993).
342
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Feb. 1993).
343
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
344
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
345
RWANDAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, ACTUALITES NATIONALES [NATIONAL NEWS] 36 (31 Aug. 1992).
346
Cable from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (9 Sept. 1992) (Subject: “Composition et deployment du GOMN”).
347
Memorandum from Deogratias Nsabimana (9 Dec. 1992).
348
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (4 Dec. 1992) (Subject: “NMOG Reports Ceasefire Violation”).
349
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (15 Mar. 1993).
350
Cable from Catherine Boivineau (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “OUA – Rwanda”).
351
Cable from Catherine Boivineau (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “OUA – Rwanda”).
352
Cable from Catherine Boivineau (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “OUA – Rwanda”).
353
See UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS, REPERTOIRE OF THE PRACTICE OF THE SECURITY
COUNCIL, SUPPLEMENT 1993-1995 327-30 (12 Dec. 1995); Letter dated 22 February 1993 from the Permanent
Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations to the President of the Security Council, S/25355 (22 Feb. 1993);
Letter dated 22 February 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Uganda to the United Nations addressed to the
President of the Security Council, S/25356 (22 Feb. 1993).
354
Letter dated 22 February 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations to the President
of the Security Council, S/25355 (22 Feb. 1993); Letter dated 22 February 1993 from the Permanent Representative
of Uganda to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/25356 (22 Feb. 1993).
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355
Letter dated 22 February 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations to the President
of the Security Council, S/25355 (22 Feb. 1993).
356
Letter dated 22 February 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Uganda to the United Nations addressed to
the President of the Security Council, S/25356 (22 Feb. 1993). Soon afterward, UN Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali approved plans for a “goodwill mission” to travel to Rwanda and Uganda. The mission visited the
region from 4 to 19 March 1993. See UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, THE UNITED NATIONS
AND RWANDA 1993-1996 217 (The United Blue Book Series Vol. X 1996).
357
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”).
358
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint sur le Rwanda”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Update
Number 11: Fighting Continues but Positions Stabilize”). Among the more notable developments on the war front in
the days preceding Pin and Quesnot’s memo—at least, according to a US cable—had been the discovery of a Ugandan
truck on the road from Cyanika to Ruhengeri. A Radio Rwanda report said a search of the truck, which bore a Ugandan
license plate, uncovered Kalashnikovs and ammunition, as well as orders signed by a Ugandan military official. A
DGSE report on 26 February cited this discovery first on a list of three indicators of Ugandan military support for the
RPF. The report nevertheless acknowledged that there was “no formal proof of Kampala’s assistance to the RPF.”
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (26 Feb. 1993).
359
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Mission de M. Debarge au
Rwanda et en Uganda – Eléments de language”).
360
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Mission de M. Debarge au
Rwanda et en Uganda – Eléments de language”).
361
France to Raise Rwanda Conflict at United Nations, AFP, 3 Mar. 1993.
362
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1 Mar. 1993).
363
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1 Mar. 1993).
364
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”); see also Cable from Colonna (1 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Declaration du porte parole”); Cable
from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1 Mar. 1993); GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS
178 (1997). Prunier saw something insidious in this message, writing: “[T]he public nature of the French minister’s
declaration was shocking. In such a tense ethnic climate, with massacres having taken place in recent weeks, this call
for a ‘common front’ which could only be based on race was nearly a call to racial war. It seemed that some French
authorities involved in the Rwandese crisis were in danger of globalising the conflict in ever cruder and more paranoid
terms.”
365
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1 Mar. 1993).
366
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”). Debarge warned that disunion within the Rwandan government might create an opening for a perceived
“third force,” which would surely fail. “Caught between the Rwandan Army and the RPF, the latter would soon be
shattered and the RPF would be the sole beneficiary of the country’s internal divisions,” he said, according to
researcher’s transcription of a French cable. Notes on Cable from George Martres (1 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Visite de
M. Marcel Debarge au Rwanda”).
367
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
368
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
369
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
370
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
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371
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
372
See Final Communiqué Published at the End of the Bujumbura Meeting Held from 25 February to 2nd March 93
Between the Political Parties (2 Mar. 1993) (signed Alexis Kanyarengwe (RPF), Faustin Twagiramungu and Ignace
Karuhije (MDR), Félicien Ngango and Théoneste Gafaranga (PSD), J. Népomucene and Michel Niyibizi (PDC), and
Justin Mugenzi and Stanislas Nyilinkwaya (PL)).
373
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
374
Memorandum from Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (2 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Mission de M.
Debarge”).
375
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
376
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
377
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
378
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
379
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
380
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
381
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
382
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
383
Fax from Dominique Delort (2 Mar. 1993). Delort’s proposal offers a striking example of French officials’
tendency, throughout the war, to compartmentalize their suspicions about the FAR’s involvement in massacres and
other human rights abuses. Cable from Georges Martres (2 Mar. 1993) (signed Dominique Delort). Delort issued the
proposal on 2 March 1993. That same day, in a sitrep sent to officials in Paris, he wrote that war and political divisions
were causing Rwandans to “lose all common sense,” driving some Hutus to kill their neighbors, either because they
were Tutsi or because they belonged to an opposition political party. He wrote: “Only the civilian population seems,
for the moment, to be committing these massacres, but information indicates future participation by the Rwandan
Army.” In short, Delort was urging France to bolster its support for an institution he suspected would soon be taking
part in the ethnic violence enveloping the country.
384
Fax from Dominique Delort (2 Mar. 1993); Report from COS, Renforcement du volet stratégie indirecte au Rwanda
(5 Mar. 1993).
385
Fax from Dominique Delort (2 Mar. 1993).
386
Fax from Dominique Delort (2 Mar. 1993).
387
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
388
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
389
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
390
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
391
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
392
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
393
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
394
Cable from Madeline Albright to US Secretary of State (4 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “France wants Security Council
Action on Rwanda”).
395
Cable from Madeline Albright to US Secretary of State (4 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “France wants Security Council
Action on Rwanda”).
396
Cable from Madeline Albright to US Secretary of State (4 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “France wants Security Council
Action on Rwanda”).
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397
Letter dated 4 March 1993 from the Chargé d’Affaires of the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the United Nations
addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/25363 (4 Mar. 1993).
398
Letter dated 4 March 1993 from the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations addressed to the
President of the Security Council, S/25371 (4 Mar. 1993).
399
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 100 (1995).
400
Duclert Commission Report 683 (quoting AN/PM, Private archives of Michel Rocard, 680AP/81, Note from
Marisol Touraine to Michel Rocard. “Le Rwanda.” 15 Mar. 1993).
401
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993). Mitterrand immediately recognized that a handoff to UN forces
would surprise and concern some French allies in other parts of Africa. “[I]f France pulls out, which would be wise,
everyone will feel threatened,” he said.
402
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
403
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
404
Notes on Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993) (noting that Mitterrand alluded to the risk of “damage
[French] prestige” if France left Rwanda).
405
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
406
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
407
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
408
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
409
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
410
Report from COS, Renforcement du volet strategie indirecte au Rwanda (5 Mar. 1993).
411
Report from COS, Renforcement du volet strategie indirecte au Rwanda (5 Mar. 1993).
412
Report from COS, Renforcement du volet strategie indirecte au Rwanda (5 Mar. 1993).
413
Report from COS, Renforcement du volet strategie indirecte au Rwanda (5 Mar. 1993).
414
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 80 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
415
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 75 (2011) 75 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
416
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 78 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
417
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 78 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
418
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 78 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
419
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 79 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
420
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 79 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
421
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 80 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
422
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 81 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
423
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 81 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
424
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 81 (2011).
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Chapter VI
January – March 1993
425
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 81 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
426
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 82 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
427
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 82 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
428
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 82 (2011).
429
Cable from Georges Martres (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Retrait des troupes Francaises du Rwanda”).
430
Cable from Georges Martres (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Retrait des troupes Francaises du Rwanda”).
431
Rwandan Negotiators Arrive for Contact Meeting, AFP, 4 Mar. 1993.
432
Cable from Georges Martres (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Retrait des troupes Francaises du Rwanda”); Memorandum
from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (26 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
433
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye (3 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Propositions de recommendations”).
434
Cable from Johnnie Carson to American Embassy in Kigali (27 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “U.S. Meeting with RPF
Military Commander”).
435
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 82 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
436
Memorandum from Michel Rigot (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda, le 9 mars 1993 – Point de situation”).
437
Memorandum from Michel Rigot (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda, le 9 mars 1993 – Point de situation”).
438
Rwanda Rebels Announce Conditional Withdrawal from Positions AFP, 5 Mar. 1993.
439
Rebel Demand Delays Signing of Joint Communiqué, AFP, 6 Mar. 1993.
440
Rebel Demand Delays Signing of Joint Communiqué, AFP, 6 Mar. 1993.
441
Joint Communiqué Issued at the End of the High-Level Meeting Between the Government of the Republic of
Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Held in Dar-Es-Salaam from 5 To 7 March 1993 (7 Mar. 1993).
442
Confidential Document Between the Rwandese Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front Regarding the
Modalities of the Withdrawal of Foreign Troops, Rw. – RPF, 7 Mar. 1993 (signed Dismas Nsengiyaremye and Alexis
Kanyarengwe).
443
Confidential Document Between the Rwandese Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front Regarding the
Modalities of the Withdrawal of Foreign Troops, Rw. – RPF, 7 Mar. 1993 (signed Dismas Nsengiyaremye and Alexis
Kanyarengwe). Note that contrary to the text of this agreement, according to French documents, on 8 February 1993,
there was only one Noroît company in Rwanda, not two; reinforcements arrived the next day.
444
Memorandum from Michel Rigot (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda, le 9 mars 1993 – Point de situation”).
445
See, e.g., Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject:
“Rwanda”) (calling for the deployment of Noroît reinforcement companies not only to protect French nationals, but
to “send a clear signal to the RPF in order to curb its appetite”).
446
Memorandum from Michel Rigot (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda, le 9 mars 1993 – Point de situation”).
447
Memorandum from Michel Rigot (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda, le 9 mars 1993 – Point de situation”).
448
Handwritten note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand on memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François
Mitterrand (9 Mar. 1993).
449
Handwritten note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand on memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François
Mitterrand (9 Mar. 1993).
450
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restreint du
10 mars 93”) (“[A]s long as the Rwandan government accepts these provisions, it is difficult for us not to side with
them.”).
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January – March 1993
451
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restreint du
10 mars 93”).
452
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restreint du
10 mars 93”).
453
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (9 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restreint du
10 mars 93”).
454
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Peace and Politics”).
455
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Peace and Politics”).
456
Report from Rwandan Intelligence Service, Note de Synthese du 10 Mars 1993 (10 Mar. 1993).
457
Cable from Georges Martres to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (11 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Position du CDR sur
les accords de Dar es Salaam”).
458
Report from Rwandan Intelligence Service, Note de Synthese du 10 Mars 1993 (10 Mar. 1993).
459
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”).
460
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”).
461
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”).
462
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”).
463
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”).
464
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”).
465
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (29 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “CDR Splits from MRND”). (“[T]here
are some military officers who were sharply critical of the president for capitulating to the RPF and not fighting on.”).
466
Memorandum from Félicien Muberuka (10 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “retrait des troupes françaises”).
467
Memorandum from Félicien Muberuka (10 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “retrait des troupes françaises”).
468
President Resigns Party Post and Promises Elections, AFP (31 Mar. 1993).
469
Notes on Cable from George Martres (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le président Habyarimana”).
470
Notes on Cable from George Martres (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le président Habyarimana”).
471
Notes on Cable from George Martres (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Entrevue avec le président Habyarimana”).
Habyarimana reportedly returned to this subject in a meeting with Ambassador Martres in late April 1993. Following
the meeting, a French embassy official sent a cable to Paris reminding officials there that the Rwandan president was
“still awaiting France’s advice as to whether he should commit himself not to seek a new mandate at the end of the
transitional period,” and that he “would like us to assure him by our presence and our support that his security and
that of his entourage will not be endangered if he leaves the political scene.” Notes on Cable from George Martres (26
Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Rencontre du Président Habyarimana avec M. Georges Martres”).
472
France Sets Out Draft Resolution on Sending U.N. Troops to Rwanda, AFP, 6 Mar. 1993.
473
UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 1993-1996 156157 (The United Blue Book Series, Vol. X 1996).
474
UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 1993-1996 156157 (The United Blue Book Series Vol. X 1996).
475
UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS, REPERTOIRE OF THE PRACTICE OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL,
SUPPLEMENT 1993-1995 329-330 (12 Dec. 1995).
476
Confidential Document Between the Rwandese Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front Regarding the
Modalities of the Withdrawal of Foreign Troops, Rw. – RPF, 7 Mar. 1993 (signed Dismas Nsengiyaremye and Alexis
Kanyarengwe).
477
Confidential Document Between the Rwandese Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front Regarding the
Modalities of the Withdrawal of Foreign Troops, Rw. – RPF, 7 Mar. 1993 (signed Dismas Nsengiyaremye and Alexis
Kanyarengwe).
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478
January – March 1993
Rwanda Peace Talks to Resume in Tanzania on Tuesday, AFP, 15 Mar. 1993.
479
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”).
480
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”).
481
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (17 Mar. 1993).
482
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (17 Mar. 1993).
483
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (17 Mar. 1993).
484
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (17 Mar. 1993).
485
Memorandum from Philippe Tracqui (19 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Ordre de Conduite No. 9”).
486
Memorandum from Philippe Tracqui (19 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Ordre de Conduite No. 9”).
487
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”).
488
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Minister of
Defense”). Defense Minister Gasana told US Ambassador Flaten on 19 March that “the RPF had withdrawn from its
March 17 positions, but that he could not verify if the pullback was all the way to the Feb. 8 positions, or if 100 percent
of the RPF forces had withdrawn.” The government had imperfect information because, as a US cable explained, the
only entity permitted to access the buffer zone and verify whether the RPF had indeed withdrawn was the GOMN.
489
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”).
490
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”).
491
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda – Conseil restraint
du 24 mars”).
492
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Mar. 1993).
493
Memorandum from Philippe Tracqui (24 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Ordre de Conduite No. 10”).
494
Memorandum from Dominique Delort (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Ordre du jour”).
495
Memorandum from Dominique Delort (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Ordre du jour”).
496
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 89 (2011). The MIP uses 28 March 1993 as the end date for Operation Chimère. See
MIP Tome I 164.
497
Memorandum from Dominique Delort (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Ordre du jour”).
498
MIP Tome II, Annex 1.1 (“Liste des Personnalités Entendues par la Mission d’Information”).
499
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement (5 Apr. 1993).
500
Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthése trimestrielle Janvier, Février, Mars 1993 (6 Apr. 1993).
501
Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthése trimestrielle Janvier, Février, Mars 1993 (6 Apr. 1993).
502
Report from Col. Bernard Cussac, Compte Rendu Semestriel de Fonctionnement (5 Apr. 1993).
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CHAPTER VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
A. The French Government’s Support for Habyarimana Continued at the Dawn of a New Era
of “Cohabitation” Government in Paris, with French Diplomats Working behind the Scenes
to Neutralize the RPF.
The March 1993 legislative elections ended in disaster for President Mitterrand’s Socialist
Party. After two rounds of voting, beginning 21 March and concluding 28 March, the moderate
conservative bloc claimed 484 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, humbling Mitterrand
and setting up a divided, or “cohabitation,” government for the second time in his presidency1
Mitterrand wasted no time choosing a prime minister. Pressed to select a member of the
conservative alliance, he settled on Édouard Balladur—a former finance minister and legislator.2
Balladur cut a genteel figure, with an abiding courteousness that tended to mask his tenacity.3
(Those who knew him well described him as “an iron fist in a velvet glove.”4) Most critically, from
Mitterrand’s perspective, Balladur was a known commodity, having served the previous
cohabitation government, from 1986 to 1988.5 Indeed, it was Balladur who, in a 1983 article,6 had
first worked out how political cohabitation could work in practice.7
“My dear compatriots,” Mitterrand said in a four-minute televised address on 29 March
1993, “by electing a new, very large majority to the National Assembly, you have signaled your
desire for a different policy. This wish will be scrupulously respected.”8 The 76-year-old president,
appearing pale, but calm,9 presented Balladur as a sensible choice in an era of divided government,
touting his “competence” and his ability to unify the various factions within the conservative
majority.10 (The Mitterrand-Balladur partnership would prove workable, by many accounts. In
contrast with the previous period of cohabitation (1986-1988), marked by frequent clashes, the
Balladur years would be described as the “velvet cohabitation.”11)
“As for me,” Mitterrand added, in his 29 March 1993 address, “I will observe the duties
and responsibilities that the constitution grants me. I will ensure the continuity of our foreign policy
and our defense policy.”12
The election results were an unavoidable topic of conversation in Paris on 1 April, when
Admiral Lanxade addressed a gathering of the city’s many foreign military, naval, and air
attachés.13 Rwanda’s military attaché in Paris, Colonel Sébastien Ntahobari, found the admiral’s
remarks reassuring, writing in a memo two weeks later that Lanxade had told the group that
“France’s policy with African countries will not change even with the Right in power.”14
Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana, who, as Rwanda’s ambassador to France, had been
tracking the legislative races closely, viewed the elections as a referendum on Mitterrand’s
handling of the French economy.15 If the president’s televised speech on 29 March was any
indication, Mitterrand did not read the results as a signal that voters were unhappy with his
administration’s foreign policy, and Ndagijimana saw little reason to expect any dramatic changes
in that arena.16 Mitterrand, Ndagijimana wrote in a 30 March analysis, “will probably have his
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say,” though Mitterrand would likely need to secure Balladur’s buy-in on any major decisions.17
“It appears, moreover, that there are no fundamental differences between the African policy led by
the Right and that led by the Left, the main [goal] being to preserve France’s interests and influence
in the world,” Ndagijimana wrote.18 He expressed confidence that France would not abandon the
La Baule policy of requiring democratic reforms as a condition for aid in developing countries.19
He did expect, though, that the new French cabinet would prioritize security and stability over the
pro-democratization policy, recognizing that many African leaders were “of the opinion that the
current political mess in many French-speaking African countries [was] not conducive to
development.”20 “That is to say,” Ndagijimana wrote, “that the necessary democratization of
African countries will be encouraged, but the socio-economic specificities and the political
stability of each country will be taken into account.”21
The reshuffling of power in Paris came at a frenzied and challenging time in France’s
dealings with Rwanda. The FAR was proving to be outmatched, even after two and a half years of
steadfast French support. Now, Operation Chimère was over—it concluded on 28 March,22 at the
very moment of the French Socialist Party’s resounding defeat at the polls—but French military
operations continued, with two Noroît companies remaining in Kigali, and several dozen
instructors and technical advisers still assisting the FAR.23 The goal now, as President Mitterrand
had framed it in a 3 March 1993 restricted council meeting, was to provide enough military support
to prevent the FAR from losing any further ground on the battlefield while the gears of diplomacy
continued to spin,24 not only in Arusha, but at the headquarters of the Organization of African
Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa and the UN headquarters in New York.25
The Arusha peace talks, after resuming in mid-March, had been productive at first, with
the government and RPF delegations needing just nine days to reach an agreement on how many
troops would serve in the new Rwandan military.26 While their initial proposals were far apart—
the government, having drastically enlarged its armed forces during the war, pitched a much higher
figure than the RPF was willing to accept—both sides had shown a willingness to compromise on
this issue, ultimately agreeing to equip Rwanda with a 13,000-man army and a 9,000-man
gendarmerie.27 The talks became considerably more contentious, though, when the negotiators
turned to the harder questions of how to integrate the two sides’ forces. When, at first, the
government declared that 80 percent of the troops should come from the FAR, and just 20 percent
from the RPF, the latter’s chief negotiator, Pasteur Bizimungu, called the proposal an “insult.”28
Bizimungu reportedly blasted the FAR as “a defeated army” and announced that if the government
wanted an 80-20 split, it could have it—but with 80 percent for the RPF, and 20 for the FAR.29
The back and forth on this issue would take up most of the next three months.30
Mitterrand, having resolved on 3 March that French troops should “be replaced” by the
United Nations “as soon as possible,”31 was not content to wait for the Arusha process to run its
course. In late March, his administration dispatched a high-level delegation led by the Foreign
Ministry’s Africa director, Jean-Marc de La Sablière, to prod the United Nations to follow through
on the recommendations the Security Council had outlined on 12 March 1993 in Resolution 812.32
The Security Council resolution had contemplated at least two types of international forces that
might be deployed to the region. It first called on Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to
consider collaborating with the OAU on an “international force” with wide-ranging
responsibilities, among them protecting civilians, delivering humanitarian assistance, and
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supporting the Neutral Military Observer Group’s work of monitoring the cease-fire.33 It next
invited Boutros-Ghali to examine the Rwandan and Ugandan governments’ requests to send
observers to their shared border.34
De La Sablière’s message during his meetings with UN officials and other diplomats on 25
and 26 March set the template for the French government’s messaging to the international
community in the months ahead. France’s position, he explained, was that both types of forces
were needed, but one was needed more urgently than the other. Tellingly, it was not the force with
the mission of protecting civilians and monitoring the cease-fire. In the French government’s view,
the proposed border force—a force designed, above all else, to neutralize the RPF as a military
power—was the higher priority.35 This UN border force would not be designed to check both
belligerents, but only one: the RPF.
Ambassador Jean-Bernard Mérimée, France’s permanent representative to the United
Nations, sought to explain the French government’s rationale in a 2 April letter to Boutros-Ghali.36
By his account, the Arusha talks were “deadlocked,” and the RPF had not yet fulfilled its promise
to pull its troops back to the 8 February 1993 cease-fire line.37 (Mérimée did not call out the RPF
by name, but the implication was clear.) “In that context,” he wrote, “it is to be feared that the
fighting will soon resume, leading to further massacres and to a very serious deterioration in the
humanitarian situation.”38 The letter called the proposed deployment of observers to the RwandanUgandan border “a matter of priority,” explaining: “We are of the view that such a deployment,
which has been requested by the authorities of Rwanda and Uganda, could reduce tension in the
region and promote the negotiation process between the parties.”39
An internal French Defense Ministry memo on 1 April was more direct. It said that RPF
troops—which, according to the memo, had pulled back from the positions they occupied when
the Dar es Salaam agreement was signed on 7 March 1993, but not all the way—appeared, still, to
be battle ready.40 “The signs that the RPF may possibly resume their offensive are beginning to
accumulate,” the memo warned.41 A UN observer force on the Rwandan-Ugandan border might
keep this threat in check. According to the memo, “This deployment would considerably limit the
assistance the Ugandan Army can provide to the RPF. It would therefore have the ability to bring
down tensions in Rwanda.”42
French concerns that the RPF military was preparing to storm Kigali continued to mount
in late March and early April 1993.43 A note dated 1 April from General Quesnot and Delaye to
Mitterrand referred to indications that an attack was just “a few days or weeks” away.44 Rwandan
authorities were no less convinced than were the French. In a 31 March meeting with a US
diplomat, Lt. Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva, the Rwandan Army état-major’s chief of intelligence,
insisted that RPF negotiators in Arusha were merely stalling while the group’s armed forces laid
the groundwork “for a massive, decisive attack, with the goal of taking Kigali.”45 Nsengiyumva
mapped out the whole scenario, predicting that, “in the very near future,” the RPF would drive
south from Ruhengeri toward President Habyarimana’s home commune of Karago, where it would
“surround, capture or kill, and thus neutralize” between 7 and 10 elite FAR battalions.46 Having
achieved a “major psychological victory by taking [the] president’s home area,” the RPF army
would seize control of Gisenyi and Ruhengeri, “close the loop” on Byumba, and march east to
Gabiro, before finally streaming south to “take” Kigali.47 Nsengiyumva said the RPF forces have
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“had a tendency to attack at the end of the week, on the full moon,” so 4 or 8-9 April “would be
propitious.”48 The US diplomat, after hearing all of this, expressed some skepticism.49 How, he
asked, could the RPF military consider taking Kigali, “when all observers and most Rwandans
assume that such an event would lead to massacres on a massive scale of Tutsis country-wide”?50
Nsengiyumva’s response was that “such a loss of life does not concern the RPF.”51
Paul Kagame, the RPF military’s chairman of High Command, was well aware of the
rumors of an impending offensive, and sought a meeting with US diplomats to assure them the
talk was unfounded.52 In the ensuing meeting on 6 April, he flatly denied that the RPF military
was contemplating an attack and insisted that the RPF delegation in Arusha was taking its task
seriously.53 Kagame viewed the allegations against his organization as all too convenient, knowing
that the Rwandan and French officials were the ones peddling them. “This is just intended to put
pressure on [the] UN to deploy both at the U[gandan] and R[wandan] border and in the DMZ later
on in Kigali,” he wrote in a message to other RPF leaders.54 He further suspected that Rwanda and
France were trying to create an impression that the OAU, as overseer of the Neutral Military
Observer Group (GOMN), was not up to the task of monitoring the buffer zone and would need to
be replaced, quickly, by UN forces.55 “O[ther]wise, they know the story is not true,” he wrote.56
Kagame told the Americans, in his 6 April meeting, that the United Nations border force
proposal was unjust. Its chief function, he noted, was to block the RPF’s supply routes.57 “[H]e
thought it was unfair to worry about only supplies going to the RPF. What about supplies to the
GOR?” a US cable about the meeting stated.58
The RPF saw no justification for the proposed border force. That the French government
was leading the charge for its creation was itself a cause for suspicion, suggesting its true purpose
was to neutralize the RPF’s military advantage over the FAR (and, in so doing, undermine the
RPF’s leverage in the ongoing Arusha talks). The Ugandan government, though, had also backed
the proposal. “If Uganda allowed them on its side of the border, that was its own affair,” Kagame
reportedly told US diplomats, explaining why, in spite of its objections, the RPF was willing to
tolerate the presence of UN observers on the Ugandan side of the border.59 “[B]ut the Rwanda[n]
side was ‘a different matter.’”60 It was all well and good for French and Rwandan authorities to
ask the United Nations to send observers there, but the Rwandan government did not control its
side of the border; the RPF did.61
De La Sablière’s mission to New York in late March did not seem to generate much
enthusiasm for the proposed border force, either from the UN Secretariat or from Security Council
member states.62 “[N]one of our Western or African partners is really motivated about this issue,”
Quesnot and Delaye wrote in their 1 April note to Mitterrand.63 De La Sablière did succeed,
though, in persuading the Secretariat to dispatch a small team of UN officers to Rwanda to assess
the practicality and potential benefits of sending observers to the Rwandan-Ugandan border.64
With that, the French government’s plan to weaken the RPF by cutting off its supply route was in
motion.
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B. France’s New Prime Minister Resolved to Bolster French Assistance to the FAR. An
Expansion of DAMI Panda Soon Followed.
The UN Secretariat’s decision to seek out an on-the-ground assessment brought President
Mitterrand one step closer to his goal of internationalizing the Rwanda crisis. It was, however,
only a step, and with the government and RPF delegations still locked in tough negotiations in
Arusha, the French government had some decisions to make about its military engagement in the
region. There were few good options, and officials in Paris would reveal themselves to be
conflicted about how to proceed.
In the view of one advisor in the Ministry of Defense, France had three options.65 The first,
and probably riskiest, option would be to promptly evacuate French nationals and pull both of the
remaining Noroît companies out of Rwanda.66 Explaining his thinking in a 1 April 1993 memo to
Defense Minister Léotard, the advisor did not seem to favor this option, as he warned it could lead
to ethnic violence.67 A second option would be to “freeze the current situation” by doing more to
improve the FAR’s defensive capabilities, while waiting for the United Nations to deploy
observers to the Ugandan border.68 According to the advisor’s memo, this could be accomplished
by strengthening the DAMI and arming the FAR with more ammunition: “This solution is the most
expensive. Its effectiveness is not guaranteed. [But] [i]t has the virtue of seeking to keep the
violence to a minimum.”69 The third and final option would be to maintain the status quo, while
remaining ready to evacuate French nationals, should that become necessary.70 The advisor’s
memo did not expressly recommend any one of the options over the others. Nor, for that matter,
did General Quesnot and Delaye, when they presented a set of substantially similar options in a
note to Mitterrand in advance of a “restricted” council meeting on 2 April.71
Prior restricted council meetings, conducted before the elections, had provided a useful
forum for Mitterrand as the French legislative elections approached and offered him a weekly
opportunity to canvas a number of key ministers and advisers for their thoughts and
recommendations on the Rwanda situation, among other subjects.72 This time, the room was
packed with less familiar faces—among them, the new prime minister, Balladur; a new foreign
minister, Alain Juppé; and a new cooperation minister, Michel Roussin.73 There was also the new
defense minister, Léotard, who, according to notes from the meeting, opened the discussion with
a grim report: “The situation is extremely serious and urgent,” he began. “The RPF is advancing
towards Kigali. . . . We already withdrew two [Noroît] troops, and we are left with about 300 men
facing many thousands coming from the north.”74 Léotard argued the Noroît companies, in their
present configuration, would not be able to hold back the RPF military.75 “Should we have to stay,
we would need reinforcements of up to 1,200 men,” he said.76
Mitterrand, as he had done in previous restricted council meetings held before the elections,
pressed Admiral Lanxade for his view. Lanxade said he was expecting the RPF army to launch an
attack “within the next week,” and he saw few good options for responding to it.77 Either the
French government could abandon Rwanda—that is, evacuate its nations and withdraw its
troops—or it could “oppose the invasion of Kigali” by the RPF military.78 “[B]ut then,” he said,
“we would have to consider [asking] our soldiers to engage in direct action.”79
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No one at the meeting spoke up for a total withdrawal. Juppé, the new foreign minister,
said that was out of the question.80 “There is a risk that massacres may occur if we leave, and a
risk of African [countries’] distrust toward France,” he said.81 On the other hand, he said, “if we
reinforce [our troops], we risk digging ourselves deeper into this affair.”82
Balladur was willing to take his chances. “The status quo is unsustainable,” he said,
according to the meeting notes.83 “Our forces are too weak. We must be more present. Given the
available manpower, we can add another thousand men, but we must know how long we can hold
out. We must provide our armed forces with additional means.”84
Mitterrand, who, as usual, retained the final word, struck a reflective tone. Ordinarily, he
said, France would not intervene in a conflict “unless there is a foreign aggression, and not in cases
of tribal conflict.”85 Here, he said, “in this case, it’s an amalgamation [of the two] because of the
Tutsi problem. President Museveni himself is of Tutsi descent.”86 (The question of Museveni’s
ethnicity had piqued Mitterrand’s interest before. He had, in fact, thought to ask President
Habyarimana about it during a meeting in April 1991.87) It was only a little more than a week
earlier that Mitterrand had agreed (if, perhaps, reluctantly) to pare Noroît down to just two
companies,88 as the Dar es Salaam agreements had called on France to do.89 Balladur’s call for
“additional means”—that is to say, more French troops—would mark a sudden and fairly radical
reversal of that decision. Mitterrand could, conceivably, have overruled the new prime minister;
he had, after all, vowed after his party’s losses in the recent legislative elections that, as president,
he would “ensure the continuity of our foreign policy and our defense policy.”90 Mitterrand,
though, did not take that route. Instead, he chose to show deference to his new partner in
“cohabitation.”
“We must do as you wish, Prime Minister,” Mitterrand said.91
Balladur had spoken, perhaps offhandedly, of sending 1,000 more soldiers to Kigali—far
more than the number of troops France had just withdrawn over the past two weeks.92 France did
not, in the end, go through with the deployment, though additional documents show it remained a
topic of discussion five days later, at the next council of ministers meeting on 7 April.93 It is not
clear why the plan was dropped, but, at the 7 April meeting, the Ministries of Defense and
Cooperation persuaded Mitterrand to authorize the deployment of an “assessment mission” to
study the FAR’s training needs.94 Balladur responded to the idea of an assessment mission by
acknowledging the need “to take stock of several issues,” an acquiescence that may have delayed,
and eventually superseded, his troop reinforcement proposal.95
The assessment mission team, led by Colonel Philippe Capodanno,96 who had performed
a similar mission in the fall of 1992,97 was charged with assessing the conditions on the ground
and recommending next steps.98 Its itinerary included a 15 April 1993 meeting with the Rwandan
National Gendarmerie chief of staff, Col. Ndindiliyimana, who came prepared with a list of
requests ranging from expanding riot-control training to providing clothing and typewriters, but
the group let him know he would have to be patient.99 A Rwandan account of the meeting reported
that Philippe Jehanne,100 a defense adviser to the French minister of cooperation,
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April 1993 – 5 April 1994
pointed out that, due to the current state of war in Rwanda, the National
Gendarmerie cannot hope to benefit from its traditional place of choice in the
immediate future. Priority goes to the [Army] which alone benefits from 90 percent
of direct aid from France. It would therefore be necessary, he added, to wait for the
end of the war before the [National Gendarmerie] could benefit from a large
contribution from France.101
Jehanne was not suggesting that the Gendarmerie could expect no aid from France in the
short term. On the contrary, Col. Bernard Cussac, the French defense attaché and head of the
Military Assistance Mission (MAM) in Rwanda, soon notified Defense Minister Gasana that the
MAM had decided to create a permanent position for a police forensics instructor to work
alongside the French DAMI officers at the Centre de recherche et de documentation criminelle
(Center for Criminal Research and Documentation, or CRDC), the Gendarmerie’s records and
investigation center in Kigali.102 These DAMI officers, who, since summer 1992, had been helping
the Rwandan gendarmes investigate politically motivated violence and acts of terrorism, had been
set to return home on 18 May, but Cussac let Gasana know that the French government had decided
to partially renew the DAMI’s mission order to avoid any gaps in French assistance to the center.103
(The DAMI wrapped up its work at the CRDC in July 1993. The MAM, however, left behind two
permanent technical advisers to continue the work the DAMI officers had started.104)
Following their meetings with numerous other Rwandan military officials, Capodanno and
his assessment team concluded: “[I]t appears necessary to make a special effort during the next six
months to place the FAR in better conditions to oppose a possible resumption of combat and to
integrate with the RPF in the future Rwandan Army.”105 The most essential tasks, according to
Capodanno, were to reorganize the battalions, retrain officers, and provide additional training for
intelligence-gathering units.106 To do this, he recommended increasing the DAMI Panda staff from
45 to 69 officers.107
The assessment quickly led to action. French and Rwandan authorities reopened the DAMI
training facility in Mukamira,108 which had been inactive since Operation Volcan in February.109
By June 1993, the number of DAMI officers had swelled to 80.110 French-led trainings resumed
that summer “at an intensive pace.”111 Noroît officers, as well, had a role to play in
professionalizing the FAR—notably, by providing shooting training for the reconnaissance
battalion’s MILAN platoon (specializing in anti-tank guided missiles).112
French advisers throughout this period continued their efforts to prepare the FAR to take
up arms against the RPF, should the peace talks fail. In April 1993, the French and Rwandan
governments agreed to reappoint Lt. Col. Jean-Jacques Maurin as technical adviser to the chief of
the Rwandan Army état-major.113 French assistance persisted further down the chain of command,
as well. Between March and September 1993, French MAM officers working with the FAR’s
aviation squadron (ESCAVI) oversaw 170 flight training missions.114 The Rwandan paracommando battalion likewise kept a busy training schedule and benefitted from a shipment of
French parachutes, which, according to a French report, was “perceived by the French cooperants
and the Rwandan paratroopers as a significant gesture of support for a unit that did not spare any
effort or blood to defend its country.”115
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Even the MIP would later question these decisions, most especially the June 1993
expansion of DAMI Panda.116 For one thing, it noted, the Arusha negotiations were winding down.
With peace nearly at hand, reinforcing French military cooperation “made less sense,” the MIP
remarked.117 Even assuming, though, that France had something to gain in redoubling its efforts
to train the FAR, its decision to do so would still be hard to justify. As the MIP observed, French
officers were well aware of the “absence of ethics” among some of the FAR’s leaders and “the
dilapidation of the FAR.”118 (The MIP noted that one French officer had referred to Colonel
Bagosora, the Ministry of Defense cabinet director who would later mastermind the Genocide, as
“trash.”119) The MIP rhetorically asked whether it was “appropriate to continue to teach the basics
[of military tactics] to individuals, the majority of whom were clearly more interested in the
material benefits being a soldier could provide them, than [motivated by] a desire to fight and
defend their country.”120 The commission left this specific question unanswered, but concluded
that considering the FAR’s complicity in the Genocide, it “would no doubt have been preferable
to refrain from this last reinforcement of French military cooperation during the summer of
1993.”121
C. The French Ministry of Defense Disregarded an Internal Recommendation to Reassess
French Policy in Rwanda.
France’s policy on Rwanda had detractors even within the French government. No fewer
than two defense ministers, Jean-Pierre Chevènement and Pierre Joxe, questioned France’s efforts
to prop up the Habyarimana government, as did the head of the Military Cooperation Mission,
Jean Varret.122 French decision makers ignored them all. They repeated this error in April 1993,
when a Defense Ministry official, Pierre Conesa, delivered what may have been the government’s
most clear-eyed analysis to date of the senselessness of French policy in Rwanda.
Conesa, a civil servant in a military intelligence division known as the Delegation for
Strategic Affairs, drafted a 10 April 1993 note in response to the FIDH report’s revelations, a few
weeks earlier, that Rwandan authorities had orchestrated ethnic killings. “In the Rwandan crisis,
we cannot ignore . . . [how President Habyarimana] has amassed reasons for criticism from human
rights organizations,” the note stated.123
Conesa argued that French policymakers were viewing the Rwandan crisis through the
wrong prism. The French government’s view was that the Ugandan government had disturbed
Rwanda’s sovereignty, and that France, by intervening as it had, was simply protecting “the
territorial and political integrity of Rwanda.”124 “This logic,” he wrote, “obliges [France] to defend
the regime in place in Kigali, which supposedly represents 90 percent of the population of Rwanda
(the Hutu).”125 Conesa saw the fallacy in this argument. Habyarimana was “only weakly
representative” of the Rwandan people.126 The French government’s error was to assume that a
Hutu president must represent the collective will of a majority-Hutu nation. “The regime in place
is no more representative than the RPF,” Conesa wrote.127
Conesa suggested that a better reading of the situation was that Rwanda was in the throes
of an “‘African-style’ internal crisis, that is, an ethnic-based revolt with a sanctuary in a
neighboring state.”128 The RPF was not a Ugandan proxy, and its campaign to depose
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Habyarimana was not a foreign invasion of the kind that might justify a French military
response.129
“It seemed to me there was no justification for grasping onto to the Habyarimana regime
so tightly,” Conesa said in a 2018 interview with journalist David Servenay.130 What is more,
Conesa saw no reason for continuing to support Habyarimana after two and a half years of war.
By staying, his note argued, France was sending a message to other African autocrats, that France
would defend them against challenges to their rule.131 With crises ongoing in South Sudan, Angola,
and other parts of Africa, the “classic argument” in favor of staying the course—i.e., that to leave
would “give our African friends the impression that France abandons them”—was “flawed.”132
“What will happen,” Conesea asked, “when allied states confronted with problems of the same
nature—half internal, half external—call for help[?]”133
Conesa has since characterized the April 1993 note as “a frontal criticism of the Élysée’s
Africa Cell and the French military system,” telling Servenay in the 2018 interview, “the purpose
of the note was to say: let’s distance ourselves, because the Élysée is going astray.”134 According
to Conesa, the civilian cabinet of Minister of Defense François Léotard, headed at the time by
François Lepine, responded positively to the April 1993 note, while the minister’s military cabinet
responded negatively to it.135 The latter was headed at the time by General Jean Rannou, but
Conesa said that Rannou himself was not involved with Rwanda, and that someone else from the
minister’s military cabinet (he could not remember who) had criticized the note.136
The Élysée’s response to the note was disappointing, if not surprising. “My conclusion,”
Conesa said in 2018, “is that the hierarchical process at the Élysée filtered reality.”137 In all
likelihood, he said, Mitterrand’s advisers screened the note and “never put directly on the
president’s desk.”138 Conesa’s call for a reassessment of France’s Rwanda policy was not merely
unheeded; it was scarcely even noticed.
D. In May 1993, French Officials Sidelined General Varret, a Leading Critic of France’s
Rwanda Policy.
On 20 May 1993, shortly after Pierre Conesa drafted his memo, French officials ousted
General Jean Varret as head of the Military Cooperation Mission (MCM), replacing him with
General Jean-Pierre Huchon.139 The MCM’s portfolio included military cooperation with about 26
countries, but according to Varret, it was his dissenting views on France’s Rwanda policy,
specifically, that cost him the position.140
Varret had taken on the MCM position in the Ministry of Cooperation in October 1990,
just as the war was starting. As discussed in Chapter 3, his concerns with French policy took root
soon afterward, when the chief of staff of Rwanda’s national Gendarmerie, Colonel Rwagafilita,
pulled him aside to ask that France supply the FAR with weapons so that it could “liquidate” the
Tutsi.141 Varret has said that, after that, he issued a series of “unambiguous” diplomatic reports
and telegrams emphasizing “the risks of a massacre of the Tutsis.142 The messages were not well
received.143 When, in July 1991, France sent several officials to Rwanda, but excluded him, it was
clear to him that his point of view was not welcome.144
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Varret’s superiors sent an even clearer signal of their displeasure with him later in the war,
following his final visit to Rwanda as head of the MCM.145 In his memoir, Varret recalled that it
was during this visit that he learned that members of the DAMI had conducted an unauthorized
reconnaissance mission in Uganda.146 “This detachment was under my orders,” he wrote, “and, of
course, it was not I who ordered this mission that went against the orders of neutrality for all French
soldiers in the internal Rwandan struggle.”147 Varret said he reprimanded the DAMI officers, only
to find, upon his return to Paris, a message on his desk informing him that the DAMI was no longer
under his orders.148
A leadership change in the Ministry of Cooperation, following the conservative rout in the
March 1993 legislative elections, only left Varret feeling more ostracized. Varret recalled that the
new minister of cooperation, Michel Roussin, carefully avoided meeting him after taking office.149
Varret felt he understood why: “I am in the way because I am not on the side of the friends of the
Hutu who must be helped to fight the Tutsi.”150 It was Roussin who notified Varret later that spring
that his services were no longer required in the Ministry of Cooperation, and that he could return
to his former office in the Ministry of Defense.151
“I said, ‘Why?’ I did not get an answer,” Varret recounted in a 2018 interview with a French
journalist.152 “Never had an answer. And Lanxade did not give me an answer. Nobody did. Not
even the president. . . . The least you can do when you sack a four-star general is tell him why!
But, my answer, it’s that I was no longer trusted.”153
In 2018, during an interview with the Rwanda scholar François Graner, Admiral Lanxade
said that he had requested for Varret to remain in his position, but it was “the Élysée Palace, to my
knowledge no doubt Quesnot, who pushed to replace Varret with Huchon.”154 In an interview with
documentarian Jean-Christophe Klotz, General Quesnot was blunt: “I have nothing against
General Varret, he’s a colleague. We commanded regiments at the same time. I’ve known him for
years. I respect his point of view. . . . But the mechanics of the Republic are such that either you
obey . . . or you get out.”155 French policy “at that point,” according to Quesnot, could not be
changed.156 Klotz then asked if Quesnot regretted this, to which Quesnot replied: “You know,
hindsight is 20/20.”157
E. At France’s Urging, the UN Security Council Voted to Send Observers to the Ugandan
Border in a Bid to Cut Off RPF Supply Routes.
As the French government ignored its internal dissenters and continued to prop up the FAR,
its diplomats, led by the Foreign Ministry’s Africa director, Jean-Marc de La Sablière, continued
to push the United Nations to send observers to the Rwandan-Ugandan border. The French
diplomats were able to line up American and Belgian support for the initiative,158 but UN
Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali expressed some reluctance, indicating he thought it would be
better to wait until a peace agreement was signed before sending UN troops to the region.159 De
La Sablière wondered if perhaps the Rwandan and Ugandan authorities had said something to
undermine the case for the border force.160 Neither country had formally withdrawn its support for
the proposal. It did appear, though, that President Habyarimana had gone off message, reportedly
letting it be known that, in his view, it was more important to send observers to Kigali than to the
border.161 De La Sablière had not expected this from the president. “These indications are not in
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line with what we consider to be the priorities of the Rwandan authorities,” he wrote.162 He urged
his colleagues in the French government to press the issue with the Rwandan government.163
An opportunity presented itself when a new French ambassador, Jean-Michel Marlaud,
arrived in Kigali in early May 1993, replacing Martres. Marlaud was a career diplomat, though
one of limited experience. Just 40 years old, he was more than two decades younger than Martres,
and this was his first ambassadorship.164
Marlaud seems to have been a useful instrument of the Élysée. One senior French official
said Marlaud executed the Élysée’s pro-regime positions and policies without question.165 His
overlap with the tenure of Col. Bernard Cussac—another pro-regime figure—as France’s defense
attaché (as well as head of the MAM and commander of Noroît) in Rwanda may have contributed
to the pro-regime bias of Marlaud’s cables, as he and Cussac tried to present a unified line in their
messages to Paris.166 Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the commander of United Nations Assistance Mission
in Rwanda (UNAMIR), similarly referred to Cussac’s outsized role. “Marlaud was open and
friendly, showing none of the usual arrogance that I had encountered with French officials on other
occasions,” observed Dallaire, “But it seemed that the military attaché had greater influence.”167
While presenting his credentials to President Habyarimana on 7 May, Marlaud pressed him
about the Rwandan government’s support for the proposed border force, explaining that BoutrosGhali appeared to be under the impression that there had been a “change in Rwandan priorities.”168
Habyarimana reportedly “expressed total amazement.”169 His government’s priorities had not
changed; “the priority was the deployment of observers at the border” and he “did not see how
such a misunderstanding could have arisen.”170 Defense Minister Gasana, arriving in New York
just a few days later, sought to clear up any ambiguity in an 18 May meeting with Boutros-Ghali,
in which he delivered a letter from Habyarimana reiterating the government’s hopes for a UN
observer force at the border.171
Boutros-Ghali signaled his willingness to support the proposal two days later, with his
submission, to the UN Security Council, of an “interim report on Rwanda.”172 The 20 May 1993
report, which stopped short of endorsing the proposal outright but touted its potential benefits,
noted that the RPF “has expressed the view that similar monitoring activities regarding the
provision of military assistance to the Government of Rwanda should also be considered.”173 There
is no indication, though, that the United Nations ever pursued this suggestion prior to the Genocide.
With the resolution’s prospects looking good, de La Sablière told US diplomats that France
hoped “to get the observers onto the border as quickly as possible, and that he did not want to get
hung up on details.”174
While French and US diplomats were readying the resolution for a vote, the negotiators in
Arusha were on the cusp of a breakthrough.175 After months of wrangling over the integration of
the two sides’ forces, RPF leaders on 8 June tentatively agreed to a Tanzanian proposal to allocate
60 percent of the military positions to the government and 40 percent to the RPF.176 The Rwandan
government delegation indicated those figures would be acceptable, as well, though divisions
were, as ever, apparent.177 A US cable noted the members of the delegation allied with President
Habyarimana had “strong reservations about even going to 40 percent.”178
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The Tanzanian delegation, willing itself to believe the end was in sight, labored tirelessly
to produce a signed peace agreement before the next OAU summit, scheduled for 28-30 June.179
While some disagreements remained, observers were optimistic that a signing could take place by
24 June.180 The Tanzanian delegates suggested that President Habyarimana should plan to come
to Arusha to “complete the negotiations himself, so that the signing can take place with a minimum
of delay.”181
The Tanzanians, though, could not keep pace with the French, who, at that moment, were
preparing their border-force proposal for a vote at the UN headquarters in New York. On 22 June,
the Security Council unanimously approved the proposal, known as Resolution 846, authorizing
the deployment of UN observers to the Ugandan side of the border for a six-month period, subject
to renewal every six months.182 The force, known as the United Nations Observer Mission UgandaRwanda, or UNOMUR, was to “monitor the Uganda/Rwanda border to verify that no military
assistance reaches Rwanda.”183 The resolution characterized the force as “a temporary confidencebuilding measure.”184
RPF leaders, continuing to chafe at the proposal’s disparate treatment of FAR and RPF
forces, had lobbied against the resolution to the last.185 In New York, an RPF official, Ngombwa
Muheto, had tried to attend the Security Council’s informal session the day before the vote, but
UN security personnel barred him from entering the building.186 (Muheto accused the French and
Rwandan representatives of conspiring to lock him out.187) A letter from RPF Director for
Diplomatic Affairs Théogène Rudasingwa on the day of the vote argued the resolution “would
have a negative impact on the Rwandan Peace Process.”188 He said the French and Rwandan
governments had wanted a border force since the beginning of the war, as both “look at the
Rwandan conflict as a war between two countries (Rwanda and Uganda).”189 Rudasingwa
cautioned: “Once this force is deployed, it will serve as an incentive and catalyst for President
Habyarimana to go to war since he will have a false sense of security that [the] RPF has been
contained and can therefore be defeated within Rwanda’s borders.”190
The French government’s contention, all along, was that the border force would
complement the negotiations in Arusha and help the two sides reach a compromise.191 In the short
term, though, there was reason to suspect that Rudasingwa may have been right. On 22 June, the
day the Security Council passed the resolution creating UNOMUR, the Rwandan cabinet decided,
in a meeting chaired by Habyarimana, to postpone the signing of the peace agreement in Arusha,
explaining the agreement was not yet ready.192 Habyarimana, despite the Tanzanians’ entreaties,
stayed home, a decision that, according to a US cable, was “viewed in Arusha as a slap in the face
of the facilitator, [Tanzanian] President Mwinyi.”193
F. Anti-Tutsi Extremists Launched RTLM in July 1993, Inciting Rwandans with Messages of
Hate.
RPF leaders remained hopeful that, despite recent setbacks, an agreement remained within
reach. “There is always a Plan A and a Plan B,” then-RPF Secretary General Tito Rutaremara has
since said. Plan A was to negotiate. At the same time, he said, “[we] could also see that the
government was mobilizing, writing lists, training Interahamwe.”194
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Increasingly that summer, it was evident that opponents of peace and reconciliation were
marshalling their forces. “The Hutus’ dream is finally coming true,” the virulently anti-Tutsi
newspaper Kangura trumpeted in its July 1993 issue.195 The occasion for this pronouncement was
the launch of Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines, or RTLM, a privately run radio station
with an unmistakable anti-Tutsi bent.196 Like Kangura, RTLM would become a leading platform
for hate speech and a tool of the génocidaires.197 Thanks, though, to the power of radio and the
popularity of RTLM’s broadcasts, it would prove to be an even more potent weapon in the
extremists’ arsenal.198
The driving force behind RTLM was Ferdinand Nahimana,199 the former director of the
Rwandan broadcasting agency the Office Rwandais d’Information (ORINFOR), whose directives
as editorial director of the state radio station, Radio Rwanda, instigated the Bugesera massacres in
March 1992.200 Nahimana was ousted from ORINFOR amid the outcry over Radio Rwanda’s role
in the slayings, a humiliation that, according to a 1995 book examining the media’s role in the
Genocide, fueled his paranoia.201 In the book, historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien and others wrote that
Nahimana came to believe that the RPF had infiltrated Radio Rwanda as part of a plot to prevent
Hutus from mobilizing in self-defense.202
Nahimana and the other founders of RTLM conceived of the station as the Hutu majority’s
answer to Radio Muhabura,203 the clandestine station the RPF had been operating from the
mountains along the Rwandan-Ugandan border since the summer of 1991.204 At his 2002-2003
trial for his role in the Genocide,205 Nahimana testified that two former colleagues, Joseph
Serugendo and Vénuste Nshimiyimana, first approached him with the idea for RTLM in the fall
of 1992.206 (Serugendo was a leader of the Interahamwe.207 In 2006, he pleaded guilty to incitement
to commit genocide and persecution as a crime against humanity, admitting he had helped plan
political rallies with the goal of inciting Interahamwe members to kill Tutsi and had used RTLM
as a vehicle to foment racial hatred.208 He received a six-month sentence but died two months after
sentencing.209)
The three men immediately set to work, placing a call to one of Rwanda’s richest
businessmen, Félicien Kabuga.210 Kabuga would go on to serve as chairman of the RTLM steering
committee and one of the station’s chief benefactors.211 He is currently under indictment for
genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and other offenses in an international
criminal court,212 having been arrested in May 2020 after more than two decades on the run.213
The financing to launch and operate RTLM came not only from Kabuga, but from a host
of influential backers, many of them members of Rwanda’s ruling elite.214 President Habyarimana
was a shareholder (one of the largest, in fact),215 as were at least two members of his family: his
son-in-law Alphonse Ntilivamunda and his cousin Charles Nzabagerageza.216 Several highranking members of his administration also owned shares, including:217
Augustin Ngirabatware (Minister of Planning and Cooperation);218
André Ntagerura (Minister of Transport and Communications);219
Col. Déogratias Nsabimana (Army Chief of Staff);
Télésphore Bizimungu (Director General of the Ministry of Planning);220
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Jean Marie Vianney Mvulirwenande (Adviser to President Habyarimana);221
Cyprien Ndagijimana (Technical Affairs Adviser in the Ministry of Public Works and
Energy);222
Stanislas Simbizi (Head of Civil Aviation in the Ministry of Transportation and
Communications);223
The list of shareholders would go on to include several architects of the Genocide. Among
them:224
Col. Théoneste Bagosora (Cabinet director for the Ministry of Defense), later found guilty
of genocide and crimes against humanity, among other offenses;225
Col. Elie Sagatwa (head of security for President Habyarimana), who was among the
victims of the 6 April 1994 plane crash;226
Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva (commander of Gisenyi military operations), later found guilty
of genocide and crimes against humanity;227
Major Aloys Ntabakuze (commander of the para-commando battalion), later found guilty
of genocide and crimes against humanity;228
From its start in July 1993, RTLM built a following among younger listeners, drawing
them in with “hot” music from popular Congolese artists (in contrast with Radio Rwanda, which
more often broadcast “old standard tunes”).229 Its reputation, though, was built on political talk,
which soon alarmed some listeners.230 “The language of the broadcasters changed,” the trial court
noted in Nahimana’s case, recounting the testimony of one listener.231 “[T]hey began to campaign
to promote the idea that all Tutsi were Inkotanyi and enemies of the nation, and that all Hutus
married to Tutsi were naïve and enemy accomplices.”232
French officials in Kigali were aware of the new station,233 and at least a few of them were
familiar with the content of its broadcasts.234 Michel Cuingnet, the head of the cooperation mission
in Rwanda, told the MIP that, from its earliest broadcasts, RTLM personalities “were broadcasting
on the air that it was necessary to ‘finish the job’ and crush all the cockroaches.”235 Nonetheless,
not everyone in France took issue with the station. An undated and unsigned draft contract between
RTLM and Telediffusion de France suggests that there was an effort to establish a five-year
partnership between the two and another entity called Eclipse-Rwanda to bring television to
Rwanda.236 (At the time, Telediffusion de France was part of France Telecom,237 the
telecommunication agency whose unique shareholder was the French government.238) Little is
known about the deal or whether it was consummated, but the venture, to be known as RTLMAssociation, was likely intended to allow RTLM to stand up the “television” in its name, and may
have been connected to Nahimana’s efforts in 1992239 to earn support in France for a Rwandan
television station.
RTLM’s rhetoric would only grow sharper and more violent with time.240 The evolution
was gradual, but noticeable, such as when news broke that Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye,
a Hutu, had been killed in a failed military coup on 21 October 1993.241 RTLM sensationalized the
story, reporting, for example, that the Tutsi plotters had tortured and castrated the president, despite
no evidence to support those assertions.242 A US cable reported that, while state-run Radio Rwanda
had “played all government communiqués calling for calm,” RTLM was pumping out
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unsubstantiated claims and urging all Rwandans to “resist the threat to democracy by every
possible means.”243 One listener’s notes of the broadcasts featured the statements, “We Hutus must
prove to the Tutsis that we are strong,” and, “You Hutus, you must be on the look-out. You might
meet the fate of the ones in Burundi.”244
The repugnance of RTLM’s broadcasts in the days after the Burundian president’s death
spurred Minister of Information Faustin Rucogoza to issue the station a formal warning.245 In a 27
October letter, Rucogoza, an MDR member,246 chided the station for using events in Burundi as
an excuse “to broadcast communiqués and programmes which may incite to violence and
undermine national unity and reconciliation advocated under the Arusha Peace Accords.”247 The
warning did not chasten the station’s broadcasters, one of whom responded, shortly afterward, by
airing more false claims about the “bloodthirsty Tutsi dog-eaters” who killed the Burundian
president.248 The broadcaster also read aloud a letter from a “high-level Hutu Power official”
condemning Rucogoza for his “evil intensions.”249 Rucogoza remained a target of RTLM
broadcasters in the months that followed.250 These were the last months of his life. Rwandan
soldiers rounded up and killed Rucogoza, his wife, two daughters, and a domestic servant on 7
April 1994, at the dawn of the Genocide.251
G. With Peace, at Last, Seemingly at Hand, France Inched Closer to the Exit.
The setbacks in Arusha in mid-to-late June 1993 made Col. Cussac uneasy.252 Negotiators
had twice penciled in dates for a signing ceremony, and both times the Tanzanian facilitators were
unable to coax the parties to accept a final agreement.253 Cussac, ever mistrustful of the RPF,
feared one more breakdown in the talks could spur the rebel forces to retake the offensive against
a Rwandan Army that, in his view, was plagued by discord and disciplinary problems.254 “A
solution will have to be found quickly to avoid a new resumption of the RPF offensive, which
could be decisive,” he wrote in a 6 July report.255
Although Cussac remained optimistic that peace was achievable, he had less confidence in
Rwandans’ capacity to rebuild their country after Arusha. “There will be many obstacles, and the
most difficult one to overcome will doubtless be the revitalization and empowerment of the
political and administrative authorities,” he wrote.256 Cussac intimated he was not convinced
Rwandans were up to that challenge, writing, in patronizing tones, that “[t]he sense of the common
good is indeed, not yet in Africa, the best mastered virtue.”257
It was clear enough that the French government had a limited interest in helping Rwanda
restore normalcy after the war. French officials were prepared to lead the charge in persuading the
United Nations to send a large peacekeeping force,258 but it was understood that the French
government did not intend to shoulder any more of the cost for it than France’s status among
Security Council member states would ordinarily require,259 nor did it intend to contribute
troops.260 Similarly, while the French government was comfortable leaving behind some military
officers to help the newly integrated Rwandan Army find its footing, it preferred to keep its
presence small. “[W]e do not intend on putting ourselves forward in the establishment of the new
Rwandan Army. We want as much as possible to put the Belgians forward, and intervene in support
with at most 20 technical military cooperants, financed according to Minister of Cooperation’s
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usual procedures,” a Defense Ministry advisor wrote in a 21 June memo, following a meeting with
Col. Delort, who had served as the commander of operations in Rwanda earlier in the year.261
The French government’s “general objectives,” the advisor said, “remain unchanged.”262
The first objective, he wrote—reiterating the central component of France’s failed policy in
Rwanda—was to “avoid[] seeing the legitimate government of a Francophone state be deposed by
force.”263 The second was “gradually disengaging ourselves by involvement of the UN and the
OAU as much as possible, in order to save the work that we have accomplished.”264 The advisor’s
memo argued that the two Noroît companies would have to remain in place for now, but suggested
that if the talks proved successful, it may be possible to withdraw one of the two companies.265
Even then, though, the French government would need to be careful in how it explained the
withdrawal, he wrote. It would have to be clear that France is simply supporting the peace
process—not abandoning the Rwandan government.266
President Habyarimana felt compelled, on several occasions in late June and early July, to
publicly reaffirm his commitment to the Arusha process now that the Tanzanian facilitators, having
twice had to postpone plans for a signing ceremony, had indefinitely suspended the talks.267 In a
15 July address to Western diplomats, he complained that “[p]artisan exploitation” of the delay
had compounded the “shock” Rwandans felt at the breakdown in the talks.268 “But in life, one
should listen to the voice of reason,” he said.269 The simple fact, he said, was that the two sides
still had a few points of disagreement to work out. Of the issues still on the table, the two biggest
were: (1) the integration of the two sides’ military commanders, and (2) the timetable for
inaugurating the post-Arusha transitional government.270
The latter issue was deceptively complex, as it hinged in large part on the goodwill of the
international community. Both sides agreed, albeit for different reasons, that some kind of UN- or
OAU-led peacekeeping force would have to be in place before the new government could begin
its work.271 The Rwandan authorities viewed the international force as an essential safeguard
against the resumption of hostilities.272 The RPF, meanwhile, needed assurances that its leaders
would be safe when they entered Kigali to join the new government.273 Their mutual need for
international support was notable not only because it imbued the two foes with a common purpose,
but because, in this one respect, at least, their interests aligned with those of France. Although—
from the perspective of the RPF—the French government had forestalled the achievement of peace
through diplomatic maneuvering and military assistance of years past, at this particular moment,
all three—the RPF, Habyarimana, and France—were eager to see foreign peacekeepers sweep into
Rwanda. The difference was in their reasoning: the Rwandan government and the RPF wanted
peacekeepers there to help the new government stitch the country back together, while the French
wanted an international force in Rwanda so that they, the French, could leave.
French and Rwandan officials did not view the OAU as well equipped to run a
peacekeeping operation by itself and were hoping the United Nations would agree to oversee it.274
(A French political counselor in Washington, D.C. told US diplomats on 7 July that “the OAU
does not have the capacity to act usefully, and thus the UN cannot escape a central role.”275) French
officials were well aware, though, that convincing the United Nations to send a large peacekeeping
force to Rwanda was going to be a challenge. French diplomats in New York could see that the
other Security Council member states had little enthusiasm for deepening the United Nations’
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involvement in Rwanda, and the response from the Secretariat was no more encouraging.276
President Habyarimana had asked Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali in Cairo in late June to
consider, as a start, sending a small group of military observers, perhaps no more than 10 of them,
before committing to anything larger.277 The secretary-general refused, saying the United Nations
would not deploy observers to Rwanda unless and until a peace treaty was signed.278
One option meriting some consideration was to expand the OAU-led Neutral Military
Observer Group (GOMN), which, since the summer of 1992, had been responsible for monitoring
the cease-fire zone, and place it under UN command.279 The GOMN was tiny, with only 50
observers to its name,280 but OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim told French, Belgian,
and US diplomats in mid-July he likely could bring that figure to 120, or possibly 240, if he could
secure an additional two companies from Nigeria.281 That would be a start, but neither of the
parties, nor the French, considered it enough. “It is . . . quite clear that the French will not withdraw
their two companies on the arrival only of some expanded OAU troops,” a US cable reported on
14 July.282 “And it is equally clear that the RPF will not come to town [to join the new
government—ed.] as long as the French are the largest foreign military force in town.”283
The peace talks resumed on 19 July in Kinihira,284 a community in the demilitarized
zone, but not before a major shakeup in Rwanda’s political leadership added a new layer of
uncertainty to the process. On 16 July, the coalition parties dumped Dismas Nsengiyaremye as
prime minister and replaced him with former Minister of Education Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a 40year-old Butare native representing the less extremist wing of the MDR party.286 The change-out
was intended as a short-term move; the parties had yet to settle on a candidate to serve as prime
minister following the inauguration of the post-Arusha “Broad-Based Transitional
Government.”287 Regardless, the unceremonious dismissal of Nsengiyaremye prompted the
resignation of his loyalists within the cabinet, including Foreign Minister Boniface Ngulinzira.288
Ngulinzira had been heading the Rwandan delegation in Arusha for 15 months.289 His sudden
departure left the Tanzanian facilitator and RPF delegation to pick up the pieces of the negotiations
with a reconstructed Rwandan delegation, now headed by Ngulinzira’s successor in the Foreign
Ministry, Anastase Gasana.290
285
The tumult within the Rwandan government continued on 20 July, when Defense Minister
James Gasana abruptly tendered his resignation and fled the country.291 In his resignation letter,
addressed to Habyarimana, Gasana wrote: “I feel compelled to make this decision because of the
persistent threats and sabotage that I face in my current position. These threats which place me and
my family in a state of permanent insecurity, are the work of an anonymous political-military
group that has given itself the name ‘A.M.A.S.A.S.U’ and whose objectives remain obscure.”292
AMASASU, whose name was a play on the Kinyarwanda word for “bullets,”293 was a clandestine
organization purporting to speak for Hutu nationalists within the Rwandan military.294 It had been
threatening since January 1993 to retaliate against RPF sympathizers and “accomplices” in
Rwanda.295 Though he belonged to the MRND, Gasana was a moderate and had infuriated
hardliners within the Army, such as Col. Bagosora, most notably in spring 1993, when Gasana
sought to confiscate weapons that Bagosora had secretly, and illegally, distributed to civilians in
the northern prefectures of Gisenyi, Ruhengeri, and Byumba.296 The news that AMASASU had
chased Gasana out of the country alarmed many Rwandans.297 “[I]f Gasana cannot protect
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himself,” former Foreign Minister Casimir Bizimungu commented privately to a US diplomat,
“we are all threatened.”298
The extremists were rewarded for their insurrection when the MRND nominated, and the
parties confirmed, a known hardliner, Byumba Prefect Augustin Bizimana, as Gasana’s
successor.299 Bizarrely, the defense minister’s ouster also ended up redounding to the RPF’s
benefit in the peace talks. As a US cable noted: “When Gasana left, with a public explanation that
his life was threatened, it was hard to imagine that the RPF could agree to come to Kigali under
the security provisions previously considered.”300 The government was obliged to consent to the
RPF’s demand for the right to dispatch a battalion of roughly 600 soldiers to protect RPF officials
in Kigali.301
The negotiations concluded in the early morning hours of 25 July, after the Tanzanian
facilitators succeeded in extracting concessions from both sides’ delegations.302 In addition to
permitting the RPF to bring troops to Kigali to serve as bodyguards, the government agreed to give
the RPF command of the Gendarmerie.303
The agreement named MDR moderate Faustin Twagiramungu as prime minister designate.
Twagiramungu had been the Rwandan cabinet’s choice for the position.304 According to Tito
Rutaremara, the RPF saw the choice of Twagiramungu for the post as preferrable to the alternative,
which was to pick a political party that would then have the right to propose one of its own for
prime minister from within its ranks. This would have been highly risky, Rutaremara said, because
Habyarimana had “divided all the opposition parties into parts,” creating “Hutu Power” extremist
wings within many of the parties.305 The RPF did not want to take the chance that the selected
party would propose a candidate from its “extremist wing.”306
President Habyarimana and RPF Chairman Alexis Kanyarengwe signed the peace
agreement in Arusha on 4 August 1993, in a solemn ceremony attended by several African heads
of state.307 France, having played a modest role in the Arusha talks, comported itself accordingly,
sending as its lone representative a member of its Dar-es-Salaam embassy staff.308 President
Mitterrand and his foreign policy team spent the day in Paris, where, as it happens, a restricted
council meeting was held, with Rwanda among the subjects up for discussion.309 General Quesnot
and Dominique Pin had briefed the president one day earlier, explaining that one of the linchpins
of the agreement was that the UN-led neutral international force would arrive within 37 days of
the signing (that is, no later than 10 September 1993), at which point France would be expected to
withdraw the two remaining Noroît companies.310 Of course, they noted, there was no guarantee
the United Nations would send a force by that deadline, if it sent one at all.311 Russia, for “financial
reasons, was opposed to creating a UN force for Rwanda, while Great Britain and the United States
had “expressed their reservations,” they said.312
Quesnot and Pin advised Mitterrand to keep the Noroît troops in Kigali, so long as the
neutral international force was not yet on the ground.313 The DAMI Panda instructors, on the other
hand, would no longer be needed, as “their mission of supporting the Rwandan Army on the front
lines [would] become irrelevant.”314 The memo recommended that the DAMI be withdrawn “as
soon as possible.”315
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The consensus among the officials at the restricted council meeting on 4 August 1993 was
in line with Quesnot’s and Pin’s views. There, Cooperation Minister Roussin said France should
immediately shut down the DAMI training sites in Gabiro and Mukamira and reel the DAMI
advisers back to Kigali.316 “I’ll add,” Roussin said, “that if these advisers’ mission is finished, if
they are not needed in Kigali, I propose putting an end to it.”317 Mitterrand concurred, saying, “We
must align our decisions with the reality on the ground.”318
The president voiced no arguments, either, when the discussion turned to the subject of
Noroît. “French troops are scheduled to withdraw when the international force is in place,” Foreign
Minister Juppé said.319 Juppé acknowledged that the United Nations had shown “little enthusiasm”
for the idea of sending UN troops to Rwanda, and that there was a chance France would have to
settle for a mere expansion of the GOMN.320 In either event, he said, “we will only need to decide
on the withdrawal of our forces when this [international] force is deployed. We will maintain our
troops until the [new] force is on the ground.”321 “Agreed,” Mitterrand said.322
Back in Kigali, Ambassador Marlaud took time over the following week to share the
French government’s plans with Rwandan officials. Defense Minister Augustin Bizimana received
the news well, comforted by Marlaud’s promises that the French government would continue to
support the Rwandan government—in particular, by lobbying the United Nations to send
peacekeepers, and by continuing cooperation.323 (Bizimana likely interpreted the reference to
cooperation as an indication that France intended to continue making some technical advisers
available to the Rwandan Army and Gendarmerie through France’s Military Assistance Mission,
or MAM, who, unlike the DAMI, fell under the auspices of the Ministry of Cooperation, as
opposed to the Ministry of Defense.) Marlaud’s assurances did not have the same effect on
President Habyarimana’s cabinet director, Enoch Ruhigira, when the two met on 10 August.324
Clearly, the thought of France’s withdrawal made Ruhigira nervous.325 “He emphasized that, even
if the peace accord had been signed, nothing would be implemented before the arrival of a neutral,
reliable international force,” Marlaud wrote afterward.326 “Until then, everything was possible, and
it was necessary to stay vigilant.”327
Ruhigira may have been alluding to a concern that either extremists from Habyarimana’s
inner circle or the RPF would undo the peace agreement, resulting in a resumption of hostilities
for which French assistance would be vital to the FAR’s prospects for success. The expectation
underpinning the Arusha Accords was that the new government, with international support, would
manage to subdue the anti-Tutsi extremists threatening to sabotage the agreement. It was a
questionable assumption, to be sure. By signing the accords, Habyarimana had infused the
hardliners in his government—and, most especially, within the military—with a renewed sense of
purpose.328 As they saw it, the president had shamefully capitulated to the enemy.329
In Paris, General Quesnot knew the FAR would find the peace agreement’s terms hard to
swallow, and he could understand why.330 Quesnot, like many French officials of the era, viewed
the Habyarimana administration as representative of Rwanda’s Hutu majority.331 Through this
(distorted) prism, he perceived a Tutsi-dominated RPF as speaking for only 15 percent of the
Rwandan population.332 And yet, the accords entitled the RPF to 50 percent of the command posts
in the military, and 40 percent of the troops—an “exorbitant share,” in Quesnot’s view.333
“Knowing the mentality of the military, the FAR and the RPF, this point made me think that the
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agreements would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement,” he told the MIP.334 And
Quesnot, ever mistrustful of the RPF, doubted its leaders had any intention to abide by a powersharing agreement.335
“No one ever believed in the Arusha peace accords,” Jean Kambanda told ICTR
investigators in a 1998 interview.336 Kambanda, who served as prime minister during the
Genocide, pleaded guilty in 1998 to genocide and crimes against humanity, among other
offenses.337 As he told the ICTR investigators:
Kambanda:
[The accords] were signed, but no one believed in them.
Investigator: No one believed in them?
Kambanda:
No, not at all.
...
Investigator: So people were preparing for war?
Kambanda: Yes.338
A further reminder of the insidious forces at work in Rwanda surfaced on 11 August 1993,
just a week after the peace agreement signing ceremony, when a UN Special Rapporteur, Bacre
Waly Ndiaye, issued his report on human rights violations in Rwanda.339 In a section addressing
“the genocide question,” Ndiaye said it was not his place to declare whether the repeated massacres
of civilians over the preceding three years qualified as a genocide, but wrote: “The cases of
intercommunal violence brought to the Special Rapporteur’s attention indicate very clearly that
the victims of the attacks, Tutsis in the overwhelming majority of cases, have been targeted solely
because of their membership [in] a certain ethnic group, and for no other objective reason.”340
Prior to the Genocide itself, few people, inside or outside the United Nations, paid much
attention to Ndiaye’s report.341 New Zealand Ambassador Colin Keating, who would assume the
one-month presidency of the UN Security Council on 1 April 1994, just days before the Genocide
began, criticized the UN Secretariat for its “silo-ization” of information and, in particular, its
failure to share reporting like Ndiaye’s and the FIDH’s with the UN Security Council.342 Keating
noted, however, that Ndiaye’s report was disseminated to the “interested parties,” e.g., the French
government, before it was released on 11 August 1993, and, in any event, French officials would
have been aware of Ndiaye’s findings about ethnic violence in Rwanda,343 which were predicated
on the 1993 FIDH report about which senior French officials were well informed.
For those who did bother to read the report, it was evident that Ndiaye was “alarmed by a
pattern of violence that was not directly related to the civil war but rather had a different and more
sinister source,” the American international relations and political science professor Michael
Barnett wrote in his 2002 book, “Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda.”344
Ndiaye’s report “was a warning for all to see,” Barnett wrote. “If only anyone had seen it.”345 In
retrospect, Barnett has since said, it was simply not reasonable to expect the United Nations, given
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its “gross limitations,” to hold the country together while forces near the center of power conspired
to tear it apart.346 “To put it uncharitably,” he said at a 2014 event at the Hague, “it sounds like the
diplomats were handing a ticking time bomb off to the UN.”347
H. Western Reluctance, Including on the Part of France, to Adequately Fund and Equip UN
Peacekeeping Forces Set Up the United Nations for Failure.
Following the signing of the Arusha Accords, “[t]he primary French goal,” according to a
US cable in mid-August 1993, was “to get out of Rwanda, but not leave a mess behind.”348 The
cable’s authors had just met with a French official (whose identity is redacted) in New York, who
had called for the meeting to lay out France’s vision for the “neutral international force [NIF],”349
which, under the Arusha Accords, was to help Rwandan authorities usher in a new era of peace.350
The NIF was the linchpin of the Arusha Accords. Under the agreement, its arrival was the trigger
for several critical developments—specifically, the departure of French troops, the entry of the
RPF security battalion into Kigali, and the establishment of the “Broad-Based Transitional
Government.”351 As the DGSE put it in an 8 September 1993 report: “For the time being, the
success of the transition process that will be gradually put in place can only depend on the arrival
of a large and effective international force within a short period of time.”352
Rwandan and RPF officials had high expectations for the NIF. In their joint letter to the
UN secretary general, dated 11 June, the two sides sketched out a long list of missions they wanted
the NIF to fulfill. These included guaranteeing security throughout the country, assisting in the
search for weapons caches, carrying out mine-clearing operations, monitoring the cease-fire, and
supervising the demobilization of military personnel.353 The Arusha Accords, as signed,
anticipated a similarly wide-ranging set of missions.354 Heedless of the slow pace at which the
United Nations typically moves, the two sides’ delegations agreed the NIF would take its place in
Rwanda no later than 10 September, just 37 days after the signing ceremony.355 It was an
implausible deadline, and it would not be met.356
In New York, where the unidentified French official met with US diplomats on 17 August,
the former explained that the French government “had certain requirements regarding Kigali,
which to them is the key both for the success of the [UN] mission, and for being able to pull out
French troops.”357 To satisfy France, the Kigali contingent would have to rival in size the security
battalion (roughly 600 soldiers) the Arusha Accords allowed the RPF to bring to the capital.358 The
unidentified French official suggested the French government was less concerned with the number
of peacekeepers operating outside of the capital.359 Indeed, the French government resisted
President Habyarimana’s original proposal of a force of between 3,000 and 4,000.360 French
officials talked Habyarimana down, maintaining that 1,000 troops (including the Kigali
contingent) would suffice.361
France’s lobbying on this point reflected an indisputable truth about UN peacekeeping
operations at that time, which is that Western countries had, by and large, grown weary of them.
As Samantha Power, then a journalist, author and academic, noted, the United Nations at that time
had 70,000 peacekeepers working on 17 missions across the globe.362 The US Congress, in
particular, she wrote, “had tired of its obligation to foot one-third of the bill for what had come to
feel like an insatiable global appetite for mischief and an equally insatiable UN appetite for
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missions.”363 “The United Nations simply cannot become engaged in every one of the world’s
conflicts,” President Bill Clinton declared in a 27 September 1993 speech at the UN General
Assembly’s 48th session.364 “If the American people are to say yes to U.N. peacekeeping, the
United Nations must know when to say no.”365
French officials, too, were increasingly coming to believe that their country had
overextended itself. Since 1986, in the waning years of Mitterrand’s first term as president, France
had staged military interventions not only in Rwanda, but in Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon,
Togo, and Zaire.366 With the value of the CFA franc cratering, the French Treasury had directed
large sums of short-term aid relief to several financially ailing francophone states—among them,
Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Senegal.367 “No one can disregard all the reasons
that justify the continuation of a major French effort in favor of Africa,” Prime Minister Balladur
wrote in an opinion piece in the 23 September 1993 issue of Le Monde.368 “But how can we ignore,
too, that the current difficulties force us to question ourselves on how to make it more effective?”369
Pointing, in particular, to France’s ongoing military interventions in Chad, Somalia, and Rwanda,
he wrote: “our action, as essential as it is today to keep the peace, is reaching its limits.”370
While Balladur made clear that he had no intention of forfeiting France’s primacy among
Africa’s Western partners, he felt that economic challenges demanded a reassessment of the
country’s relations with the continent.371 The view in the Élysée was much the same. Expounding
on the administration’s thinking in a two-hour lunch on 13 October, Bruno Delaye, the president’s
Africa adviser, and two other Élysée officials told a visiting delegation from the US Department
of State that France was “retrenching because of resource constraints.”372 The Élysée officials
explained that, for the foreseeable future, France would “limit itself, even more than in the past, to
its traditional sphere of influence,” a term the Americans understood to include only former French
colonies.373 The implication, which surprised their American guests, was that France “would not
get involved further” in former Portuguese colonies, such as Angola or Mozambique, or former
Belgian colonies, such as Zaire or Rwanda.374
What separated France from other budget-conscious UN Security Council member states
at that time, such as the United States and Russia, was what it had at stake in Rwanda. Unlike those
other countries, France had already poured considerable resources into Rwanda, and was still doing
so. To Mitterrand, the decision to authorize and finance a new UN peacekeeping force for Rwanda
was not an act of magnanimity—it was an essential part of his plan to disengage from the Rwandan
conflict.375 To some degree, he may have viewed the UN peacekeeping force as stepping into the
shoes of Noroît, but Noroît was not a peacekeeping force, it was a deterrent force and, as such,
needed fewer resources.
Dallaire, the UN force commander, met with Ambassador Marlaud and other French
officials twice during a fact-finding trip to Rwanda in mid- to late August 1993.376 Inviting Dallaire
to his home, Marlaud made a good first impression. “He listened to me carefully, expressed
genuine enthusiasm for my nascent ideas and even looked over my reconnaissance plan,” Dallaire
wrote later.377 Marlaud told the fact-finding mission that Rwandans were not familiar with UN
procedures and would be deeply disappointed if the United Nations could not deploy a
peacekeeping force by the 10 September deadline.378 He warned, too, that extremists who oppose
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the Arusha Accords and who “were waiting for the first opportunity to conclude that [the
agreement] was ‘dead’” might exploit any delays in the UN deployment.379
Marlaud assured Dallaire that France “would respect the Arusha Accord and leave Kigali
whatever the size of the NIF, [be it] 10 or 10,000 men.”380 This may have been more of a rhetorical
gesture than a genuine pledge on the part of France. In conversations with Western diplomats,
French officials indicated that the strength of the NIF would have to cross some minimum
threshold to prove itself “credible” before France would withdraw the Noroît companies.381 One
French military deputy commander in Kigali told US diplomats the minimum was 1,000 UN-led
troops,382 though Joyce Leader, the US embassy’s deputy chief of mission, noted in a cable that
other French officials had cited lower figures.383 By mid-September, the official line in the Élysée
was that the Noroît troops were not going anywhere until there were at least 800 troops under UN
command in Rwanda.384
RPF leaders let it be known, to Dallaire and to anyone else who would listen, that France’s
retreat was of vital importance to them. “[W]e made it clear the French should leave Rwanda,”
Tito Rutaremara, then RPF secretary general, recalled; “Pasteur Bizimungu said the French should
go now.”385 “[T]hey firmly object to the presence of these French Forces on Rwandese soil,”
Dallaire’s team wrote in the technical report it later distributed to UN staff.386 Until Noroît
withdraws, they said, they would not join the Broad-Based Transitional Government, or BBTG.387
This, Dallaire knew, would be disastrous. “Without the BBTG,” his team wrote, “there is no peace
process.”388
By the time of his second meeting with Marlaud, on 29 August, Dallaire had a rough idea
of how many troops he would recommend the United Nations dispatch, and he was willing to share
those figures with the French ambassador. (Dallaire’s plan was to present the United Nations with
three options: an “ideal” force of 5,500 personnel, a “reasonable viable option” of 2,500, and a
barebones operation of between 500 and 1,000.389) Marlaud suggested Dallaire’s approach seemed
reasonable, but the French military attaché (Col. Cussac), who had been listening in on the
discussion, would have none of it.390 As Dallaire recalled:
[A]s soon as I started to talk actual figures, the French military attaché leapt into
the fray. He said he couldn’t understand why I needed so many troops. France had
a battalion of only 325 personnel stationed in the country and the situation seemed
to be well in hand. There was an awkward moment as the ambassador reiterated his
support for my plan and the attaché sat back in his chair silently fuming.391
Cussac’s insistence that Noroît had the situation “well in hand” says a lot about his
objectives in Rwanda, and perhaps about his government’s priorities, more broadly. As defense
attaché, Cussac knew as well as anyone that Noroît was not a peacekeeping operation, as the NIF
would be. In less guarded moments, Cussac himself would acknowledge that Noroît had served
not only to protect expatriates, but to present a “credible deterrent” to any RPF military designs on
storming Kigali and toppling the government.392 To suggest that France’s Noroît troops, in their
pursuit of these two goals, had “the situation . . . well in hand” was to fundamentally misapprehend
the “situation” in Rwanda.
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Cussac was not merely overlooking the obvious point that the Rwandan government and
the RPF were asking the United Nations to do much more than Noroît had ever done—for example,
ensuring the safety of the civilian population, recovering weapons and clearing mines, and helping
the two sides integrate their militaries.393 What his outburst suggests, beyond that, is that, to
Cussac, the RPF would always be “the enemy,”394 and impeding its takeover would always take
priority over other objectives.
Dallaire circled back with Ambassador Marlaud in September 1993, recalling the warm
rapport the two had struck during his visit to Rwanda.395 To his chagrin, though, “it seemed the
military attaché had greater influence: France thought a force of a thousand was sufficient,” he
wrote.396
I. Following the August 1993 Truce, France Refused to Contribute Soldiers to the UN
Peacekeeping Force, but Remained in Rwanda and Continued to Advise and Train the FAR.
President Habyarimana knew the day of Noroît’s retreat was coming; by signing the Arusha
Accords, he had, in fact, assented to it, however reluctantly. It was, from his standpoint, a
significant concession. The Noroît troops had, in varying numbers, been stationed in Kigali for
roughly three years,397 and, as Ambassador Marlaud put it in a 10 August cable, were “considered
here as the true symbol of our engagement in Rwanda.”398 With their impending departure, it
appeared the French military presence in Rwanda would be reduced to just the DAMI Panda
advisers (30, as of 4 October) and the other military cooperants (38, as of the same date).399 Most
of the DAMI advisors remained into December 1993;400 by year’s end, they would be all but gone,
too.401
Anticipating the government’s concern, Ambassador Marlaud made a point in mid-August
of assuring Minister of Defense Bizimana that France was not abandoning Rwanda. In a 17 August
meeting, Marlaud explained that, while France was planning to continue the gradual reduction of
its technical military assistance, the number of French cooperants would not dip below 50.402
French military cooperation was still very much under way in August 1993, when the
Arusha Accords were signed. Among the French officers who arrived between late July and midSeptember were three squadron chiefs: Gino Groult, who would serve as adviser to the mobile
Gendarmerie; Erwan de Gouvello, the new technical adviser to the commander of the FAR’s
reconnaissance battalion; and Gérard Forgues, who would take over for Lt. Col. Robardey as
adviser to the état-major of the national Gendarmerie.403 Groult was replacing Squadron Leader
Denis Roux,404 who had trained the Presidential Guard. (As noted in the prior chapter, Roux’s
superiors asked Roux to “step back a little” from his role with the Presidential Guard in mid1992.405 Allegations would emerge that Presidential Guard members belonged to the MRND youth
militia and had participated in massacres.406) The Arusha Accords called for the Presidential
Guard’s dissolution.407 Groult’s assignment, upon arriving in August 1993, was to supervise the
training of recruits for the new Republican Guard, the entity that, under the peace agreement, was
to replace it.408
The August 1993 truce between the government and the RPF likewise did not stop the flow
of weapons and other articles of military equipment from France to Rwanda. As the MIP noted,
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the French government issued seven licenses in September 1993 authorizing companies in France
to ship military equipment to the FAR.409 Licenses issued in 1993 included authorization to export
1,800 projectiles for 60 mm mortars, as well as licenses to ship spare parts for light armored
vehicles and spare parts for a Gazelle helicopter.410
Another French arrival around this time was Warrant Officer José de Pinho. De Pinho, who
had served in Norôit earlier in 1993,411 was taking on a newly created position as technical adviser
to the Commandos de recherche et d’action dans la profondeur (CRAP), an elite intelligencegathering unit within the FAR’s para-commando battalion.412 French officers considered it vital to
ramp up trainings for the unit, which, like the rest of the para-commando battalion, had suffered
significant losses during the war.413 The fighting had stopped, but the training continued. Upon his
arrival in September 1993, de Pinho spent about a month overseeing trainings on parachute
jumping, intelligence techniques, information transfer, camouflage techniques, and the use of
weapons.414
De Pinho believed Noroît had been a tremendous force for good in Rwanda and worried
what its departure would mean for the country.415 The idea of a handoff to the United Nations, in
particular, did not sit well. “I’m well aware of the unflattering reputation of these international
forces, because their interventions generally result in failures,” he wrote in a 2014 memoir.416 De
Pinho said he took comfort in the thought that France would, he believed, probably contribute
troops to the eventual UN peacekeeping force.417 “My hope,” he wrote, “is to see the French forces
of Noroît, who are on site, shield themselves with the blue helmet of the United Nations.”418
Rwandan officials had the same hope. “[T]his participation is essential,” Rwandan military
officials agreed at an 18 August 1993 meeting devoted to the subject of the future of FrancoRwandan military cooperation.419 French troops, they noted, knew the terrain, and because they
were already on the ground, their presence would speed up the NIF’s deployment considerably.420
In truth, France did not intend to participate in the NIF,421 and Rwandan authorities, whether they
knew that or not, were certainly aware that RPF leaders would never consent to their
participation.422 President Habyarimana, though, was not about to give up on his administration’s
closest ally. In early October, just as the UN Security Council was taking up the resolution that
would authorize the peacekeeping operation in Rwanda, he pleaded with UN, US, and Belgian
officials to press France to lend troops to the international force, arguing “that a French presence
should not pose a problem as long as the French forces were part of a larger force under UN
command.”423
President Mitterrand saw the plea coming when, on 11 October, Habyarimana came to
speak with him in Paris.424 His response was unequivocal: no, French soldiers would not serve in
the UN peacekeeping force.425 His talking points for the meeting, prepared by de La Sablière,
advised him to explain that France’s participation was simply not conceivable because the RPF
opposed it.426 (This was true, though it may have also provided a convenient cover for France, as
Mitterrand was eager to extricate French troops from the Rwandan quagmire. Bruno Delaye hinted
at this a few days later, letting slip in a meeting with US diplomats that the RPF “fortunately” did
not want French troops to take part in the peacekeeping force.427) Perhaps to soften the blow, de
La Sablière encouraged Mitterrand to reassure the Rwandan president that France would
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nevertheless “do everything in its power to ensure that the Arusha agreements are respected and
that, in particular, the elections can be held within the expected time (22 months).”428
The exchange between the two presidents was part of a broader dialogue about the future
of Franco-Rwandan relations in the post-Arusha era. To Habyarimana and the coalition
government, France had been an invaluable ally, but to the RPF it had been an adversary. Now,
with the RPF on the verge of sharing power in Kigali and merging its forces with the FAR, there
was speculation that its leaders would refuse to permit French military instructors, through the
Military Assistance Mission, to continue training Rwandan soldiers and gendarmes.429
Rwandan defense officials tried to persuade French cooperants in Kigali that the pending
integration of RPF political leaders into the government, and of RPF troops into the Rwandan
armed forces, did not need to spell the end of the two countries’ military cooperation.430
Significantly, one of those officials was Colonel Bagosora—who, as an unabashed hardliner and
future architect of the Genocide, had ample reason to want French troops to remain in Rwanda,
and was certainly not interested in what the RPF thought about it. In a 20 August meeting with
various French officers, Bagosora argued that talk of the RPF army’s unwillingness to submit its
troops to French instruction were mere “rumors,” with no formal complaint from the RPF to back
them up.431 “[L]ogically,” he said, “the RPF could not refuse aid from a country [that has been]
friendly to Rwanda for a long time.”432
Lt. Col. Damy (ordinarily the technical adviser to the National Gendarmerie chief of staff,
but filling in for Col. Cussac as chief of the MAM during a temporary absence) assured Bagosora
that France wanted the technical cooperation to continue.433 At his urging, the Rwandan
government on 5 October submitted a formal request for direct aid and personnel.434 At the top of
the list: 40 instructors for the Rwandan Army and 30 instructors for the national Gendarmerie.435
The request specified that these trainers were needed to assist with the integration of RPF troops
into the Rwandan armed forces, adding that special training would be needed for RPF gendarmes,
since “it is France that has taken care of the National Gendarmerie’s training since its creation.”436
This was precisely the opposite of what the Mitterrand administration, for much of 1993,
had been saying it was trying to achieve. The purported goal was a clean exit from Rwanda, while
leaving just enough technical cooperants in place to mollify France’s longtime partners in the
Rwandan government and avoid giving other francophone leaders in Africa the impression that
France had abandoned its ally.437 As de La Sablière’s talking points for the presidential tête-à-tête
on 11 October noted, it was not yet clear whether the RPF, soon to join the transitional government,
would object to continued French military cooperation, and France was not prepared to lock into
a long-term commitment.438 “We hope that the broad-based transitional government will determine
as soon as possible what it expects of France,” de La Sablière wrote.439 “[W]e do not intend, in
any case, to go beyond the cooperation [framework from] before the offensive of October 1990,
which focused on the Gendarmerie with about twenty cooperants.”440 Cussac would later tell
Defense Minister Bizimana that France remained open to his request for instructors, but would
prefer to “wait for the establishment of the transition institutions in order to study in detail . . . not
only the needs of these two great bodies of the State, but also the structures and orientations that
will determine these needs.”441
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J. As a New, Larger UN Force Was Created, UNOMUR—the Previously Authorized UN
Border Force, Championed by France—Proved to Be Little More than Symbolic.
The UN Security Council 5 October vote on Resolution 872, authorizing the peacekeeping
force that would be known as the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, or UNAMIR,
was unanimous, ultimately.442 The United States waited until the day of the vote to inform the
Quai d’Orsay that it had overcome its reservations about the operation’s cost and decided to back
the resolution.443
Among the cost-saving measures that US and British officials succeeded in weaving into
the resolution concerned UNOMUR, the UN border force that French diplomats had championed
all through the spring and summer of 1993 as a means of cutting off the RPF’s supply lines.444 The
public case for the border force was that it would turn down the heat on the conflict and encourage
the two sides to make peace.445 As it turned out, though, the UNOMUR advance team did not even
arrive in the region until 18 August, two weeks after the government and the RPF cemented a
peace deal in Arusha.446 It was not until October that UNOMUR achieved its full strength of 81
military observers, and by that time the preparations for the new, substantially larger peacekeeping
force (UNAMIR) were already under way. US and British officials, seeing an opportunity to cut
costs, persuaded the Secretariat and the Security Council to roll UNOMUR into the new
operation.447
UNOMUR was, in essence, a gift from France to the Rwandan government. Its ostensible
purpose was, if not to cripple the RPF’s military capabilities, at least to comfort the government,
knowing that so long as RPF forces remained at full strength, the FAR would be overmatched. It
would seem, though, that UNOMUR did not achieve even this much. Ambassador Claver
Kanyarushoki, the Rwandan ambassador to Uganda, asserted in a 17 November letter to Foreign
Minister Gasana that the RPF was continuing, despite UNOMUR, to receive “any required
assistance from Uganda.”448 The mission had poorly chosen the locations of observation points
and substations along the countries’ long, porous border and conducted few patrols, mostly during
daylight hours, he complained.449 He suspected, too, that the Ugandans were tipping off the RPF
about the mission’s movements.450
While commending the UNOMUR troops’ determination and courage, Dallaire conceded
the operation was of limited value. “The border was a sieve, riddled with little mountain trails that
had been there for millennia,” he recalled in his book.451 “Given my tiny force of 81 observers and
the fact that we had no access to helicopters with night-vision capability, the task of keeping the
border under surveillance was at best symbolic.”452
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K. As Violence Spiked, the French Government Pulled the Last Remaining Noroît Companies,
Leaving Military Advisers Behind.
France is not leaving Rwanda since it remains present through its military
technical assistance detachment, which remains ready, as it has in the past,
to help our Rwandan comrades in the main areas of their military activity.453
– Bernard Cussac, Defense attaché to the French Embassy in
Rwanda and Head of the Military Assistance Mission
(1991 –1994)
Already, there were signs that UNAMIR, while much larger than the border force, would
prove similarly inadequate to the challenges awaiting it. Responses to the United Nations’
solicitations for troops were underwhelming, to say the least. Among NATO countries, only
Belgium was willing to provide troops for the new force—a “mixed blessing,” in Dallaire’s view,
given its colonial past.454 Belgium’s announcement energized the extremists at RTLM, the
privately-run Hutu supremacist radio station, who immediately railed against the return of the
colonialists, whom the extremists viewed as closely tied to the RPF.455 The resistance to peace and
reconciliation was stirring, and its campaign to torpedo the Arusha agreement was about to enter
a new, violent phase.
On 21 October 1993, the day Dallaire was due to fly into Kigali to begin laying the
groundwork for UNAMIR, a faction of the Burundian Army attempted a coup d’état.456 The
plotters kidnapped and murdered Melchior Ndadaye, the country’s democratically elected Hutu
president.457
The attempted coup set off a wave of retaliatory killings of Tutsi in Burundi and a new
refugee crisis, with some 300,000 Burundian Hutus fleeing to Rwanda and other neighboring
countries.458 In his book, José de Pinho, the French technical adviser assigned to the elite CRAP
unit within the FAR’s para-commando battalion, recalled traveling to the Burundian border shortly
after the coup, as part of a “field survey” of southern Rwanda.459 There, he met up with members
of his unit, who had been sent to the border for the dual purposes of protecting refugees and fishing
dead bodies out of the Akanyaru River.460 “On the ground, the horror was indescribable,” he wrote.
“There were piles of corpses in an advanced state of decomposition all along the river.”461 The
scene, he said, only confirmed for him what was already evident to all of the French cooperants in
Rwanda: that the horrific events in Burundi would “inevitably have serious consequences for
Rwanda.”462
Quesnot and Delaye saw the threat no less clearly. In a 26 October memo to Mitterrand,
they warned: “[T]he Arusha Accords are in grave danger. The Hutu-Tutsi tensions in Rwanda are
going to get worse. A race against time is under way until the arrival of the blue helmets in
Kigali.”463
A Rwandan government communiqué from the day of Ndadaye’s assassination, signed by
Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana, condemned the coup but urged Rwandans to respond to the crisis
with “calm and vigilance.”464 That message, however, had to compete with the broadcasts on
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RTLM, which, in response to the killing of Burundi’s first Hutu president, “poured out a torrent
of propaganda, mixing constant harping on the old themes of ‘majority democracy,’ fears of ‘Tutsi
feudalist enslavement’ and ambiguous ‘calls to action.’”465 At a “Hutu Power” rally in Kigali a
few days after the coup, MDR Vice President Frodouald Karamira demonized Hutus working
against Hutu solidarity, deeming them “the enemy.”466 That rally and another held the next day
were followed by outbursts of ethnic violence, responsible for the hospitalization of roughly a
dozen victims.467
Ndadaye’s death cast a long shadow, one that was still in evidence on 1 November, when
Dallaire held a flag ceremony in Kinihira to celebrate the launch of UNAMIR operations in the
demilitarized zone.468 The occasion marked the United Nations’ takeover of the GOMN, the
African observers, previously overseen by the OAU, who, since the summer of 1992, had been
charged with monitoring the cease-fire.469 The transfer brought UNAMIR’s manpower to 150
people—that is, 126 GOMN observers, plus Dallaire’s own staff of about 25.470 Dallaire proudly
raised the UN flag, but—as if to remind the assembled crowd of the challenges ahead—promptly
lowered it to half mast, out of respect for the period of mourning President Habyarimana had
decreed after Ndadaye’s death.
More violence was to follow.471 Most troublingly, on 17 November, a well-coordinated
attack in Ruhengeri claimed the lives of close to 40 people, most of whom were promptly identified
as members of Habyarimana’s party, the MRND.472 The assailants left virtually no witnesses
behind, killing “entire families, including babies.”473 Habyarimana, evidently enraged, insisted the
RPF was behind the attack.474 Defense Minister Bizimana, having previously warned that the RPF
was scheming to sabotage the peace accords, lashed out on 21 October, declaring in a
communiqué: “There is no doubt that these ignoble and savage acts have been perpetrated by the
RPF . . . in order to plunge the country into a blood-bath.”475 The communiqué, issued without
Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana’s consent, announced that all meetings and joint commissions
with the RPF would be immediately suspended until the RPF renounced the violence.476
Uwilingiyimana promptly overruled the defense minister, a public rebuke that angered MRND
officials.477
French officials did not hesitate to blame the Ruhengeri killings on the RPF.478 Officially,
a UNAMIR investigation was inconclusive.479 When, however, Dallaire covertly dispatched two
UN officers to gather intelligence from moderates within the FAR, they came back with
information suggesting that FAR para-commandos from the Camp Bagogwe training base had
carried out the attacks.480
The violence in mid-to-late November 1993 and Rwanda’s increasing instability made
French officials in Paris anxious, which only added to Dallaire’s concerns.481 Dallaire was
counting on France to keep Noroît in place for at least a few weeks longer, as he waited for the
arrival of 370 para-commandos from Belgium and several hundred more from Bangladesh, who,
together, would form the heart of the UNAMIR battalion in Kigali.482 Quesnot and Delaye,
however, worried that increasing instability might draw their forces into a conflict and wanted
Noroît to leave the country before that could happen.483 On 23 November, Delaye notified
President Mitterrand that the French Prime Minister’s Office, Defense Ministry, and Cooperation
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Ministry were all in agreement: French troops should leave as quickly as possible—perhaps as
early as 1 December—without waiting for the Bangladeshi companies’ arrival.484
As the French government was working on logistics for the withdrawal, the insecurity
worsened. On 30 November, the state-run radio reported that civilians were killed in Mutura,
outside Gisenyi, in an attack that bore similarities to the coordinated assaults in Ruhengeri two
weeks earlier.485 Once again, the radio blamed the RPF.486 UNAMIR officials, though, did not
credit that account. According to a US cable, a UN officer said that “while UNAMIR cannot prove
it, they strongly believe that Hutu extremists (possibly including FAR personnel and/or
Habyarimana government officials) are behind these acts rather than the RPF.”487 Dallaire, who
shared in this assessment, believed the extremists’ goal was to further destabilize Rwanda and
block the implementation of the Arusha Accords.488
While Habyarimana and Defense Minister Bizimana wanted France to take its time, others
in the Rwandan government were not sorry to see France go.489 In a 6 December 1993 interview
with a Belgian journalist, Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana suggested that most Rwandans were
glad to see the Belgian troops take Noroît’s place in Kigali.490 “The reality,” she said, “is that the
population considers that the French soldiers . . . were there to support the head of state, while the
Belgians are there to ensure the security of the people.”491 The quote infuriated President
Habyarimana, whose cabinet director, Enoch Ruhigira, promptly denounced the article as
“tendentious and slanderous.”492 In a 10 December letter to the paper’s editor, Ruhigira called the
allegation that French troops’ mission was to support Habyarimana “absurd,”493 adding:
It is true that the presence of these French soldiers in Rwanda did not win the full
support of all layers of Rwandan opinion. The same can be said for Belgian troops.
The important thing to remember is that the vast majority of people and the
Rwandan government are very happy with the mission accomplished by the
French soldiers in Rwanda. 494
Ambassador Marlaud would later refer to Uwilingiyimana’s remark as “the only false note” in an
otherwise “unanimous” outpouring of gratitude for French troops upon their departure a few days
later.495
Defense Minister Bizimana, too, was agitated about the prime minister’s comment, and felt
compelled to respond to it in his speech on 10 December, at a farewell ceremony his Ministry
hosted for the Noroît troops on 10 December.496 “It should be recalled once again,” he said, in his
remarks during the ceremony at the Kigali airport, “that French troops were sent to our country
with the primary mission of ensuring the safety of expatriates and not to guard the Head of State,
as some uninformed or ill-intentioned people claim, who, in order to win the sympathy of the RPF,
blindly repeat its speech.”497 Bizimana twice referred to Noroît as a “humanitarian” operation.498
Thanking the French Army, he wished them “a safe return to your beautiful country” and, in words
that would later seem portentous, expressed his hope that he would “see you again in the land of a
thousand hills in more pleasant conditions.”499 (French troops would, in fact, return just six months
later, under conditions that were anything but pleasant.)
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During his speech, Colonel Cussac boasted that Noroît had “fulfilled its mission with
professionalism and discretion.”500 In contrast with Bizimana, Cussac did not insist that France’s
primary mission over the preceding three years had been to protect its nationals. Seeming to
dispense with that pretense, Cussac said, “[F]or a little more than 3 years, the French Armed Forces
in Rwanda presented both a credible deterrent and an effective and decisive know-how that helped
stop the fighting and reestablish a negotiation process that allowed the return of peace through
negotiations.”501 (This claim that France sought “peace through negotiations” might have seemed
more credible had Cussac not, in the first line of his speech, referred to the RPF as “the enemy.”502)
As Cussac spoke, the handover was under way. At the US embassy, staff saw rifle-toting
Belgian troops patrolling the streets of Kigali.503 They were highly conspicuous, as if to advertise
their presence.504 The security of Kigali was in their hands.
The Noroît troops’ withdrawal concluded three days later, on 13 December.505 Cussac, in
his speech at the farewell ceremony, had reassured the Rwandans that it was only Noroît, not
France, that was retreating. “France is not leaving Rwanda since it remains present through its
military technical assistance detachment, which remains ready, as it has in the past, to help our
Rwandan comrades in the main areas of their military activity.”506 The MAM left roughly 25 men
in Rwanda heading into the new year.507 Their work of training the FAR continued.508
Charles Kayonga, who commanded the RPF troops protecting the RPF officials who were
to join the Broad-Based Transitional Government, took part in the negotiations to decide where in
Kigali the RPF would be housed.509 He traveled with his team to Kigali in early December to
identify the location.510 The potential sites they viewed were the Parliament (CND), KAMI camp,
Camp Kigali, and Amahoro Stadium.511 The RPF chose the CND, located atop a hill with a wide
view of Kigali, because its high ground offered the required protection, its officials could work
from the CND (which was large enough to house all of the politicians and the RPF security forces
deployed to protect them), and the central location of the CND made it easier to move about the
city.512 Cutting down on their movement was not only more convenient, it reduced the security
risk.513 The Rwandan government, which had pushed the RPF to locate instead to KAMI camp,
eventually relented and agreed to let the RPF reside at the CND.
With Noroît gone, and more than 1,200 UNAMIR service members newly in place, the
implementation of the peace accords would at last begin. The RPF security battalion arrived in
Kigali on 28 December, allowing Colonel Kanyarengwe and other RPF leaders to safely take their
place at the CND.514 When the RPF deployed to the CND, Chairman of High Command Kagame
briefed them as follows:
You are to protect the VIPs of the RPF. You are responsible. You are not to violate
the Kigali Weapons Secure Area (any weapons there were known and recorded).
You are going for peace. The violations of the ceasefire should not come from you.
You are going to go and work for the peace process.515
Upon arrival at the CND, the 600 RPF soldiers immediately began digging trenches for the
sake of protection.516 That evening, Dallaire recalled, ambassadors from the diplomatic community
came to welcome Kanyarengwe. “I was surprised to see the French ambassador come,” he wrote,
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“since no foreign nation had done so much to prevent this day from happening.”517 He wondered
if, perhaps, the French “were reconciled to a new Rwanda.”518
L. The Remaining French Military Cooperants Continued to Advise and Assist FAR Leaders
in Early 1994, Even As Evidence Emerged That the FAR Was Arming and Training the
Interahamwe, the Militia Suspected of Planning to Exterminate Tutsi.
When you are supposed to advise, you must advise however it is
necessary.519
– Jean-Michel Marlaud, Ambassador to Rwanda (1993 – 1994)
Defense Minister Augustin Bizimana, in his address at the farewell ceremony for Noroît
on 10 December 1993, referred to the departing French servicemen and their Rwandan
counterparts in the FAR as “brothers in arms.”520 “More than anyone else,” he told the Noroît
troops, “you are well placed to testify that the Rwandan Army is a Force of sons of this country,
committed and determined to defend the most cherished interests of their country.”521
“Certainly,” he added, “within the Rwandan Army and the National Gendarmerie, there
are some bad elements who dishonor their brothers by unworthy behavior, incompatible with a
career in arms. Such elements exist in any society and therefore also in any army, but they do not
make up the bulk of our men.”522 This was a sentiment the French commanders could appreciate.
They, too, had been forced to confront misconduct within their own ranks over the course of the
preceding three years. In what may have been the most egregious of these episodes, three Noroît
soldiers allegedly gang raped a young Rwandan woman aboard a military truck in March 1993.523
A document later compiled by a French Ministry of Defense official in response to inquiries from
the MIP indicates that the soldiers raped the victim with a bayonet before throwing her out of the
truck.524 French gendarmes arrested the three soldiers, and French military authorities called for
criminal charges to be filed.525 The soldiers, though, were never prosecuted,526 and the Ministry of
Defense official’s notes, while not entirely clear, appear to suggest that authorities in Paris
intervened to relieve a French judge of jurisdiction over the case, presumably for political
reasons.527
Chantal Ingabire528
Chantal Ingabire was born in Ngarama, in the north‐east of Rwanda. In 1990, she moved to Kigali
to attend school and lived with an aunt and uncle in the Kiyovu neighborhood.
As a high school student in Kigali in late 1990, I first began to notice the growing
presence of the French. Over time, I would see the French at the airport, roadblocks, and
elsewhere in Kigali. They were recognizable because of their red hats and military vehicles.
They would be either alone or with FAR soldiers.
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You didn’t want to be involved with French soldiers, you’d run away, because there
was no difference between them and the FAR soldiers. We felt like what the government
was doing, the French went along with them and were their support. The FAR soldiers felt
like they could get away with anything because the French were supporting them. The
extremists became more extreme because the French were there as support. There was no
one who condemned what was done. The Rwandan soldiers would beat people at
roadblocks, and the French would observe and do nothing. The Government was so proud
of what they were doing, and no one condemned it. They thought they could get away with
it, and it made them even bolder.
At the checkpoints, we were terrified, and the French soldiers were present and
could see we were terrified as the Rwandan soldiers were questioning and harassing us.
The French would question and approach us, say we should please them, and ask to meet
us later.
The French soldiers had a fixation on Tutsi women and viewed us as second‐class
citizens whom they could use without consequences. They felt like we were there to play
with. They made us feel like they could just use us, misuse us, and take advantage of us as
we were in a terrible moment of our lives. Rwandan soldiers were raping Tutsi girls.
My friends and I would try to avoid their notice. Every time we saw them, we
would look down and find another way around. It was important to avoid eye‐contact. We
would tell our other friends and little sisters about this to help them dodge the French in
the way they would Hutu soldiers. The French knew the Tutsi women were young and
vulnerable, and wanted to use us like second‐class people because we were in the minority
and poor. They never saw value in us.
Even when the French looked at you favorably, it was to show that they wanted to
meet you privately. We were young, even as young as 15. They were not—they were full
grown men. They wanted to take advantage of us. Even when you were buying groceries,
they would watch you, and you knew they wanted to take advantage of you. There would
be times when you’re just walking, and a jeep of French soldiers would stop next to you
and tell you to find them at the Meridien Hotel as if you were a prostitute! They treated us
like second‐class; they knew we were at risk, that many of our people were already in
prison at that time. It reached a point where, if you see the French, you have to dodge and
let their jeep pass.
Some of the girls were left pregnant by the French soldiers. Some girls said they had
no choice. They felt if they would be hurt or even killed. They knew we were terrified to
see them, but they would continue anyway. They knew the government would never
condemn them. There was a big belief in the Hutu community that it was okay to sleep
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with or rape Tutsi women. And the French were doing exactly the same thing the Hutu
soldiers were doing.
I remember a friend, her name was M., sobbing as she told me and another
classmate that she had been raped and was pregnant. She said that her child’s father was
French, but she had no relationship with him. She said that some French soldiers had seen
her walking in her neighborhood and convinced her to let them give her a ride. When they
stopped her, one of the soldiers forced her to have sex in the car. It was the first time it had
happened to her, because she had been a virgin. M. ultimately decided to keep the child,
and I believe the child is still alive.
From 1990 to 1993, while the French were there, my family and I constantly suffered
because we were Tutsi, and the French were aware of how we were treated. I remember a
specific experience at a roadblock that occurred sometime around the beginning of 1991. I
was walking with a group of friends—two Hutu and four Tutsi girls at a roadblock between
my school and where I was living. Rwandan soldiers asked us for our identification. They
then let the Hutu continue. There were three French soldiers there and their chief. They
didn’t say anything about them letting the Hutu go, they didn’t ask why they were doing
this. This was not unusual, and my sisters and my friends experienced the same treatment.
In the end of November 1990, after the RPF invasion, FAR soldiers came to search
my uncle’s house in Kigali while we were there. One soldier pressed his gun to the back
side of my head. My uncle was taken to prison. One of his friends got him out, but many
people were put in prison as RPF collaborators.
The French soldiers never condemned people’s mistreatment by the FAR. I
remember one of the soldiers told the French that we were the enemies, that our brothers
were in the RPF and attacking. We were young, we were not even part of politics or
anything. I remember them telling the French we were the enemy, and the French didn’t
do anything. They were there as government supporters and to do what the Rwandan
soldiers would do. The only difference was that they were French and wearing a different
uniform.
The day after the crash, the Interahamwe came to kill the Tutsi. They had lists, and
they knew where all the Tutsi lived. When people went out, they were killed on the way
home. The next day, there were roadblocks everywhere. The first week after the plane
crash, we were waiting to be killed. They were saying our names on RTLM. They would
come and beat you. but not kill you, because that would be a favor. They said, “We want
to torture you to make you regret being born Tutsi.”
I lost all the family on my father’s side, and my two younger sisters in Bugesera. I
do not know exactly when they died, but I believe it was a week after the plane crash. The
last time I saw my sisters was when I dropped them off for Easter break at my uncle’s house
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and told them I would pick them up the next weekend. When the Genocide started, I could
not get to them in time.
If there was one assertion in Bizimana’s speech at the 10 December 1993 farewell
ceremony for Noroît that was indisputable, it was that the French government knew the Rwandan
armed forces as no one else did. Indeed, since the war broke out in October 1990, the French and
Rwandan militaries had worked much more closely than virtually anyone outside of the two
countries’ governments knew. For those who were not already aware, though, a fuller picture was
starting to emerge.
In January 1994, the New York-based non-governmental organization Human Rights
Watch (HRW) issued a report that, among other things, explored the “large, but still not completely
defined role” that the French government had played in arming and training the Rwandan military
over the preceding three years.529 The French government, the report noted, “has either supplied
or kept operational most of the heavy guns, artillery, assault vehicles and helicopters used by
Rwanda in the war.”530 The report went on to discuss the assistance French military personnel had
provided, a subject about which the French government had yet to be entirely forthcoming. Citing
“non-French Western diplomats in country,” the report alleged that French soldiers “provided
artillery support for Rwandan infantry troops both before and during the February 1993
offensive.”531 In addition, it stated, “western observers, diplomats and Rwandan military officers
said that French advisors”—though technically prohibited from entering combat zones—“had
been observed in tactical combat situations with Rwandan troops during the February 1993
offensive. When confronted with this statement, French Ambassador Marlaud told the HRW:
‘When you are supposed to advise, you must advise however it is necessary.’”532
HRW did not question the right of France or any other country to sell weapons or provide
military assistance to a foreign ally such as Rwanda. Its point, rather, was that human rights ought
to be “a paramount concern when governments make decisions” to arm or support a country “with
a questionable human rights record.”533 In Rwanda, it concluded, “[w]ith the exception of Belgium,
it does not appear that any military suppliers took human rights considerations into account.”534
France, as HRW noted, had substantially scaled back its support for the FAR by the time
of the report’s release in January 1994. In keeping, though, with Colonel Cussac’s vow that France
would remain “ready, as in the past, to help our Rwandan comrades in the main areas of their
military activity,” the French Military Assistance Mission left behind 25 officers and noncommissioned officers to continue the work of professionalizing the Rwandan Army and
Gendarmerie.535 They included:
Lt. Col. Maurin, deputy defense attaché, who continued to serve as advisor to the FAR’s
chief of staff, Major General Déogratias Nsabimana;536
Battalion Chief Erwan de Gouvello, who served as technical advisor to the commander of
the FAR’s reconnaissance “recce” battalion;537 and
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Captain Grégoire de Saint Quentin, who served as technical advisor to the commander of
the para-commando battalion.538
These French servicemen helped the FAR maintain its battle-readiness during the final, tensionfilled months before the Genocide.
In his 2001 memoir, Admiral Lanxade characterized the decision to continue supporting
the FAR during this time as essentially beneficent: “[W]e believed that the political transition
defined at Arusha would be difficult and that we needed to help the new regime with the delicate
reconstitution of an army [by] integrating the RPF’s forces.”539 The reality, though, was that there
was, as yet, no “new regime” for the French government to help. There was only Habyarimana,
who, on 5 January 1994, was sworn in as president for a new 22-month term, becoming the first,
and only, official to formally assume a position in the transitional government.540 The rest of the
transitional government envisioned in the Arusha Accords did not yet exist and, in fact, never
would. The political impasse, which persisted for months, stymied plans to integrate the two sides’
armed forces and left the Rwandan military under the command of anti-Tutsi hardliners—
principally, Defense Minister Bizimana and Cabinet Director Bagosora, and Army Chief of Staff
Nsabimana. The FAR, in short, was still the FAR, and French military cooperation was still
accruing to its exclusive benefit.
That France continued during this period to offer the services of a technical adviser (Lt.
Col. Maurin) to Major General Nsabimana remains particularly eyebrow-raising. Nsabimana’s
reputation for cruelty preceded his June 1992 appointment as FAR chief of staff. While anyone, in
some respects, would appear to be a welcome replacement for the cruel and corrupt Col. Laurent
Serbuga, a US cable at the time nonetheless reported Nsabimana was “known as a man who gives
no quarter, believed to have tortured prisoners to death and instituted summary executions on the
battlefield.”541 A December 1993 US cable, following Nsabimana’s promotion to Major General,
noted allegations that he had “made verbal death threats against former Defense Minister James
Gasana.”542 (Gasana, as a reminder, abruptly resigned and fled the country in July 1993 after
receiving death threats from a clandestine group of Hutu nationalists within the Rwandan
military.543)
When, in mid-January 1994, an informant within the Interahamwe alerted UNAMIR that
the MRND-affiliated militia was planning to reignite the war and slaughter Tutsi, one of the
revelations was the extent to which Nsabimana and the FAR were complicit in the scheme.544 The
informant identified himself as a former para-commando and member of the Presidential Guard
who had left the military to become the chief trainer of the Interahamwe.545 The idea at first, he
said, had been to whip the young men of the Interahamwe into an armed militia to “protect Kigali
from [the] RPF.”546 Recently, though, his superiors had ordered the men to draw up lists of Tutsi
from Kigali and their home communes.547 The informant suspected a plan was in the works to
exterminate Tutsi.548
According to the informant, financial and material support for the Interahamwe trainings
came from two sources: MRND President Mathieu Ngirumpatse and FAR Chief of Staff
Nsabimana.549 As Dallaire noted in an 11 January 1994 cable to the UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations, and in briefings to French, Belgian, and US diplomats, the informant
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explained that the trainings, in which 1,700 men had participated, were held at Rwandan Army
bases, and were conducted by army instructors, with Nsabimana’s consent.550 The informant also
said that the FAR had recently transferred to the Interahamwe four large shipments of AK-47s,
grenades, and ammunition.551
Dallaire, it turns out, had personally witnessed the Interahamwe in action on 8 January, at
a violent demonstration outside the CND, the site of one of many ultimately aborted attempts to
swear in representatives of the Broad-Based Transitional Government.552 UNAMIR officers had
recognized some Presidential Guard members, dressed in civilian clothes, among the agitators
inciting the mob.553 The informant confirmed that 48 FAR para-commandos and some gendarmes
had taken part in the demonstration.554 He said the Interahamwe’s goal had been to provoke both
the RPF security battalion and Belgian troops into a firefight.555 “[I]f Belgian soldiers resorted to
force[,] a number of them were to be killed and thus guarantee Belgian withdrawal from Rwanda,”
Dallaire wrote in the 11 January code cable.556 The ensuing pandemonium would also offer the
militiamen a pretext for killing Tutsi in the capital.557 The informant said that, thanks to the lists
the men had drawn up, the Interahamwe were capable of killing as many as 1,000 Tutsi in a single
hour.558
Dallaire and the UN secretary general’s special representative, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh,
shared this new intelligence with the Belgian and US ambassadors and the French chargé
d’affaires, William Bunel, on 12 January.559 “None of them appeared to be surprised, which led
me to conclude that our informant was merely confirming what they already knew,” Dallaire would
later write.560 In a cable that day, Bunel characterized the intelligence as “serious and plausible.”561
However, he wrote, he could not rule out the possibility that the information was part of a ruse “to
discredit the president at the same time that the new institutions are supposed to be set up.”562 He
noted that UNAMIR had learned about the source through Prime Minister-designate Faustin
Twagiramungu, the moderate former president of the MDR.563 “[W]e well know the state of
relations between General Habyarimana and Faustin Twagiramungu,” Bunel wrote.564
The possibility that the informant was laying a trap for UNAMIR had also occurred to
Dallaire.565 Dallaire, though, was willing to take that chance. The informant had offered to disclose
the locations of weapons caches in Kigali where the Interahamwe was hiding weapons, in what
Dallaire viewed as a patent violation of a December 1993 agreement to restrict access to weapons
in the capital.566 (The 24 December agreement between the government and the RPF created what
UNAMIR officials referred to as the “Kigali Weapons Secure Area.”567 By its terms, it placed all
military weapons under UNAMIR’s control, restricted the movement of troops in the city, and
allowed UNAMIR to search for and confiscate unauthorized arms, ammunition, and
explosives.568) Determined to seize the initiative, Dallaire set out to order his staff to begin
preparations to locate and confiscate the weapons within the next 36 hours.569
The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) swiftly nixed the idea.570
Speaking with a Belgian diplomat the following week, UN Assistant Secretary General for
Peacekeeping Iqbal Riza explained that the view in the Department was that a raid would be too
risky.571 The concern was not merely that it would put UN soldiers’ lives at risk.572 It was, more
than this, that it threatened to turn Habyarimana and his allies against UNAMIR, imperiling the
mission’s claim to neutrality.573 “Who guarantees that only the Habyarimana camp is cheating?,”
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Riza reportedly suggested, alluding to the alleged violation of the weapons-restriction
agreement.574 “If it appears that the RPF, for example, has also exceeded its powers, UNAMIR
will certainly give the impression of being biased.”575
Leaders of the UN DPKO preferred the Department present the newly acquired intelligence
to Habyarimana himself, with diplomatic support from France, Belgium, and the United States.576
“Riza alluded to the good relations between Belgium and the RPF on the one hand, and between
France and the Rwandan government on the other,” a Belgian cable reported, “It would be good
for Belgium to alert the RPF to the danger of the situation and for France to do the same with the
president.”577 (Bunel and other diplomats, including the US, Belgian, Egyptian, and Tanzanian
ambassadors, did, ultimately, raise the issue in a meeting with Habyarimana on 14 January.578
While there, Bunel reportedly urged Habyarimana to use his “moral authority” to reduce tensions
among the bickering political factions.579 Habyarimana obliged, issuing a call for reconciliation
and cooperation in a public address on 15 January.580 The diplomats’ demarche otherwise appears
to have had little impact, if any, either on the political impasse or on the security situation in
Kigali.581)
For their part, when Dallaire and Booh-Booh met with Habyarimana on 12 January, just a
few hours after briefing the Western diplomats, the president was not alone. Among the coterie of
advisors and officials sitting by his side were Bizimana, Nsabimana, and another official France
had come to know well: National Gendarmerie Chief of Staff Augustin Ndindiliyimana.582 (A
French officer, Lt. Col. Alain Damy, had been serving as technical advisor to Ndindiliyimana since
August 1992.583 Six other French cooperants continued to work with the Gendarmerie as well.584)
Dallaire later stated that “Habyarimana denied any knowledge of such [weapons] caches.”585 The
UNAMIR force commander recalled leaving the meeting certain that the information he and BoohBooh had shared “would be transmitted to the extremists” (though, to be sure, several of them had
been right there in the room, alongside the president).586
That night, two UNAMIR officers rode with the informant to a building in Kigali where
the informant had said they would find one of the weapons caches.587 The tip checked out: in the
basement, they found at least 50 assault rifles, boxes of ammunition, clips, and grenades.588 The
building—the MRND headquarters—was owned by Ndindiliyimana.589
“Some of the French people who were here in 1994, I’d like to see them again one day,” a
French priest in Rwanda told a journalist from Le Monde in 1998.590 The priest, speaking on
condition of anonymity, was incredulous of claims that French officials did not know the Genocide
was coming, given how closely they had worked with the Rwandan military.591 “The genocide was
planned! That ambassador, army officers and intelligence guys couldn’t have not known,” he
said.592 The priest pointed, specifically, to a French officer advising the Rwandan Presidential
Guard, who he did not name and whose men executed some of the first targeted killings of the
Genocide.593 The priest told the Le Monde reporter that this officer “hurriedly left Kigali” two
weeks before the Genocide.594 “We felt that there was danger lurking,” the priest said, “but we
knew nothing. He knew!”595
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M. The FAR Received a Delivery of Munitions from France in January 1994, Despite the
Deteriorating Situation on the Ground.
I asked that the [French] Air Force transport [a shipment of mortar rounds]
for us to BANGUI so that the ESCAVI [FAR aviation squadron] could
retrieve them there. The Bangui proposal was deemed appropriate given
that following the imminent departure of the French from Kigali, they
should no longer openly show themselves.596
– Sebastian Ntahobari
The aim of the December 1993 weapons-restriction agreement between the Rwandan
government and the RPF had been to minimize the risk of an armed confrontation once the RPF
security force took up residence at the CND, in Kigali, just before the start of the new year.597
Enforcement, though, proved exceedingly difficult. “My troops reported that the [FAR] were
moving heavy weapons just beyond the area covered by the agreement, and I was also hearing of
militia training going on inside the KWSA,” Dallaire wrote in his 2003 memoir.598 “I got no
satisfactory responses to my queries from the [FAR] chief of staff or the minister of defense, just
shrugs and evasive answers.”599
As this report has elsewhere noted, the French government sold or donated about 42 million
French francs ($7.6 million) worth of military equipment to the Rwandan government between
1990 and 1994, and doled out licenses for roughly 137 million French francs ($24.9 million) in
military equipment exports.600 Total weapons deliveries from France (coming from the
government and private industry) peaked in the aftermath of the RPF offensives in Byumba in
June 1992 and Ruhengeri in February 1993, before tailing off as the Arusha peace talks were
reaching their conclusion in mid-1993.601 To Dallaire’s consternation, though, one shipment came
quite a bit later, arriving in the midst of the tense final months before the Genocide, when both
sides to the conflict had agreed to place their weapons under UNAMIR control.
The DC-8 cargo plane first took off on 21 January 1994 from Zaventem, Belgium, carrying
food, medicine, and three civilian vehicles, all of them bearing the label of the East African Cargo
freight company.602 It was destined for Kigali, but on the way it stopped in Châteauroux, France,
where it picked up roughly 3.5 tons of additional cargo: 1,000 mortar rounds (60 mm),
manufactured by Thomson-Brandt Armements, a French company, for the Rwandan military.603
The shipment had been ordered more than a year earlier, in December 1992.604 A few
months later, a French Defense Ministry memo noted that the FAR had “placed an order for 1,000
shells from the company Thomson-Brandt Armaments, which is unable to supply them for ten
months.”605 When by December 1993 ten months had passed, and still the shipment had not
arrived, Rwanda’s military attaché in Paris, Colonel Ntahobari, raised the issue with Colonel
Dominique Delort, who had led French forces during Operation Chimère and the simultaneous
expansion of Noroît in February and March 1993.606 In a meeting on 2 December 1993 (about a
week before Noroît’s departure), Ntahobari proposed that, once the munitions were ready for
delivery, they be sent to Bangui—the site of a French military base in the Central African
Republic—instead of Kigali.607 The Rwandan aviation squadron could pick up the shipment in
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Bangui, according to Ntahobari’s proposal, to conceal the French role that might otherwise be
revealed in a delivery made directly to Kigali.608 “The Bangui proposal was deemed appropriate
given that following the imminent departure of the French from Kigali, they should no longer
openly show themselves,” Ntahobari wrote in a memo a few days later.609 Delort referred
Ntahobari to General Huchon,610 the head of the Military Cooperation Mission in the French
Ministry of Cooperation.611 It is unclear whether Ntahobari ever contacted Huchon, or how
Huchon responded if he did. In the end, the munitions were sent to Kigali on the privately
contracted East African Cargo freight plane.
The plane landed at the Kigali airport in the evening on 21 January.612 When a Belgian
UNAMIR officer arrived on the scene, he found Rwandan troops unloading the mortar rounds
from the plane.613 Dallaire, incensed to see his efforts to control weapons in Kigali undermined,
ordered the munitions impounded.614 He later warned Nsabimana “that any other aircraft landing
in Rwanda with war material on board will not be permitted to offload and will be ordered to leave
the country immediately.”615 “Due to the sense of insecurity and uncertainty prevalent in Rwanda,”
Dallaire would explain to his superiors in the United Nations, “any ammunition resupply at this
time would become an explosive issue with the parties.”616 Underscoring this point, the day of the
weapons delivery, two UN peacekeepers, just after they had delivered Dallaire’s message to
impound the ammunition, rescued a couple from a mob outside the CND. In Dallaire’s telling, the
mob was taunting the RPF guards at the CND to try and save the couple. The attackers had sliced
the man’s face “almost in two, exposing the blue-white glint of bone” and sliced the arm of the
woman, pregnant at the time, “through the bone.” The peacekeepers interceded to prevent the RPF
from responding and potentially escalating the conflict.617 This was “not the first time UNAMIR
had witnessed the targeting of innocent civilians by machete-wielding mobs intent on killing
Tutsis. But in the days that followed, these incidents accelerated at an alarming rate.”618
Rwandan defense officials pleaded with Dallaire over the following weeks to release the
confiscated munitions, noting they had placed the order before the August 1993 peace
agreement.619 Technically, this was true and, according to the United Nations, rendered the
delivery an exception to the weapons restriction agreement.620 But since the FAR offered no proof
of their claim, Dallaire refused.621 The last thing the FAR needed, in his view, was more weaponry.
“We were all supposed to be moving toward peace, not preparing for war,” he wrote.622
N. Frustrated, but Not Yet Willing to End the Mission, the UN Security Council Voted on 5
April 1994—One Day before the Start of the Genocide—to Extend UNAMIR’s Mandate.
Western diplomats in Kigali spent the better part of January 1994 shuttling between
meetings with President Habyarimana, on the one hand, and opposition party leaders, on the other,
listening to each blame the other for the endless delays in establishing the Broad-Based
Transitional Government (BBTG). “Your friends seem to be back on the brinksmanship kick (a
skill they honed so well in Arusha),” a US State Department official in Washington quipped in a
7 January message to the new US ambassador in Kigali, David Rawson.623 The problem,
essentially, was that two of the major political parties, the MDR and the Liberal Party, were each
in crisis, having split into moderate and extremist factions incapable of agreeing on who should
represent the parties in the BBTG and National Assembly.624 Habyarimana, meanwhile, was
exploiting the parties’ descent into chaos, working behind the scenes to ensure that the hardline
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Hutu-power coalitions’ picks for ministers and deputies were the ones seated in the new
government.625
Amidst all the bickering and finger-pointing, the diplomatic corps thought it best,
generally, to project an air of neutrality.626 One visiting French official, Minister Delegate for
Humanitarian Action Lucette Michaux-Chevry, insisted over two days in late January that France
was disinterested when it came to Rwandan internal affairs.627 A Belgian cable, though,
subsequently reported that in a meeting with Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana, a leading figure in
the MDR’s moderate faction, Michaux-Chevry said that “the opposition bore responsibility for the
political deadlock.”628 The assertion, the cable noted, “was not appreciated by the Prime
Minister.”629
Colonel Cussac’s sympathies lay, as usual, with Habyarimana. In a 14 January memo, he
argued there were essentially two blocs in Rwandan politics: one represented by the president and
the MRND, and the other represented by the RPF, with all other parties falling into one or the other
camp.630 The president, he asserted, “retains the support of the majority of people,” but was afraid
his opponents would use their power in the transitional government to oust him from office.631
(One possibility, which Habyarimana must have contemplated, was that the opposition ministers
and legislators would launch an investigation of his administration’s crimes and human rights
abuses, which might then form the basis for his impeachment.632) Cussac described the RPF bloc,
by contrast, as “a faction that has only made itself heard through the use of arms and whose goals
are both the fall of the President and [holding] total power.”633
Cussac’s assessment was, to a large extent, in line with Major General Nsabimana’s. In
February, the Rwandan Army chief of staff was among a group of FAR commanders who told a
US diplomat they were “still wary of the ‘Tutsi RPF.’”634 Recounting the conversation, a US cable
reported that Nsabimana “still thinks that the Tutsi aim remains unchanged—total power.”635
Nsabimana predicted that RPF political and military leaders would wait until UNAMIR completes
its mission and then, after losing in the elections, stage a coup.636
Views among the FAR’s mid-level officers and enlisted soldiers were less uniformly
hostile to the RPF and its perceived sympathizers (i.e., the Tutsi).637 When, however, the US Navy
Justice School brought FAR and RPF soldiers together in January 1994 for a multi-day conference
on the role of militaries in a democracy, the US organizers could not help but note how differently
the two sides saw the war they had just fought against each other:
In the enlisted ranks, the RPF soldiers were provided political education in the field.
All were taught the RPF political programme that the nature of the three year
conflict was not ethnic but rather one of fighting against a dictatorial regime for the
rights of all Rwandans. By comparison, most of the [FAR] enlisted were given very
little training and taught that Tutsis were their enemy.638
By mid-February, the political infighting that had been holding up the establishment of the
BBTG was beginning to fade as an issue, only for a new impediment to take its place.639 The
question now was, effectively, the same one that nearly derailed the Arusha peace process in late
1992 and early 1993: whether the Hutu supremacist CDR party should have a seat in the
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transitional government.640 To claim a seat in the National Assembly, the CDR would need to do
as other parties had and sign both the Arusha Accords and a political code of ethics.641
Habyarimana, desperate for allies in the legislature,642 not only defended the CDR’s right to
participate in the government, but insisted it must not be excluded.643 RPF leaders vehemently
disagreed, maintaining that the CDR was a sectarian party, and that its history of violence must
not be rewarded.644
The diplomatic corps, including the French, took Habyarimana’s side.645 To be sure, they
were well aware of the party’s penchant for extreme anti-Tutsi rhetoric and violence. Regardless,
as Belgian Ambassador Johan Swinnen explained in 2014, “We thought it would be better to
involve [the CDR] fully in the dynamic of peace and reform rather than to exclude them.”646 RPF
leaders, though, proved immovable on this issue, which, to them, was a matter of principle.647 They
suspected that the real reason Habyarimana was harping on the issue was because he wanted to
keep delaying the installation of the transitional government.648
With frustrations mounting among UN Security Council member states, the Council
president on 17 February issued a tersely worded statement that operated, in effect, as an
ultimatum.649 The Council, he explained, was “deeply concerned” with the state of affairs in
Rwanda, both because of the delays in establishing transition institutions and because of the
deteriorating security situation, particularly in Kigali.650 The statement warned: “UNAMIR will
be assured of consistent support only if the parties implement the Arusha Peace Agreement fully
and rapidly.”651
The crisis, though, was only deepening. On 21 February, gunmen assassinated Rwanda’s
minister of public works and energy, Félicien Gatabazi, outside of his home in Kigali.652 Gatabazi
was the executive secretary of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which, while critical of
Habyarimana, had played a productive role in the effort to break through the recent political
stalemate.653 The next day, in the southern town of Butare, a PSD stronghold, an angry mob
exacted revenge, murdering CDR President Martin Bucyana.654 Hours later, an RPF convoy
outside of Kigali was ambushed in an attack that the RPF blamed on government forces.655 In the
ensuing gunfire, one RPF soldier was killed, and a UNAMIR observer was injured.656 This last
attack infuriated the RPF, which promptly issued a statement calling Habyarimana a terrorist and
declaring that the party would not show up for a planned swearing-in ceremony the next day.657
In New York, the French permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador
Mérimée, consulted his US colleagues and found their patience was nearly at an end.658 “They
reminded me that UNAMIR had been created under the strong condition that the parties cooperate
in view of installing provisional institutions. It must be noted that we are at an impasse,” Mérimée
wrote in a 2 March cable.659 “The withdrawal of the United Nations’ mission should therefore be
considered if no progress has been made in the implementation of the Arusha peace accord.”660 A
UN Secretariat official expressed a similar sentiment, complaining that “the Rwandan president
has systematically sabotaged the initiatives intended to promote the emergence of a consensus.”661
The Secretariat was particularly concerned about the safety of UN staff, after Habyarimana
personally warned Booh-Booh that “his security was no longer fully guaranteed.”662 “This warning
was very worrying,” Mérimée wrote.663 “At the appropriate time, it would be necessary to remind
the Rwandan authorities that they were responsible for the safety of all of the UN staff in Rwanda.
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If attacks were to be committed against them, there would be no doubt that a withdrawal would be
necessary.”664
By 22 March, just two weeks before its mandate was due to expire, UNAMIR had roughly
achieved its full authorized strength of 2,539 troops.665 Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali
recommended extending its mandate for another six months, and France drafted a Security Council
resolution that would do just that.666 France was flexible, though, and when the Chinese, Russian,
and British delegations sought to reduce the extension to two months, French officials said “they
could live with three.”667 The Council ended up settling on a four-month extension, after
Rwanda—which had lucked into a non-permanent seat on the Council at the start of the year668—
rallied the non-aligned caucus (Nigeria, Djibouti, Oman, and Pakistan) to push for more.669
The skeptics won one notable victory, though, as the final draft called for the Council to
revisit the matter within the next six weeks, unless the secretary-general could certify that the
transitional institutions had been established, and that UNAMIR was progressing to its next phase
of operations.670 The message, plainly, was that the Council was frustrated, and its patience was
not infinite. “The [six-week deadline] they have provided for in the resolution is very serious,” an
RPF official in New York wrote after the vote.671 “I can assure you that without institutions in
place by that time [UNAMIR] will go. There will be nobody to defend it except perhaps France
[and] Rwanda. They are all praying for a miracle.”672
It was 5 April 1994. In Paris, General Quesnot wrote one of his routine memos to President
Mitterrand, discussing the latest developments in the Baltics, Chad, and Cameroon.673 The memo,
typical of Élysée memos in early 1994,674 made no mention of Rwanda.675 The country and its
troubles had of late receded as a focus of the Élysée’s attention. That, however, was about to
change.
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Notes to Chapter VII
1
Rone Tempest, Mitterrand Names Conservative Prime Minister: France: Edouard Balladur, Praised as a Polished
Bureaucrat, Pledges Not to Interfere in President’s Role, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 30 Mar. 1993. Traditionally, in the
French political system, all ministers answer to the President of the Republic. When the President is of one political
party and the majority of members of parliament are of a different political party, it is called “cohabitation.” During a
cohabitation, “the government works for the Prime Minister who then reports to the President.” MICHEL ROUSSIN,
AFRIQUE MAJEURE (1997) 54 (of Kindle version). Roussin served as France’s minister of cooperation from 1993 to
1994 under Prime Minister Balladur. It is generally acknowledged that, during cohabitation, the prime minister takes
the lead in domestic politics, while the President remains the supervisory authority of foreign affairs. Id. at 57.
Emile Favard, Edouard Balladur: les délices de la distinction Edouard Balladur: The Joys of Distinction, LES
ECHOS, 30 Mar. 1993. Balladur had decades of government experience by the time he became prime minister. After
graduating near the top of his class from the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the French graduate school
that doubles as a gateway to high positions in the public and private sectors, Balladur served in a series of government
posts before joining the cabinet of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou in 1964, becoming one of Pompidou’s most
loyal and trusted advisors. See EDOUARD BALLADUR, LE POUVOIR NE SE PARTAGE PAS: CONVERSATIONS AVEC
FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND POWER IS NOT TO BE DIVIDED: CONVERSATIONS WITH FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND 15 (2009).
In 1969, Balladur followed Pompidou to the Élysée, see Claude Villeneuve, Monsieur Balladur, L’EXPRESS, 15 Apr.
1993, where he eventually became Pompidou’s secretary general—that is, his main advisor, see Remy Jacqueline,
Balladur: portrait intime [Balladur: An Intimate Portrait], L’EXPRESS, 11 Mar. 1993.
2
3
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”). In recent years, Balladur has been the subject of two investigations, both related to the
Karachi Affair, a corruption and kickbacks scheme involving submarine sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia during his
term as Prime Minister. See Hélène Bekmezian et al., Comprendre l’affaire Karachi en 6 épisodes [Understanding
the Karachi Affair in 6 Steps], LE MONDE, 31 May 2017. In October 2019, Balladur and Defense Minister François
Léotard were indicted for “complicity in the abuse of corporate assets,” and, in Balladur’s case, the concealment of
this offense. See Affaire de Karachi: Balladur et Léotard comparaîtront devant la Cour de justice de la République
[Karachi Case: Balladur and Léotard to Appear before the Court of Justice of the Republic], LE MONDE, 1 Oct. 2019.
Balladur appealed the indictment, but the French Cour de Cassation, France’s supreme court of appeal, confirmed the
charges in March 2020. See Affaire Karachi: Balladur sera jugé devant la cour de justice [Karachi Affair: Balladur
Will be Judged Before the Court of Law], LE MONDE, 13 Mar. 2020; Affaire Karachi: Edouard Balladur sera jugé
devant la cour de justice de la République apres le rejet de ses pourvois en cassation [Karachi Affair: Balladur Will
be Judged Before the Republic’s Court of Law after Rejection of his Appeals in Cassation], LE MONDE, 13 Mar. 2020.
Both Balladur and Léotard are set to stand trial. See Affaire Karachi: Edouard Balladur sera jugé devant la cour de
justice de la République après le rejet de ses pourvois en cassation [Karachi Affair: Balladur Will be Judged Before
the Republic’s Court of Law after Rejection of his Appeals in Cassation], LE MONDE, 13 Mar. 2020; Affaire de
Karachi: Balladur et Léotard comparaîtront devant la cour de justice de la République [Karachi Case: Balladur and
Léotard to Appear before the Court of Justice of the Republic], LE MONDE, 1 Oct. 2019.
4
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
5
Rone Tempest, Mitterrand Names Conservative Prime Minister: France: Edouard Balladur, Praised as a Polished
Bureaucrat, Pledges Not to Interfere in President’s Role, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 30 Mar. 1993.
6
Edouard Balladur, Les Deux tentations Two Temptations, LE MONDE, 16 Sept. 1983.
La cohabitation était-elle prévue à l’origine de la Constitution? Was Cohabitation Originally Provided for in the
Constitution?, CONSEIL CONSTITUTIONNEL, https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/la-constitution/la-cohabitationetait-elle-prevue-a-l-origine-de-la-constitution (last visited 31 Oct. 2020); La cohabitation de 1986-1988, une
première sous la Ve République The 1986-1988 Cohabitation, a First Under the 5th Republic, VIE PUBLIQUE,
https://www.vie-publique.fr/eclairage/37994-une-premiere-sous-la-ve-republique-la-cohabitation-de-1986-1988
(updated 19 June 2019) (last visited 31 Oct. 2020).
7
8
La nomination du nouveau premier minister: “Je veillerai à la continuité de notre politique extérieure et de notre
politique de défense” affirme M. François Mitterrand [The Nomination of the New Prime Minister: “I Will Ensure
Page | 291
Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
the Continuity of Our Foreign Policy and Our Defense Policy” Confirms François Mitterrand], LE MONDE, 31 Mar.
1993.
9
Rone Tempest, Mitterrand Names Conservative Prime Minister: France: Edouard Balladur, Praised as a Polished
Bureaucrat, Pledges Not to Interfere in President’s Role, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 30 Mar. 1993.
10
La nomination du nouveau premier minister: “Je veillerai à la continuité de notre politique extérieure et de notre
politique de défense” affirme M. François Mitterrand [The Nomination of the New Prime Minister: “I Will Ensure
the Continuity of Our Foreign Policy and Our Defense Policy” Confirms François Mitterrand], LE MONDE, 31 Mar.
1993.
11
Edouard Balladur, GOUVERNEMENT.FR, https://www.gouvernement.fr/edouard-balladur (last visited 31 Oct. 2020).
12
La nomination du nouveau premier minister: “Je veillerai à la continuité de notre politique extérieure et de notre
politique de défense” affirme M. François Mitterrand [The Nomination of the New Prime Minister: “I Will Ensure
the Continuity of Our Foreign Policy and Our Defense Policy” Confirms François Mitterrand], LE MONDE, 31 Mar.
1993.
13
Memorandum from Colonel Sébastien Ntahobari to James Gasana (14 Apr. 1993).
14
Memorandum from Colonel Sébastien Ntahobari to James Gasana (14 Apr. 1993).
15
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
16
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
17
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
18
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
19
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
20
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
21
Memorandum from Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boniface Ngulinzira (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Eléctions
legislatives françaises”).
22
MIP Tome I 168.
23
As of 1 April 1993, France’s military presence in Rwanda consisted of 310 Noroît soldiers and 80 cooperants,
according to a French Ministry of Defense memo. See Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr.
1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril 1993”).
24
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
25
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with the majority of
African nations as signatories to resolve issues on the continent. It disbanded in 2002 and was replaced by the African
Union (AU).
26
Rwanda Government, Rebels Agree on Size of Joint Army, AFP, 24 Mar. 1993.
27
See Rwanda Government, Rebels Agree on Size of Joint Army, AFP, 24 Mar. 1993; Cable from Catherine Boivineau
(25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “OUA – Rwanda”); Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (18 May 1993). The
government had initially proposed a total force of 25,000 troops, with 17,000 going to the Army and 8,000 to the
Gendarmerie. The RPF sought a considerably smaller force, hoping to cap the total at 15,000. See Cable from Peter
Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (26 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Background to Rwanda Talks Concerning Military
Force Size”). Pasteur Bizimungu, the leader of the RPF delegation, pointed out that Rwanda’s pre-war Army consisted
of just 7,000 soldiers, and its Gendarmerie consisted of just 2,500. He argued a large, poorly paid military would pose
risks to the country and its new government. Id.
28
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (27 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Update on Rwanda
Negotiations in Arusha: 3/26/93”).
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Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
29
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (27 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Update on Rwanda
Negotiations in Arusha: 3/26/93”).
30
Cable from Peter Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (9 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks: Breakthrough
on Force Proportions”).
31
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993).
32
S.C. Res. 812, ¶¶ 1-10, S/RES/812 (1993) (12 Mar. 1993).
33
UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 1993-1996 156-157
(The United Blue Book Series Vol. X 1996).
34
UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 1993-1996 156-157
(The United Blue Book Series Vol. X 1996).
35
See Cable from Catherine Boivineau (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “OUA – Rwanda”); Memorandum from Kofi Annan
to Boutros-Boutros Ghali (25 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Note for the Secretary-General”) (stating that, in his meetings on
24 March with UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Kofi Annan, de La Sablière “stressed that
the most urgent task was the deployment of military observers at the border with Uganda”); Cable from Belgian
Delegation to the United Nations in New York (26 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: entretien avec de La Sablière”)
(“For France, observation at the border with Uganda constitutes the principal priority.”).
36
Letter Dated 2 Apr. 1993 from Jean-Bernard Mérimée, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations
Addressed to Boutros Boutros Ghali, UN Secretary-General, S/25536 (6 Apr. 1993).
37
Letter Dated 2 Apr. 1993 from Jean-Bernard Mérimée, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations
Addressed to Boutros Boutros Ghali, UN Secretary-General, S/25536 (6 Apr. 1993). The letter alleged, specifically,
that “the provisions of the Dar-es-Salaam agreement, particularly those relating to the withdrawal of the warning
forces, appear to be a long way from being fully implemented.” A communiqué, co-signed by Dr. Nsengiyaremye
Dismas, Prime Minister of Rwanda, and Colonel Kanyarengwe Alexis, President of RPF, contained only one provision
relating to the withdrawal of one of the “warring forces,” and that provision applied only to the RPF. See Communiqué
conjoint publie a l’issue de la rencontre de haut niveau entre le gouvernement de la republique rwandaise et le front
patriotique rwandais, tenue a Dar-es-Salaam du 5 au 7 Mars 1993 (7 Mar 1993) (signed Dismas Nsengiyaremye and
Alexis Kanyarengwe). Mérimée could not have been referring to the FAR, as the communiqué expressly allowed the
FAR to remain in place.
38
Letter Dated 2 Apr. 1993 from Jean-Bernard Mérimée, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations
Addressed to Boutros Boutros Ghali, UN Secretary-General, S/25536 (6 Apr. 1993).
39
Letter Dated 2 Apr. 1993 from Jean-Bernard Mérimée, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations
Addressed to Boutros Boutros Ghali, UN Secretary-General, S/25536 (6 Apr. 1993).
40
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
41
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
42
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
43
See, e.g., Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le
1er avril 1993”); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Apr. 1993)
(Subject: “Conseil restraint du 2 avril 1993 – Rwanda”).
44
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
restraint du 2 avril 1993 – Rwanda”).
45
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
46
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
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Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
47
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
48
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
49
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
50
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
51
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Intelligence on Possible RPF
Attack”).
52
Cable from A. Ellen Shippy to US Secretary of State (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Kagame”).
53
Cable from A. Ellen Shippy to US Secretary of State (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Kagame”).
54
Cable from Paul Kagame, to Joseph (approx. 7 Apr. 1993) (emphasis omitted) (message from “P.C,” short for
“Political Commissar,” a title Kagame was known to use).
55
Cable from Paul Kagame to Joseph (approx. 7 Apr. 1993).
56
Cable from Paul Kagame to Joseph (approx. 7 Apr. 1993).
57
Cable from A. Ellen Shippy to US Secretary of State (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Kagame”).
58
Cable from A. Ellen Shippy to US Secretary of State (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Kagame”).
59
Cable from A. Ellen Shippy to US Secretary of State (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Kagame”).
60
Cable from A. Ellen Shippy to US Secretary of State (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Meeting with Kagame”).
61
See The French Resolution and the Rwandese Patriotic Front Position Contrasted (approx. Mar. 1993) (signed
Théogèn Rudasingwa); Interim Report of the Secretary-General on Rwanda, S/25810 (20 May 1993).
62
See Cable from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (30 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Observateurs a la frontier RwandoOugandaise”); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Apr. 1993)
(Subject: “Conseil restraint du 2 avril 1993 – Rwanda”).
63
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
restraint du 2 avril 1993 – Rwanda”).
64
PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE TECHNICAL MISSION TO UGANDA & RWANDA 8, 17 (14 Apr. 1993). The assessment
team’s preliminary report, issued on 14 April, generally endorsed France’s rationale for sending UN observers to the
Rwandan-Ugandan border and recommended that the UN dispatch a force of 81 military observers, plus 24 civilian
support staff, to the border “as soon as possible.”
65
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
66
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
67
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
68
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
69
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
70
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril
1993”).
71
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
restraint du 2 avril 1993 – Rwanda”).
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Chapter VII
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72
See Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993); Restricted Council Meeting Notes (17 Mar. 1993); Restricted
Council Meeting Notes (24 Mar. 1993).
73
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
74
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
75
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
76
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
77
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993). Lanxade argued the signs of a coming RPF attack showed the
need for a UN border force. “Men and military arsenal pour in from Uganda,” he said. “This is made possible by the
fact that there is no observer monitoring the Rwanda-Uganda border.”
78
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
79
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
80
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
81
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
82
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
83
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
84
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
85
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
86
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
87
Memorandum from Casimir Bizimungu to Juvénal Habyarimana (25 Apr. 1991).
88
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (24 Mar. 1993).
89
Communiqué conjoint publie a l’issue de la rencontre de haut niveau entre le gouvernement de la republique
rwandaise et le front patriotique rwandais, tenue a Dar-es-Salaam du 5 au 7 Mars 1993 (7 Mar 1993) (signed Dismas
Nsengiyaremye and Alexis Kanyarengwe).
90
La nomination du nouveau premier minister: “Je veillerai à la continuité de notre politique extérieure et de notre
politique de défense” affirme M. François Mitterrand [The Nomination of the New Prime Minister: “I Will Ensure
the Continuity of Our Foreign Policy and Our Defense Policy” Confirms François Mitterrand], LE MONDE, 31 Mar.
1993.
91
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (2 Apr. 1993).
92
Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard (23 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Point de situation au Rwanda le 23
février 1993”). At its February 1993 peak, the number of Noroît troops in Kigali was only 570. The withdrawal of two
companies in March 1993 left Noroît with roughly 310 soldiers. Memorandum from Michel Rigot to François Léotard
(1 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda le 1er avril 1993”).
93
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda’); Restricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr.
1993) (Subject: “Situation en Afrique et dans l’ex-Yougoslavie”).
94
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda’); Restricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr.
1993) (Subject: “Situation en Afrique et dans l’ex-Yougoslavie”); Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du
Colonel Capodanno sur sa mission au Rwanda (15-17 avril 1993) (19 Apr. 1993).
95
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr. 1993).
96
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (23 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Mise en place d’un Assistant
Militaire Technique”).
97
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS AND DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS
(1959-1994) [A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 207 (2007).
98
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda’); Rescricted Council Meeting Notes (7 Apr.
1993) (Subject: “Situation en Afrique et dans l’ex-Yougoslavie”).
99
Meeting Notes (15 Apr. 1993) (signed Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
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Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
100
COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITOYENNE [CITIZEN INQUIRY COMMISSION], L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE:
L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GENOCIDE AU RWANDA [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE
AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 493 (2005). A 2005 report on France’s involvement in Rwanda entitled “The Horror
that Strikes Us in the Face” asserted that Jehanne was actually employed by the French intelligence agency, the DGSE,
while working in the Ministry of Cooperation. GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 278 (1995). Gerard Prunier,
though, referred to Jehanne as “a former secret service man serving in the office of Cooperation Minister Michel
Roussin.”
101
Meeting Notes (15 Apr. 1993) (signed Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
102
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (23 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Mise en place d’un Assistant
Militaire Technique”).
103
Memorandum from Bernard Cussac to James Gasana (23 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Mise en place d’un Assistant
Militaire Technique”).
104
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
105
Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa mission au Rwanda (15-17 avril 1993)
(19 Apr. 1993).
106
Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa mission au Rwanda (15-17 avril 1993)
(19 Apr. 1993).
107
Report from Philippe Capodanno, Rapport du Colonel Capodanno sur sa mission au Rwanda (15-17 avril 1993)
(19 Apr. 1993).
108
See Cable from William Bunel (29 Apr. 1993) (signed Bernard Cussac) (Subject: “Reinstallation d’une partie du
DAMI Panda a Mukamira”) (assessing it would be possible to return the DAMI to Mukamira).
109
Cable from Georges Martres (19 Feb. 1993) (signed Bernard Cussac) (Subject: “Position des AMT et DAMI
Panda”); Report from COMOPS Kigali, Réorganisation de l’assistance opérationnelle et de l’instruction aux Forces
armées (15 Mar. 1993) (recommending that the instruction sites at Mukamira and Gabiro be reactivated).
110
MIP Tome I 168.
111
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
112
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
113
Letter from Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation to French Embassy in Kigali (25 Apr. 1993).
114
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
115
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
116
MIP Tome I 370.
117
MIP Tome I 370.
118
MIP Tome I 370.
119
MIP Tome I 370.
120
MIP Tome I 370.
121
MIP Tome I 370.
122
See JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 164 (2001)
(recalling that Chevènement tried, in vain, to dissuade President Mitterrand from sending troops to Rwanda in the
opening days of the war); Memorandum from Pierre Joxe to François Mitterrand (19 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”)
(urging President Mitterrand to strictly limit France’s role to protecting French nationals); RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE
AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE [BACK IN KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] (2019) (Directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz) (recounting
Varret’s concerns about extremists in the Rwandan government at 20:00-23:00).
123
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
124
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
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Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
125
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
126
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
127
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
128
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
129
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
130
David Servenay, Pierre Conesa: “Rien ne justifiait qu’on tienne le régime rwandais à bout de bras” [Pierre
Conesa: “There Was No Justification for Holding the Rwandan Regime at Arm’s Length”], LE MONDE, 16 Mar. 2018.
131
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
132
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
133
Memorandum from Pierre Conesa (10 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Plaidoyer pour un reèxamen de la politique française
au Rwanda”).
134
David Servenay, Pierre Conesa: “Rien ne justifiait qu’on tienne le régime rwandais à bout de bras” [Pierre
Conesa: “There Was No Justification for Holding the Rwandan Regime at Arm’s Length”], LE MONDE, 16 Mar. 2018.
135
Interview by LFM with Pierre Conesa.
136
Interview by LFM with Pierre Conesa.
137
David Servenay, Pierre Conesa: “Rien ne justifiait qu’on tienne le régime rwandais à bout de bras” [Pierre
Conesa: “There Was No Justification for Holding the Rwandan Regime at Arm’s Length”], LE MONDE, 16 Mar. 2018.
138
David Servenay, Pierre Conesa: “Rien ne justifiait qu’on tienne le régime rwandais à bout de bras” [Pierre
Conesa: “There Was No Justification for Holding the Rwandan Regime at Arm’s Length”], LE MONDE, 16 Mar. 2018.
139
Décret du 24 mai 1993 portant maintien en 1re section, réintégration dans la 1re section, élévation aux rang et
appellation de général de corps d’armée, admission par participation dans la 2e section, nomination dans la 1re et la
2e section et affectation d’officiers généraux (26 May 1993).
140
MIP Audition of General Jean Varret, Tome III, Vol 1, 3 & 7.
141
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018).
142
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
143
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
144
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
145
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018). In his memoir, Varret wrote that the
visit took place in early 1993. Our research, however, uncovered no records of a visit at that time. See Report from
Jean Varret, Compte rendu de mission au Rwanda et au Burundi (27 May 1992). While we cannot rule out the
possibility that records of such a visit do exist, but remain unavailable, it is possible that Varret simply misremembered
the timing of his visit. Varret, we know, did visit Rwanda in May 1992. MIP Tome I 154. We also know that, according
to the MIP, the DAMI was placed under the authority of an operational commander, Colonel Jacques Rosier, the
following month, and remained under Rosier’s authority until November 1992. This sequence of events is consistent
with Varret’s claim that his superiors stripped him of his authority over the DAMI shortly after he visited Rwanda.
146
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
147
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
148
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
149
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
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Chapter VII
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150
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
151
JEAN VARRET, J’EN AI PRIS POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 157 (2018).
152
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 569 (2019).
153
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 569 (2019).
154
François Graner, Jacques Lanxade: “Le Président suivait généralement mon avis, je dirais même quasiment
toujours” [Jacques Lanxade: “The President Generally Followed My Advice, I Would Even Say Almost Always”],
AGONE, 22 Aug. 2018.
155
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE
Christophe Klotz).
AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE
[BACK
IN
KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] (2019) (Directed by Jean-
156
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE
Christophe Klotz).
AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE
[BACK
IN
KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] (2019) (Directed by Jean-
157
AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE
[BACK
IN
KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] (2019) (Directed by Jean-
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE
Christophe Klotz).
158
Memorandum from Robert Grey to Madeleine Albright (27 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “Tripartite (French/Belgian/US)
Demarche on Boutros-Ghali regarding Rwanda”).
159
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Brussels (7 May 1993) (Subject: “UN/OAU Initiatives
on Rwanda: What Next”).
160
Cable from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (4 May 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
161
Cable from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (4 May 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
162
Cable from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (4 May 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
163
Cable from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (4 May 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
164
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 262 (2019); Legislative Decision, JOURNAL
OFFICIEL DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE, Nominations officielles: Jean-Michel Marlaud (29 Mar. 1993); M.
Georges Martres nommé ambassadeur de France au Rwanda [Mr. Georges Martres Appointed French Ambassador
to Rwanda], AFP, 9 Sept. 1989.
165
Interview by LFM with Laurent Contini.
166
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol 1, 73.
167
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 62 & 84 (2003).
168
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (7 May 1993) (Subject: “Remise des lettres de creatnce au president
Habyarimana. Observateurs des Nations Unies a la frontier Ougando-Rwandaise”).
169
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (7 May 1993) (Subject: “Remise des lettres de creatnce au president
Habyarimana. Observateurs des Nations Unies a la frontier Ougando-Rwandaise”).
170
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (7 May 1993) (Subject: “Remise des lettres de creatnce au president
Habyarimana. Observateurs des Nations Unies a la frontier Ougando-Rwandaise”).
171
Interim Report of the Secretary-General on Rwanda, S/25810 (20 May 1993); Letter Dated 18 May 1993 from the
Permanent Representative of Uganda to the United Nations Addressed to the President of the Security Council,
S/25797 (19 May 1993). The Ugandan government clarified its position the same day, assuring Boutros-Ghali in a
letter that “we have no objections to the monitoring team coming to Uganda.”
172
Interim Report of the Secretary-General on Rwanda, S/25810 (20 May 1993).
173
Interim Report of the Secretary-General on Rwanda, S/25810 (20 May 1993).
174
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (7 June 1993) (Subject: “GOR Requests Urgent Meeting to
Resolve Rwanda Impasse”).
175
Cable from Peter Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (9 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks: Breakthrough
on Force Proportions”).
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Chapter VII
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176
Cable from Peter Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (9 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks: Breakthrough
on Force Proportions”).
177
Cable from Peter Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (9 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks: Breakthrough
on Force Proportions”).
178
Cable from Peter Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (9 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks: Breakthrough
on Force Proportions”).
179
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (17 June 1993).
180
Cable from Peter Jon De Vos to US Secretary of State (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks: Itching [sic]
Toward Conclusion”).
181
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 June 1993) (Subject: “Cabinet Delays Signature, Rejects
Prime Minister”).
182
S.C. Res. 846, U.N. Doc. S/RES/846, 3 (22 June 1993); see also Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée (22 June 1993)
(Subject: “Rwanda. Resolution 846”).
183
S.C. Res. 846, U.N. Doc. S/RES/846, 3 (22 June 1993).
184
S.C. Res. 846, U.N. Doc. S/RES/846, 3 (22 June 1993).
185
Letter from Théogèn Rudasingwa to President of the United Nations Security Council (22 June 1993).
186
Memorandum from Ngombwa Muheto (21 June 1993).
187
Memorandum from Ngombwa Muheto (21 June 1993).
188
Letter from Théogèn Rudasingwa to President of the United Nations Security Council (22 June 1993).
189
Letter from Théogèn Rudasingwa to President of the United Nations Security Council (22 June 1993).
190
Letter from Théogèn Rudasingwa to President of the United Nations Security Council (22 June 1993).
191
See Letter Dated 2 April 1993 from the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations Addressed to
the Secretary-General, S/255366 (6 April 1993).
192
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (23 June 1993) (Subject: “Cabinet Delays Signature, Rejects
Prime Minister”).
193
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (23 June 1993) (Subject: “Arusha Peace Talks:
Can they be Salvaged?”).
194
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
195
Hassan Ngeze, RTLM: Aho Umututsi Yanitse Ntiriva [RTLM: No Chance for the Tutsi], in KANGURA 13-14 (July
1993).
196
See Hassan Ngeze, RTLM: Aho Umututsi Yanitse Ntiriva [RTLM: No Chance for the Tutsi], in KANGURA 13-14
(July 1993).
197
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32, 321, 323
(Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
198
Mary Kimani, RTLM: The Medium that Became a Tool for Mass Murder, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA
GENOCIDE 111 (Allan Thompson ed. 2007); see also Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32, (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003) (“The nature of radio transmission
made RTLM particularly dangerous and harmful, as did the breadth of its reach. Unlike print media, radio is
immediately present and active. The power of the human voice . . . adds a quality and dimension beyond words to the
message conveyed.”). Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA
GENOCIDE 41 (Allan Thompson ed. 2007). One Rwandan listener described the talk on RTLM as “a conversation
among Rwandans who knew each other well and were relaxing over some banana beer or a bottle of Primus in a bar.”
199
Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 41
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
200
See Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., Case No ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 668 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
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201
JEAN-PIERRE CHRÉTIEN
(2002).
ET AL.,
RWANDA:
LES MÉDIAS DU GÉNOCIDE
[RWANDA: MEDIA
OF THE
GENOCIDE] 61
202
ET AL.,
RWANDA:
LES MÉDIAS DU GÉNOCIDE
[RWANDA: MEDIA
OF THE
GENOCIDE] 61
JEAN-PIERRE CHRÉTIEN
(2002).
203
Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., Case No ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 490 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
204
See JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR: DIPLOMACY AND THE MAKING OF THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 30
(2020); Ogen John Kevin Aliro, Rwanda Troops Flee War Front, WEEKLY TOPIC, 5 July 1991.
205
See Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32, 173
(Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003). The trial court sentenced Nahimana in 2003 to life in prison for inciting
genocide and other genocide-related crimes.
206
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32, 173 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
207
Prosecutor v. Joseph Serugendo, Case No. ICTR-2005-84-I, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 16, 9 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 12 June 2006).
208
Prosecutor v. Joseph Serugendo, Case No. ICTR-2005-84-I, Judgement and Sentence ¶¶ 4, 17-29 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 12 June 2006).
209
Prosecutor v. Joseph Serugendo, Case No. ICTR-2005-84-I, Judgement and Sentence, PDF p. 22, 12 June 2006;
Prosecutor v. Joseph Serugendo, Case No. ICTR-2005-84-I, ICTR Case Profile (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 22 Aug.
2006).
210
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003); Hassan Ngeze, RTLM: Aho Umututsi Yanitse Ntiriva [RTLM: No Chance for
the Tutsi], in KANGURA 13-14 (July 1993) (referring to Kabuga as “the richest man in Rwanda”).
211
See Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32, 173
(Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
212
Prosecutor v. Félicien Kabuga, Case No. ICTR-98-44B-PT, Amended Indictment (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14
Apr. 2011).
213
Prosecutor v. Félicien Kabuga, Case No. MICT-13-38-I, Urgent Motion for Amendment of Order for Transfer
(Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals 20 May 2020).
214
Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 41
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
215
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32, 173 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
216
Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, Societe Anonyme (R.T.L.M. SA), Statuts (8 Apr. 1993) (signed Isaac
Mulinhano et al.) (RTLM Memorandum of Association); see also Le Ministre, M. Gatabazi, dépasse les limites [The
Minister, Mr. Gatabazi, Crosses the Line], La Médaille, 13 Mar. 1993 in LA REVUE DE LA PRESSE RWANDAISE, 15,
4 Apr. 1993 (noting that Ntilivamunda was director general of bridges and roads in the Ministry of Public Works and
Energy); ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, FROM WAR TO GENOCIDE: CRIMINAL POLITICS IN RWANDA 1990-1994, 49 & 53 (2010);
see also Letter from Andre Ntagerura (1 Dec. 1992) (noting that Nzabagerageza, a former prefect of Ruhengeri, was
cabinet director for the Ministry of Transportation); Prosecutor v. Juvénal Kajelijeli, Case No. ICTR-98-44A-T,
Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 258 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 1 Dec. 2003); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 243
(2019).
217
Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, Societe Anonyme (R.T.L.M. SA), Statuts (8 Apr. 1993) (signed Isaac
Mulinhano et al.) (RTLM Memorandum of Association).
218
Augustin Ngirabatware v. Prosecutor, Case No. MICT-12-29-A, Judgement (Mechanism for International Criminal
Tribunals, 18 Dec. 2014). Ngirabatware received a 35-year sentence following his convictions on counts of genocide;
direct and public incitement to commit genocide; and rape as a crime against humanity. An appeals court later reversed
the rape count and reduced his sentence to 30 years.
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Chapter VII
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219
Prosecutor v. André Ntagerura et al., Case No. ICTR-99-46-T, ¶¶ 78 & 829 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 Feb.
2004). Ntagerura was charged with several crimes in connection with the Genocide but was acquitted on all counts.
220
Report of the UN Reconnaissance Mission Rwanda, Annex 1: List of officials and representatives met (31 Aug.
1993).
221
Memorandum from Richard Cobb (7 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Briefing Memorandum for the Acting Deputy
Administrator”) (document from the US Agency for International Development).
222
JOURNAL OFFICIEL DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE RWANDAISE 37 (15 Nov. 1992).
223
JOURNAL OFFICIEL DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE RWANDAISE 37 (15 Nov. 1992); Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al.,
Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 1031-32 & 177 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
Simbizi was a founding member of the CDR.
224
See Lists of RTLM Shareholders, 30 Nov. 1995, 3, 8, 13-14 in Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No.
ICTR-98-41-T, Exhibit No. P336B (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwand 10 Apr. 1996).
225
Théoneste Bagosora & Anatole Nsengiyumva v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 3 &
265 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
226
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 115 (2000).
227
Théoneste Bagosora & Anatole Nsengiyumva v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 2 &
264 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
228
Aloys Ntabakuze v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41A-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 2, 317, (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 8 May 2012).
229
See Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 441, 154 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003); Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA
AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 41 (Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
230
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 441, 154, (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
231
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 441, 154, (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
232
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 441, 154, (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003).
233
Cable from Georges Martres (13 Apr. 1993). Ambassador Martres, in an April 1993 cable, reported on the plans
to launch the new radio station, reporting that “the Hutu nationalist circles of Kigali are trying to compete with the
RPF in the media war.”
234
See MIP Tome I 291; JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN
GENOCIDE] 57 (2014) (recalling RTLM’s “virulent broadcasts” in late 1993).
235
MIP Tome I 291. Cuingnet appears to have been mistaken about what RTLM began broadcasting. The station
started airing original programming in July 1993, not April 1993, as Cuingnet is reported to have said. See Mary
Kimani, RTLM: The Medium that Became a Tool for Mass Murder, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 111
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
236
Convention D’Association Entre La Societe Eclipse-Rwanda, La Radio-Television Libre Des Mille Collines
(RTLM SA) et Telediffusion de France (TDF).
237
Telediffusion
de
France,
Buyoutsinsider.com
(last
visited
11
Apr.
2021),
https://www.buyoutsinsider.com/telediffusion-de-france-8/ (noting that the European Commission has approved the
sale of Telediffusion de France to CDC, a private equity fund).
238
See France Telecom Group History, FUNDING UNIVERSE (last
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/france-telecom-group-history/.
visited
11
Apr.
2021),
239
See Memorandum from Ferdinand Nahimana to Juvénal Habyarimana (14 Apr. 1992) (Subject: “Rapport de
mission à Bruxelles et à Paris”) (advising President Habyarimana that Simone Tardy of the French Ministry of
Cooperation “reaffirmed that France is always ready to help us set up a national television” in Rwanda).
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Chapter VII
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240
Prosecutor v. Ferdinand Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 170 & 485 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3 Dec. 2003) (“[T]he Chamber finds this progression to be a continuum that began with the
creation of RTLM radio to discuss issues of ethnicity and gradually turned into a seemingly non-stop call for the
extermination of the Tutsi.”).
241
Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 45
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
242
Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 45
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007). The human rights activist Alison Des Forges wrote that the false report of castration was
intended to remind listeners of the pre-colonial era, when “some Tutsi kings castrated defeated enemy rulers and
decorated their royal drums with the genitalia.” The allusion was meant “to elicit [listeners’] fear and repulsion; it did
so with great success.”
243
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Burundi Coup: Rwandan Reaction”).
244
Simone Monasebian, The Pre-Genocide Case Against Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines, in THE MEDIA
310 (Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE
245
Letter from Faustin Rucogoza to the Chairman of the RTLM Initiative Committee (27 Oct. 1993).
246
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 19 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
247
Letter from Faustin Rucogoza to the Chairman of the RTLM Initiative Committee (27 Oct. 1993).
248
Simone Monasebian, The Pre-Genocide Case against Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines, in THE MEDIA
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 310
249
Simone Monasebian, The Pre-Genocide Case against Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines, in THE MEDIA
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 310
250
Simone Monasebian, The Pre-Genocide Case against Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines, in THE MEDIA
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 310
251
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement ¶ 737 & 194, (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
252
See Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle avril-mai-juin 1993 4 (6 July 1993).
253
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (22 July 1993) (Subject: “Peacekeeping and Observing in
Rwanda”).
254
See Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle avril-mai-juin 1993 4 (6 July 1993).
255
See Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle avril-mai-juin 1993 4 (6 July 1993).
256
See Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle avril-mai-juin 1993 4 (6 July 1993).
257
See Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle avril-mai-juin 1993 4 (6 July 1993).
258
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (30 July 1993) (Subject: “Support for Peace”).
259
Memorandum from Laurie Shestack to Karl Inderfurth (26 July 1993) (Subject: “Meeting on Rwanda”). The US
Department of State-Defense Department document noted that France supported an assessed UN force but was
“unwilling to contribute to a voluntary fund.”
260
See Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (16 July 1993) (Subject: “French Views on
Peacekeeping Operations in Rwanda”) (citing a French diplomat as saying that “French troops would probably not be
able to participate in a UN-led NIF [neutral international force], given the RPF’s strong objection to French presence
in Rwanda”).
261
Memorandum from Laurent Bili (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Présence militaire au Rwanda”).
262
Memorandum from Laurent Bili (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Présence militaire au Rwanda”).
263
Memorandum from Laurent Bili (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Présence militaire au Rwanda”).
264
Memorandum from Laurent Bili (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Présence militaire au Rwanda”).
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265
Memorandum from Laurent Bili (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Présence militaire au Rwanda”).
266
Memorandum from Laurent Bili (21 June 1993) (Subject: “Présence militaire au Rwanda”).
267
See Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the Heads of Diplomatic and Consular Missions (26 July 1993); Meeting
Notes (7 July 1993) (signed Juvénal Renzah); Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech before the 29th Session of the Conference
of Heads of State and Government in Cairo (29 June 1993).
268
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the Heads of Diplomatic and Consular Missions (26 July 1993).
269
See Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the Heads of Diplomatic and Consular Missions (26 July 1993).
270
Meeting Notes (7 July 1993) (signed Juvénal Renzah).
271
See Meeting Notes (7 July 1993) (signed Juvénal Renzah); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (14
July 1993) (Subject: “Expanded NMOG”).
272
Meeting Notes (7 July 1993) (signed Juvénal Renzah).
273
See Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (14 July 1993) (Subject: “Expanded NMOG”).
274
See Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (16 July 1993) (Subject: “French Views on
Peacekeeping Operations in Rwanda”); Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (22 June 1993)
(Subject: “SC to Adopt Rwanda Resolution 6/22”) (“The command of the neutral international force (NIF) is shaping
up to a matter of great controversy. The Russians, and reportedly also the British, prefer an OAU-led force, rather than
a UN force. The French, and presumably UN U/SYG Jonah, will continue to push for a UN-led force.”).
275
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Mission at UN (14 July 1993) (Subject: “French Views on Current
UN Issues”); Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (16 July 1993) (Subject: “French
Views on Peacekeeping Operations in Rwanda”). The same counselor told a US State Department official the
following week that France “does not think that the OAU has the necessary resources or expertise to mount an NIF
[neutral international force], nor do they have the confidence of the Rwandan government.”
276
Cable from American Embassy in Addis Ababa to US Secretary of State (13 July 1993) (Subject: “Expansion of
OAU NMOG for Rwanda”).
277
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (8 July 1993) (Subject: “UN SYG Won’t Send Observers
to Rwanda”).
278
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (8 July 1993) (Subject: “UN SYG Won’t Send Observers
to Rwanda”).
279
See Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (14 July 1993) (Subject: “Expanded NMOG”);
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
280
See Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Rwabnda (7 Apr. 1993) (Subject: “INR Analysis:
OAU/Rwanda: Blessed are the Peacekeepers”).
281
Cable from American Embassy in Addis Ababa to US Secretary of State (13 July 1993) (Subject: “Expansion of
OAU NMOG for Rwanda”); see also Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (30 July 1993) (Subject:
“Support for Peace”).
282
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (14 July 1993) (Subject: “Expanded NMOG”).
283
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (14 July 1993) (Subject: “Expanded NMOG”).
284
Juvénal Habyarimana, Speech to the Heads of Diplomatic and Consular Missions (26 July 1993).
285
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR: DIPLOMACY AND THE MAKING OF THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 202 (2020).
286
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (19 July 1993) (Subject: “Transition Government extended—
MDR Splits”); see also Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
287
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (19 July 1993) (Subject: “Transition Government extended—
MDR Splits”) (noting that the parties “did not announce Agathe as the prime minister candidate for the new enlarged
transition government after the peace accord”). As previously noted, the two sides agreed in principle in July 1992 to
establish a “broad-based transitional government,” or BBTG, to wield political power in Rwanda during the
transitional period after the war. See the N’Sele Ceasefire Agreement, as amended, art. 5, Rw. – RPF, 12 July 1992.
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April 1993 – 5 April 1994
A “Protocol of Agreement” in October 1992 sketched out the BBTG’s powers. See Protocol of Agreement on PowerSharing within the Framework of a Broad-Based Transitional Government, arts. 13 - 15, Rw. – RPF, 30 Oct. 1992.
288
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (19 July 1993) (Subject: “Transition Government extended—
MDR Splits”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (30 July 1993) (Subject: “The MDR vs the MDR:
Part II”) (characterizing Ngulinzira as an Nsengiyaremye loyalist).
289
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 202 (2020).
290
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (19 July 1993) (Subject: “Transition Government extended—
MDR Splits”).
291
Letter from James Gasana to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 July 1993); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of
State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “The MDR vs the MDR”).
292
Letter from James Gasana to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 July 1993).
293
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 546 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 December 2008); JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR xix (2020). The name stood for Alliance
des Militaires Agacés par les Séculaires Actes Sournois des Unaristes, or Alliance of Soldiers Annoyed by the
Underhanded Acts of the Unarists.
294
Memorandum from Tango Mike to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Naissance et Raison d’Étre des
AMASASU”).
295
Memorandum from Tango Mike to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 Jan. 1993) (Subject: “Naissance et Raison d’Étre des
AMASASU”); Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 54649 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
296
ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 337 (2019); JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 201 (2020).
297
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “The MDR vs the MDR”).
298
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “The MDR vs the MDR”).
299
Letter from Matthieu Ngirumpatse to Agathe Uwiringiyimana (27 July 1993) (Subject: “Candidature au poste de
Ministre de la Défense”); ANDREW WALLIS, STEPP’D IN BLOOD 343 (2019).
300
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “Agreement on Peace”).
301
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (30 July 1993) (Subject: “Support for Peace”); Cable from
Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “Agreement on Peace”).
302
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “Agreement on Peace”).
303
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “Agreement on Peace”).
304
See Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “Agreement on Peace”); Cable
from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993) (Subject: “The MDR vs the MDR”).
305
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
306
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara; Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (26 July 1993)
(Subject: “Agreement on Peace”).
307
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 191 (1995); MK, Peace Agreement Signed at Last!, Rwandese Review 34, 6 Aug. 1993.
308
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 191 (1995).
309
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
310
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”); Peace Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the
Rwandese Patriotic Front, Rw. – RPF (4 Aug. 1993).
311
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
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April 1993 – 5 April 1994
312
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
313
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
314
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
315
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
316
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
317
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
318
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
319
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
320
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
321
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
322
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (4 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda et au Congo”).
323
Letter from Augustin Bizimana to French Embassy in Rwanda (9 Aug. 1993); Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud
(10 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Allègement de la coopération militaire française”).
324
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (10 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Allègement de la coopération militaire française”).
325
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (10 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Allègement de la coopération militaire française”).
326
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (10 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Allègement de la coopération militaire française”).
327
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (10 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Allègement de la coopération militaire française”).
328
Philip Gourevitch, After the Genocide, in THE NEW YORKER (18 Dec. 1995) (“In August of 1993, when the Hutu
President Juvénal Habyarimana signed a power-sharing peace accord with the R.P.F., extremist Hutus began to
speculate whether the President himself had become an accomplice.”); ARTHUR JAY KLINGHOFFER, THE
INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 29 (1998) (“It was a fateful time for Rwanda as its president
was being drawn into a course of action against his inclinations and those of Hutu extremists.”).
329
Cable from Williem Claes (16 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Attitude du CDR face aux accords d’Arusha”).
330
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1, 123.
331
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1, 124 (asserting that the government “represented 80 percent
of the population”).
332
Report from Bernard Cussac, Sythèse trimestrielle juillet, août, septembre 1993 (18 Oct. 1993).
333
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1, 123.
334
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1, 123.
335
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1, 123.
336
Transcript of Interview with Jean Kambanda, Cassette 77 JK – Side A, 16 (1998).
337
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR-97-23-S, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 40 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 4 Sep. 1998).
338
Transcript of Interview with Jean Kambanda, Cassette 77 JK – Side A, 16 (1998).
339
Mr. B.W. Ndiaye of Senegal, the UN “Special Rapporteur”—independent expert appointed by the UN Commission
on Human Rights (now called the UN Human Rights Council) with the mandate to monitor, advise, and publicly
report on human rights situations in Rwanda—conducted his investigation in April 1993 in the wake of the March
1993 release of the report of the FIDH Commission (see Chapter 6). See UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON HUMAN
RIGHTS, REPORT BY MR. B.W. NDIAYE, SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR, ON HIS MISSION TO RWANDA FROM 8 TO 17 APRIL
1993, ¶ 4 (1993).
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April 1993 – 5 April 1994
340
UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, REPORT BY MR. B.W. NDIAYE, SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR, ON HIS
MISSION TO RWANDA FROM 8 TO 17 APRIL 1993, ¶ 79 (1993).
341
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 153 (2020).
342
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
343
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
344
MICHAEL BARNETT, EYEWITNESS TO A GENOCIDE: THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 59 (2002).
345
MICHAEL BARNETT, EYEWITNESS TO A GENOCIDE: THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 59 (2002).
346
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 1-36 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
347
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 1-36 (2 June 2014).
348
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”).
349
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”). The name of the French official is redacted in the US cable.
350
Declaration Adopted by the Regional Summit on the Occasion of the Signing of the Peace Agreement between the
Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front: Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania, 4th
August 1993 5 (4 Aug. 1993); JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 208 (2020).
351
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
Restreint du 4 août – Afrique”).
352
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (8 Sept. 1993).
353
Letter Dated 14 June 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations Addressed to the
President of the Security Council, S/25951 (11 June 1993).
354
Protocol of Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front on
the Integration of the Armed Forces of the Two Parties, art. 54, Rw. – RPF, 4 Aug. 1993.
355
Arusha Peace Agreement, Rw. – RPF, 4 August 1993.
356
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 58 (2003). Brig. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, who would go on to
lead the UN peacekeeping force, made this explicit during a press conference on the airport runway upon his arrival
in Kigali on 19 August 1993. In his book, Shake Hands with the Devil, he wrote: “I remember raising my finger to
make the point that our presence was only phase one, that a series of decisions had yet to be made by the UN and the
troop-contributing nations before anybody would be sent to Rwanda. There would definitely be no UN mission on the
ground by September 10.”
357
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”).
358
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (30 July 1993) (Subject: “Support for Peace”).
359
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”).
360
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”).
361
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (18 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “French Ideas About Rwanda
NIF”); Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “The French Military and the
Neutral International Force (NIF)”).
362
SAMANTHA POWER, A PROBLEM FROM HELL 341 (4th ed. 2013).
363
SAMANTHA POWER, A PROBLEM FROM HELL 341 (4th ed. 2013).
364
Bill Clinton, Address to the UN General Assembly (27 Sept. 1993).
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Chapter VII
365
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
Bill Clinton, Address to the UN General Assembly (27 Sept. 1993).
366
Guy Martin, Continuity and Change in France-African Relations in THE JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES
17 (Mar. 1995). In each of these instances, the intervention was “in support of those in power.”
367
Guy Martin, Continuity and Change in France-African Relations in THE JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES
17 (Mar. 1995). According to Professor Guy Martin, short-term aid relief to African countries cost France more than
1.5 billion francs between December 1992 and May 1993.
368
Édouard Balladur, Point de vue: la France et l’Afrique: une solidarité exigeante [Point of View on France and
Africa: A Demanding Solidarity], LE MONDE, 23 Sep. 1993.
369
Édouard Balladur, Point de vue: la France et l’Afrique: une solidarité exigeante [Point of View on France and
Africa: A Demanding Solidarity], LE MONDE, 23 Sep. 1993.
370
Édouard Balladur, Point de vue: la France et l’Afrique: une solidarité exigeante [Point of View on France and
Africa: A Demanding Solidarity], LE MONDE, 23 Sep. 1993.
371
Édouard Balladur, Point de vue: la France et l’Afrique: une solidarité exigeante [Point of View on France and
Africa: A Demanding Solidarity], LE MONDE, 23 Sep. 1993.
372
Cable from Walter J.P. Curley to US Secretary of State (18 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Élysée Africa Watcher Offers
Tour d’Horizon to Ambassador Glaspie”).
373
Cable from Walter J.P. Curley to US Secretary of State (18 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Élysée Africa Watcher Offers
Tour d’Horizon to Ambassador Glaspie”).
374
Cable from Walter J.P. Curley to US Secretary of State (18 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Élysée Africa Watcher Offers
Tour d’Horizon to Ambassador Glaspie”).
375
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (3 Mar. 1993) (“We must, as soon as possible, hand over our position to
international forces from the UN.”).
376
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 62 (2003).
377
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 62 (2003).
378
UNITED NATIONS, REPORT OF THE UN RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO RWANDA 12 (1993).
379
UNITED NATIONS, REPORT OF THE UN RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO RWANDA 12 (1993).
380
UNITED NATIONS, REPORT OF THE UN RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO RWANDA 13 (1993).
381
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “The French Military and the Neutral
International Force (NIF)”).
382
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “The French Military and the Neutral
International Force (NIF)”).
383
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (31 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “The French Military and the Neutral
International Force (NIF)”).
384
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (21 Sep. 1993) (Subject: “Points chauds – Situation”).
385
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
386
UNITED NATIONS, REPORT OF THE UN RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO RWANDA 41 (1993).
387
UNITED NATIONS, REPORT OF THE UN RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO RWANDA 41 (1993).
388
UNITED NATIONS, REPORT OF THE UN RECONNAISSANCE MISSION TO RWANDA 13 (1993). In summation, Dallaire
wrote: “Without a credible NIF, the foreign [i.e., French] troops will not withdraw. Without the withdrawal of foreign
troops, the RPF will not enter the city to participate in the BBTG. Without the BBTG, there is no peace process. The
above conditions are inextricably linked and the key is the rapid deployment of a credible NIF to provide security [for]
Kigali.”
389
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 75-76 (2003) (internal quotation marks omitted).
390
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 76 (2003).
391
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 76 (2003).
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Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
392
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony
to the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 2 (Dec. 1993) (“Thus, for a little more than 3
years, the French Armed Forces in Rwanda presented both a credible deterrent and an effective and decisive knowhow that helped stop the fighting and reestablish a negotiation process that allowed the return of peace through
negotiations.”).
393
Letter Dated 14 June 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations Addressed to the
President of the Security Council, S/25951 (11 June 1993).
394
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993) (referring to the RPF as “the
enemy”).
395
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 84 (2003).
396
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 84 (2003).
397
LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 87 (2000); Six School Children Killed, 18 Wounded in Mine Blast, AFP, 3
Dec. 1993 (stating, “the Noroît unit which has been (in the country) since October 1990”); Mel McNulty, France’s
Role in Rwanda and External Military Intervention: A Double Discrediting, in INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 31
(1997).
398
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (10 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Allègement de la coopération militaire française”).
399
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (4 Oct.1993) (Subject: “Rwanda: dispositive militaire français”).
This figure includes 22 soldiers under the command of the Military Assistance Mission, plus 16 soldiers in an antiaircraft unit.
400
Notes on Cable from French Embassy in Kigali (30 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Réorganisation du dispositif AMT au
Rwanda”).
401
Timeline of French commitment of military resources in Rwanda (undated) (indicating that one DAMI member
remained in Rwanda from January 1994 to April 1994). A 30 November 1993 cable signed by Col. Cussac
recommended that the remaining DAMI Panda personnel should be repatriated along with the Noroît soldiers in midDecember 1993, but that one non-commissioned officer from DAMI Panda should remain in Rwanda on a temporary
assignment to work with the Rwandan Army intelligence unit. Notes on Cable from French Embassy in Kigali (30
Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Réorganisation du dispositif AMT au Rwanda”).
402
Letter from Augustin Bizimana, Rwandan Minister of Defense, to Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Rwandan Prime
Minister (23 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Coopération Militaire avec la France”).
403
Cable from the Military Assistance Mission in Kigali to Rwandan Minister of Defense (11 Feb. 1994) (Subject:
“Relève 1993 – arrivées et departs des coopérants militiares”); Cable from Rwandan Ministry of Defense (17 June
1993).
404
Cable from the Military Assistance Mission in Kigali to Rwandan Minister of Defense (11 Feb. 1994) (Subject:
“Relève 1993 – arrivées et departs des coopérants militiares”); Cable from Rwandan Ministry of Defense (17 June
1993).
405
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRÈTES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 164 (2014).
406
Position of RPF on Negotiations Concerning Putting an End to Massacres and Guarantees that Massacres Won’t
Re-occur 5 (22 Jan. 1993) (“The [French] troops have relieved, in particular the Presidential Guard of some of their
duties in Kigali. A fact which has allowed the Presidential Guard alongside other forces, to participate directly in
massacres. The French troops therefore offer moral support and indirectly reinforce the forces which are carrying out
the massacres.”).
407
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
408
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993).
409
MIP Tome II, Annex 10.A.2 (“Récapitulatif des CIEEMG de 1987 à 1994”).
410
MIP Tome II, Annex 10.A.2 (“Récapitulatif des CIEEMG de 1987 à 1994”).
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Chapter VII
411
JOSÉ
(2014).
DE
PINHO, COMPRENDRE
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS
[UNDERSTANDING
THE
RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 26-27
412
Memorandum from Augustin Bizimana to Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation 7 (25 June 1993)
(Subject: “Candidature de l’Adjudant De Pinho José”).
413
Report from Bernard Cussac, Compte rendu semestrial de fonctionnement (2 Oct. 1993) (noting that two CRAP
soldiers had been captured in the occupied zone in June 1993).
414
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 27 (2014).
415
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 43 (2014).
416
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 43 (2014).
417
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 43 (2014).
418
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 43 (2014).
419
Meeting Notes (18 Aug. 1993) (signed Edouard Hakizemana and Innocent Nday”senga).
420
Meeting Notes (18 Aug. 1993) (signed Edouard Hakizemana and Innocent Nday”senga).
421
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (16 July 1993) (Subject: “French Views on
Peacekeeping Operations in Rwanda”) (citing a French diplomat as saying that “French troops would probably not be
able to participate in a UN-led NIF, given the RPF’s strong objection to French presence in Rwanda”).
422
See Letter from Augustin Bizimana, Rwandan Minister of Defense, to Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Rwandan Prime
Minister (23 Aug. 1993) (Subject: “Coopération Militaire avec la France”) (featuring, beside a statement about
possible French participation in the NIF, a handwritten note asserting, “the RPF would not agree”).
423
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Kigali (14 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “President Habyarimana
and Secretary Christopher Discuss Peace Process and Challenges Ahead”).
424
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (8 October 1993) (Subject: “entretien avec le Général
Habyarimana, Président du Rwanda le lundi 11 octobre à 18 h 30”) (advising Mitterrand before the meeting that
Habyarimana “will probably request from you that we supply some blue helmets”) (emphasis in the original)).
425
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (21 Oct. 1993).
426
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (7 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République
avec Général Juvénal Habyarimana, Président du Rwanda”).
427
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (18 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Élysée Africa Watcher Offers
Tour d’Horizon to Ambassador Glaspie”) (emphasis added).
428
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (7 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République
avec Général Juvénal Habyarimana, Président du Rwanda”).
429
Meeting Notes (21 Aug. 1993) (signed Théoneste Bagosora and Edouard Hakizimana).
430
Meeting Notes (21 Aug. 1993) (signed Théoneste Bagosora and Edouard Hakizimana).
431
Meeting Notes (21 Aug. 1993) (signed Théoneste Bagosora and Edouard Hakizimana).
432
Meeting Notes (21 Aug. 1993) (signed Théoneste Bagosora and Edouard Hakizimana).
433
Meeting Notes (21 Aug. 1993) (signed Théoneste Bagosora and Edouard Hakizimana).
434
Memorandum from Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Jean-Michael Marlaud (5 Oct. 1993).
435
Memorandum from Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Jean-Michael Marlaud (5 Oct. 1993).
436
Memorandum from Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Jean-Michael Marlaud (5 Oct. 1993).
437
See Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (11 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien avec le
Président Habyarimana du Rwanda – Lundi 11 octobre 1993 à 08h30 – Questions de défense”); Restricted Council
Meeting Notes (2 Mar. 1993) (“Vis-à-vis the rest of Africa, if France pulls out, which would be wise, everyone will
feel threatened.”).
438
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (7 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République
avec Général Juvénal Habyarimana, Président du Rwanda”).
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439
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (7 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République
avec Général Juvénal Habyarimana, Président du Rwanda”).
440
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (7 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien du Président de la République
avec Général Juvénal Habyarimana, Président du Rwanda”); see also Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to
François Mitterrand (11 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Habyarimana du Rwanda – Lundi 11 octobre
1993 à 08h30 – Questions de défense”). General Quesnot articulated the same point in a briefing document a few days
later, writing, “Our military cooperation should . . . be maintained at the same level as before the events of 1990; that
is to say, some twenty military assistants whose focus will center on the [training] of the Gendarmerie” (emphasis in
the original).
441
Letter from Bernard Cussac to Augustin Bizimana (9 Feb. 1993).
442
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée (5 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda-Resolution 872”).
443
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (5 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Contingency Demarche to the
French on Rwanda and Somalia”).
444
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée (5 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda-Resolution 872”); see Cable from Madeleine
Albright to US Secretary of State (24 Sept. 1993) (Subject: “Draft SC Resolution for Rwanda PKO”); see also
Resolution 846, para. 3, U.N. Doc. S/RES/846 (1993) (22 June 1993).
445
Letter Dated 2 April 1993 from the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations Addressed to the
Secretary-General, S/255366 (6 April 1993).
446
Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda, S/26618 (22 Oct. 1993).
447
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée (5 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Rwanda-Resolution 872”); see also Report of the
Secretary General on Rwanda, S/26488 7 (24 Sept. 1993).
448
Memorandum from Claver Kanyarushoki to James Gasana (17 Nov. 1993).
449
Memorandum from Claver Kanyarushoki to James Gasana (17 Nov. 1993).
450
Memorandum from Claver Kanyarushoki to James Gasana (17 Nov. 1993).
451
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 95 (2003).
452
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 95 (2003).
453
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993) (referring to the RPF as “the
enemy”).
454
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 84 (2003).
455
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 101 (2003); see also GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS
199 (1997); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (15 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Votre entretien
avec M. Léotard le 15 novembre à 17H00”). General Quesnot recognized the threat, too, warning Mitterrand in this15
November note: “The [imminent] arrival of Belgian troops, in particular, is being taken very badly by those in the
governmental forces who openly denounce the links between Brussels and the Tutsi aristocrats.”
456
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 96-97 (2003); see also GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS
199 (1997).
457
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 199 (1997).
458
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 199 (1997).
459
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 55 (2014).
460
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 55 (2014).
461
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 55 (2014).
462
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 55 (2014).
463
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (26 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Conseil
restreint du 27 octobre – Burundi”).
Page | 310
Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
464
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Burundi Coup: Rwandan Reaction”).
465
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 200 (1997).
466
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 215 (2020).
467
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (25 Oct. 1993) (Subject: “Burundi Coup: Rwandan Reaction”).
468
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (1 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “United Nations Assistance Mission
for Rwanda (UNAMIR)”).
469
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (1 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “United Nations Assistance Mission
for Rwanda (UNAMIR)”).
470
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (1 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “United Nations Assistance Mission
for Rwanda (UNAMIR)”).
471
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (16 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Assassination Attempt on Human
Rights Leader”). On 14 November, a grenade attack injured Alphonse Nkubito a prominent human rights activist and
chief public prosecutor of the Kigali appeals court.
472
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (18 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Civilians Killed in DMZ”).
473
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Calm Still Prevails After Civilians
Killed in DMZ”).
474
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Calm Still Prevails After Civilians
Killed in DMZ”).
475
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Calm Still Prevails After Civilians
Killed in DMZ”) (alteration in original); see also Meeting Notes (23 Oct. 1993) (signed Isidore Bwanakweli and
Augutin Bizimana).
476
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Calm Still Prevails After Civilians
Killed in DMZ”); see also Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Government
to Resume Joint Sessions with RPF”).
477
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Government to Resume Joint Sessions
with RPF”); see also Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (29 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Prime Minister
Solicits Diplomatic Help”).
478
Memorandum from Jean Vidal, Bruno Delaye, and Christian Quesnot, to François Mitterrand (24 Nov. 1993)
(Subject: “Points chauds – Situation”); Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle Octobre, Novembre,
Décembre 1993 (14 Jan. 1993).
479
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 112 (2003); see also Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary
of State (24 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Calm Still Prevails After Civilians Killed in DMZ”).
480
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 121-22 (2003); see also JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO
HORROR 231 (2020). Certain details about the November attacks struck US Deputy Chief of Mission Joyce Leader as
curious. In her 2020 book, Leader recalled that the state-run radio station announced these killings on the morning of
18 November. In the announcement, the radio named all thirty-five victims and all of the four communes affected,
despite the fact that “the attacks had occurred in remote, widely dispersed areas only the night before. . . . Rwandans
and diplomats alike wondered how the journalists or their local sources could have gathered this information so
quickly. Many suspected possible government or hard-line political party involvement.”
481
Memorandum from Jean Vidal, Bruno Delaye, and Christian Quesnot, to François Mitterrand (24 Nov. 1993)
(Subject: “Points chauds – Situation”).
482
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye (23 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Point Hebdomadaire de situation sur l’Afrique”); see
also Memorandum from Jean Vidal, Bruno Delaye, and Christian Quesnot, to François Mitterrand (24 Nov. 1993)
(Subject: “Points chauds – Situation”).
483
Memorandum from Jean Vidal, Bruno Delaye, and Christian Quesnot, to François Mitterrand (24 Nov. 1993)
(Subject: “Points chauds – Situation”) (“Given the risks associated with the events in Burundi and the threatening
attitude of the F.P.R. and the Hutu extremists (hostile to the Belgian deployment) and to avoid our troops being drawn
Page | 311
Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
into new domestic conflicts, the government is of the opinion that the Noroît detachment should be withdrawn in the
first days of December, without waiting for the Bengalis to arrive.”).
484
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye (23 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Point Hebdomadaire de situation sur l’Afrique”).
485
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (20 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Military Attack Reported Near
Gisenyi”); see also Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (1 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “UN Operations in
Rwanda”).
486
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (20 Nov. 1993) (Subject: “Military Attack Reported Near
Gisenyi”).
487
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (1 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “UN Operations in Rwanda”).
488
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State 6 (7 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “UNAMIR Update”).
489
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (1 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “UN Operations in Rwanda”)
(“UNAMIR officers stated that President Habyarimana and Defense Minister Bizimana are attempting to slow the
departure of the French (and therefore the arrival of the RPF in Kigali to participate in the transitional government).”).
490
Collette Braeckman, Agathe Uwilingyimana: Sur la situation au Rwanda et l’impact des événements du Burundi
[Agathe Uwilingyimana: On the Situation in Rwanda and the Impact of the Events in Burundi], LE SOIR, 6 Dec. 1993.
491
Collette Braeckman, Agathe Uwilingyimana: Sur la situation au Rwanda et l’impact des événements du Burundi
[Agathe Uwilingyimana: On the Situation in Rwanda and the Impact of the Events in Burundi], LE SOIR, 6 Dec. 1993.
492
Letter from Enoch Ruhigira to Le Soir (10 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Démenti formel”).
493
Letter from Enoch Ruhigira to Le Soir (10 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Démenti formel”).
494
Letter from Enoch Ruhigira to Le Soir (10 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Démenti formel”).
495
Cable from Jean-Michel Marlaud (14 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Retrait du détachement Noroît”).
496
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 14 (Dec. 1993).
497
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 14 (Dec. 1993).
498
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 14-16 (Dec. 1993).
499
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 16 (Dec. 1993).
500
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993).
501
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993).
502
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993).
503
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (10 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “UNAMIR Initiates Kigali Security
Patrols”).
504
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (10 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “UNAMIR Initiates Kigali Security
Patrols”).
505
Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle Octobre, Novembre, Décembre 1993 (14 Jan. 1993).
506
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993).
507
Letter from French Embassy in Kigali to Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (11 Feb. 1994)
(transmitting a biographical file on Lt. Col. Mace).
508
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 59 (2014).
Page | 312
Chapter VII
509
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
510
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
511
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
512
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga; Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba.
513
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga; Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba.
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
514
UN Security Council Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda,
S/26927 3 (30 Dec. 1993); ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 127, 129 (2003).
515
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
516
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
517
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 130 (2003).
518
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 130 (2003).
519
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 24 (Jan. 1994).
520
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 16 (Dec. 1993).
521
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 16 (Dec. 1993).
522
Augustin Bizimana, Speech on the Occasion of the departure of French troops on 10 December 1993, in LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 16 (Dec. 1993).
523
Duclert Commission Report 825.
524
Duclert Commission Report 897 (quoting SHD, GR 203 17 1, Fiche, 20 Mar. 1998).
525
See Duclert Commission Report 825, 897.
526
Duclert Commission Report 825.
527
Duclert Commission Report 897 (quoting SHD, GR 203 17 1, Fiche, 20 Mar. 1998).
528
Account taken from interview by LFM with Chantal Ingabire.
529
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 16 (Jan. 1994).
530
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 16 (Jan. 1994).
531
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 24 (Jan. 1994).
532
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 24 (Jan. 1994).
533
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 32 (Jan. 1994).
534
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ARMING RWANDA: THE ARMS TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE RWANDAN
WAR 32 (Jan. 1994). Indeed, Belgium halted all transfers of lethal weaponry to the Rwandan government after the
war started. Id. at 23. The report stated, though, that in 1992, Belgium contributed 88 million Belgian francs in military
assistance to Rwanda, which covered costs associated with delivering “non-lethal military equipment” such as
uniforms as well as training soldiers, officers, and medical personnel. Id. at 32.
535
Bernard Cussac, Speech on the Occasion of the Taking Up of Arms in Kanombe During the Farewell Ceremony to
the French Troops, in LE JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 1 (Dec. 1993); see also Fiche recapitulative
COOP/MMC en date du 23 mars (23 March 1994).
Page | 313
Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
536
Fiche recapitulative COOP/MMC en date du 23 mars (23 March 1994). Nsabimana was promoted from Colonel to
Major General in December 1993. See Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (30 Dec. 1993) (Subject:
“GOR Names High Command Members”).
537
Fiche recapitulative COOP/MMC en date du 23 mars (23 March 1994).
538
Fiche recapitulative COOP/MMC en date du 23 mars (23 March 1994).
539
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 171 (2001).
540
UN Security Council Second Progress Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Assistance Mission
for Rwanda, S/1994/360 2 (30 March 1994); see also JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 241 (2020).
541
Cable from Robert Flaten to US Secretary of State (11 June 1992) (Subject: “Council of Ministers Retires Top
Military Officers”).
542
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (30 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “GOR Names High Command
Members”).
543
Letter from James Gasana to Juvénal Habyarimana (20 July 1993) (resignation letter).
544
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”) (“According to UNAMIR’s
informant, 1,700 ‘Interahamwe’ supposedly received military training and weapons for that, with the complicity of
FAR chief of staff.”).
545
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 142 (2003); see also Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana,
Case No. ICTR-00-56-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 291 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 17 May 2011).
546
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
547
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”); see
also ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 142 (2003).
548
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
549
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
550
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”);
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 142 (2003); see also, Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994)
(Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”).
551
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 143 (2003).
552
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 141 (2003).
553
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 141 (2003).
554
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
555
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
556
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
557
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”).
558
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”).
559
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”); see also ROMÉO DALLAIRE,
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 148 (2003).
560
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 148 (2003).
561
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”).
562
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”).
563
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”); see also ROMÉO DALLAIRE,
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 141 (2003).
564
Cable from William Bunel (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Menaces de guerre civile”).
565
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
Page | 314
Chapter VII
566
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 143-44 (2003).
567
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 124-25 (2003).
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
568
Memorandum from Luc Marchal to James Gasana, Alexis Kanyarengew, and Roméo Dallaire (15 Dec. 1993)
(enclosing “Operating Procedures for Establishment of Kigali Weapon Secure Area”); see Cable from Joyce Leader
to US Secretary of State 3 (23 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Critical Analysis of UNAMIR’s Phase 1 Operations”).
569
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (11 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Request for Protection for Informant”).
570
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 147 (2003).
571
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
572
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
573
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
574
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
575
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
576
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
577
Cable from Paul Noterdaeme to Willy Claes (20 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: évaluation de la situation par le
Secrétariat de l’ONU”).
578
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (14 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Transition Institutions: No Movement
Yet”); see also Cable from Johan Swinnen (15 Jan 1994).
579
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (14 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Transition Institutions: No Movement
Yet”).
580
Cable from Johan Swinnen (17 Jan. 1994).
581
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE:
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 1-123 (2 June 2014) (quoting US Deputy Chief of Mission Joyce Leader
saying that, when diplomats pressed Habyarimana about the weapons-distribution issue, “[i]t was rather sloughed off
by the President who said, ‘Well, we had these arms distributed, but we aren’t doing this anymore.’ To hear that they
are asking them to go and talk to the President again was spinning wheels in ways that were rather unproductive.”).
582
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 148 (2003).
583
Fiche recapitulative COOP/MMC en date du 23 mars (23 March 1994); see also Meeting Notes (28 Aug. 1992)
(signed Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Jean-Baptise Iradukunda).
584
Fiche recapitulative COOP/MMC en date du 23 mars (23 March 1994).
585
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 149 (2003).
586
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 149 (2003).
587
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 150 (2003); Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (12
Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Further Information from Informant”).
588
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Further Information from Informant”); see
also Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Case No. ICTR-00-56-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 290 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 17 May 2011).
589
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (12 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Further Information from Informant”); see
also Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Case No. ICTR-00-56-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 290 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 17 May 2011).
590
Rémy Ourdan, Les yeux fermés de l’Occident [The Shut Eyes of the West], LE MONDE, 1 Apr. 1998.
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Chapter VII
April 1993 – 5 April 1994
591
Rémy Ourdan, Les yeux fermés de l’Occident [The Shut Eyes of the West], LE MONDE, 1 Apr. 1998.
592
Rémy Ourdan, Les yeux fermés de l’Occident [The Shut Eyes of the West], LE MONDE, 1 Apr. 1998.
593
Rémy Ourdan, Les yeux fermés de l’Occident [The Shut Eyes of the West], LE MONDE, 1 Apr. 1998.
594
Rémy Ourdan, Les yeux fermés de l’Occident [The Shut Eyes of the West], LE MONDE, 1 Apr. 1998.
595
Rémy Ourdan, Les yeux fermés de l’Occident [The Shut Eyes of the West], LE MONDE, 1 Apr. 1998.
596
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
597
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 124 (2003); see also Memorandum from Luc Marchal to James
Gasana, Alexis Kanyarengew, and Roméo Dallaire (15 Dec. 1993) (enclosing “Operating Procedures for
Establishment of Kigali Weapon Secure Area”).
598
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 126 (2003).
599
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 126 (2003).
600
MIP Tome I 180-81.
601
MIP Tome I 181, 184-85; MIP Tome II, Annex 10.A.2 (“Récapitulatif des CIEEMG de 1987 à 1994”).
602
Report from M. Nees to S3 (22 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Report on the Investigation of 21 January on Suspect Cargo
of an Aircraft Which Landed at Kigali International Airport”).
603
Report from M. Nees to S3 (22 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Report on the Investigation of 21 January on Suspect Cargo
of an Aircraft Which Landed at Kigali International Airport”). The KIBAT report notes that the shipment contained
900 mortar rounds; however, the Thomson-Brandt packing list reflects 1,000 mortar rounds. See Thomson-Brandt
packing list (21 Jan. 1994).
604
Notes on Cable from French Embassy in Kigali (15 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “Fourniture de munitions à l’armée
rwandaise”).
605
Memorandum from Fruchard (16 Feb. 1993) (Subject: “Besoins en munitions des Forces armées rwandaises”).
606
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
607
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
608
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
609
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
610
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
611
Memorandum from Sébastien Ntahobari to Augustin Bizimana (8 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Rapport de visite”).
612
Report from M. Nees to S3 (22 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Report on the Investigation of 21 January on Suspect Cargo
of an Aircraft Which Landed at Kigali International Airport”).
613
Report from M. Nees to S3 (22 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Report on the Investigation of 21 January on Suspect Cargo
of an Aircraft Which Landed at Kigali International Airport”).
614
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 156-57 (2003).
615
Memorandum from Roméo Dallaire (31 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Security Situation 31 January 1994”).
616
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (7 March 1994) (Subject: “Resupply of Ammunition for Government
Army”).
617
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 157 (2003).
618
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 158-59 (2003).
619
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (7 March 1994) (Subject: “Resupply of Ammunition for Government
Army”); see also, ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 202 (2003).
620
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (7 March 1994) (Subject: “Resupply of Ammunition for Government
Army”); Cable from Kofi Annan to Roméo Dallaire et al. (7 March 1994) (Subject: “Ammunition shipment for the
RGF”).
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April 1993 – 5 April 1994
621
See Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (7 March 1994) (Subject: “Resupply of Ammunition for
Government Army”); see also, ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 202 (2003).
622
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 202 (2003).
623
Cable from US Secretary of State to David Rawson (7 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”).
624
Cable from US Secretary of State to David Rawson (7 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”).
625
Cable from US Secretary of State to David Rawson (7 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”).
626
Cable from US Secretary of State to David Rawson (7 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”).
627
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (10 Feb. 1994).
628
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (10 Feb. 1994).
629
Cable from Johan Swinnen to Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (10 Feb. 1994).
630
Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle Octobre, Novembre, Décembre 1993 (14 Jan. 1993).
631
Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle Octobre, Novembre, Décembre 1993 (14 Jan. 1993).
632
Memorandum from David Jensen (7 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “My Visit to Rwanda, February 1-4, 1994”);
Memorandum from Seth Sendashonga (23 Feb. 1994). Bruno Delaye raised this possibility in a February 1994 meeting
in Paris with a colleague and with an RPF minister, Seth Sendashonga. According to Sendashonga’s notes of the
meeting, Delaye said Habyarimana may be afraid of impeachment, “but that kind of fear goes away when there are
some guarantees.” Delaye’s meaning was not subtle. “[W]e felt like he was pressuring [us] to give amnesty and give
Habyarimana guarantees that nothing will happen to him during the transition,” Sendashonga wrote.
633
Report from Bernard Cussac, Synthèse trimestrielle Octobre, Novembre, Décembre 1993 (14 Jan. 1993).
634
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (17 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “The Military and the Transition to
Peace”).
635
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (17 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “The Military and the Transition to
Peace”).
636
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (17 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “The Military and the Transition to
Peace”).
637
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (17 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “The Military and the Transition to
Peace”).
638
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (17 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “The Military and the Transition to
Peace”).
639
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 245 (2020).
640
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 245 (2020).
641
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 245 (2020).
642
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 246 (2020).
643
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye (29 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Point Hebdomadaire de Situation sur l’Afrique”).
644
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye (29 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Point Hebdomadaire de Situation sur l’Afrique”);
Cable from David Rawon to US Secretary State (28 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “CDR Issue Proves Intractable”).
645
Memorandum from Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh to Kofi Annan and Marrack Goulding (28 Mar. 1994) (Subject:
“Efforts to Install the Transitional Institutions”) (listing Ambassador Marlaud among the signatories of a declaration
urging that “all political parties authorized in Rwanda at the date of signature of this protocole and the RPF should be
represented at the transitional National Assembly when it is in place, under the condition that they respect the peace
agreement”); U.N. SCOR, 49th Sess., 3358th mtg. at 6, S/PV.3358 (5 Apr. 1994).
646
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 1-30 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
647
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye (29 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Point Hebdomadaire de Situation sur l’Afrique”);
Cable from David Rawon to US Secretary State (28 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “CDR Issue Proves Intractable”).
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648
Cable from David Rawon to US Secretary State (28 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “CDR Issue Proves Intractable”).
649
Statement by the President of the Security Council, S/PRST/1994/8 (17 Feb. 1994).
650
Statement by the President of the Security Council, S/PRST/1994/8 (17 Feb. 1994). (internal quotation marks
omitted).
651
Statement by the President of the Security Council, S/PRST/1994/8 (17 Feb. 1994). (internal quotation marks
omitted).
652
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (22 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “Minister/Politician Assassinated”).
653
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (22 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “Minister/Politician Assassinated”).
654
JOYCE E. LEADER, FROM HOPE TO HORROR 249 (2020); Memorandum from Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh to Kofi
Annan and James Jonah (23 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “The Current Situation in Rwanda”).
655
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (23 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “Insecurity Escalates, a Kigali and
Elsewhere”).
656
MIP Tome I 220.
657
Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State (23 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “Insecurity Escalates, a Kigali and
Elsewhere”).
658
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
659
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
660
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
661
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
662
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
663
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
664
Cable from Jean-Bernard Mérimée to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 Mar. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
665
MIP Tome I 213; S.C. Res. 872, S/RES/872 (5 Oct. 1993) (establishing UNAMIR for a period of six months).
666
Second Progress Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda,
S/1994/360 12 (30 Mar. 1994); Cable from Edward Walker to US Secretary of State (4 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Perm-5
Discussions on Rwanda Mandate Extension”).
667
Cable from Edward Walker to US Secretary of State (4 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Perm-5 Discussions on Rwanda
Mandate Extension”).
668
Report by the Secretary-General Concerning the Credentials of the Representatives and Deputy and Alternate
Representatives of the Members of the Security Council Elected for the Period 1994-1995, S/26923 (31 Dec. 1993).
669
RPF Memorandum (5 April 1994); Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (5 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda: Demarche to the French on UNSC Resolution”).
670
UNITED NATIONS, THE UNITED NATIONS AND RWANDA 1993-1996 252 (1996); MIP Tome I 212.
671
RPF Memorandum (5 April 1994).
672
RPF Memorandum (5 April 1994).
673
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (5 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Situation”).
674
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 Feb. 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Balladur – Questions africaines”); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Mar. 1994)
(Subject: “Point Hebdomadaire de Situation sur l’Afrique”); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François
Mitterrand (30 Mar. 1994) (Subject “Votre entretien avec le Premier ministre le mercredi 30 mars 1994 – Situation”).
675
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (5 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Situation”).
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CHAPTER VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
A. French Cooperants Accompanied a FAR Officer, Major Aloys Ntabakuze, to Inspect the
Wreckage of President Habyarimana’s Plane, Not Long before Troops under Ntabakuze’s
Command Slaughtered Tutsi.
At approximately 8:30 p.m. on 6 April 1994, French Warrant Officer José de Pinho, like
many people in Rwanda, was watching the African Cup of Nations soccer championship semifinals on television with his son in their temporary home in Kanombe military barracks, on the
outskirts of Kigali, when he heard two explosions in succession.1
De Pinho was one of five French military cooperants who, along with their families, lived
in Kanombe while they trained an elite group of FAR para-commandos in sky diving, intelligence
gathering and transmission, camouflage, and weapons techniques.2 The Rwandan para-commando
leader was Major Aloys Ntabakuze, who was de Pinho’s neighbor (their houses separated by only
a small path) and worked in the office across from his.3
As de Pinho left his house to meet his immediate superior, Commander Grégoire de Saint
Quentin, he ran into Ntabakuze, and the three soon gathered in Ntabakuze’s office.4 Ntabakuze
said that he had not been able to obtain precise information on the explosions, but he could confirm
that the presidential plane had taken off safely from Dar es Salam. All present understood the
implication.5
Around 10 p.m., de Pinho, de Saint Quentin, and one or two more French cooperants drove
with Ntabakuze toward the President’s residence, exited their vehicle, and proceeded on foot
through a field outside the residence.6 After about 50 meters, they came across the tail of a plane.
De Pinho recognized the call sign of the Falcon 50, gifted by France to Rwanda, that served as the
President’s plane.7
By that point, the Rwandan military had already recovered the bodies of President
Habyarimana, the three French crew members (the pilot, the copilot, and a mechanic), and others.8
Also amongst the dead were the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, and Habyarimana’s
personal secretary and Akazu boss, Elie Sagatwa.9 (Later that night, the Presidential Guard would
deny access to Belgian UNAMIR soldiers dispatched to secure the crash site.)10
While sorting through the wreckage, Ntabakuze identified the corpse of the FAR Chief of
Staff Déogratias Nsabimana.11 Ntabakuze then approached his French compatriots. “This time it’s
over,” he said.12
Ntabakuze would play a pivotal role in the horror that followed. According to multiple eyewitnesses who testified in Ntabakuze’s trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR), Ntabakuze would soon (either the night of 6 April or the morning of 7 April) order his
para-commandos to “avenge” the president’s death by killing Tutsi in nearby areas.13 One witness
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said that “Ntabakuze ordered the deployment of each of the companies. The First Company was
to be sent to a neighborhood near [Kanombe] known as ‘Akajagali,’ the Third Company to Kabeza
and the Fourth Company to Remera.”14 The troops sent to those neighborhoods would carry out
some of the first killings of the Genocide.15
Due to inconsistences in the details of the witness testimony—for example, the eight
witnesses placed Ntabakuze’s order to the troops at different times on 7 April, ranging from the
early morning to the afternoon, while four other witnesses said that Ntabakuze gave the order
earlier in the evening of 6 April—the ICTR concluded that there was not enough evidence to
conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ntabakuze had ordered his men to kill Tutsi on that
particular occasion.16 He would nonetheless be convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity,
and other crimes, in part for his actions only four days later. The court found that, on 11 April,
Ntabakuze exercised command over para-commandos who marched Tutsi men, women, and
children from their shelter at the ETO [École technique officielle] in Kigali to a killing field on
Nyanza Hill.17 Some estimates of the number killed there are as high as 4,000.
The killings across Kigali began in the early morning after the attack on President
Habyarimana’s plane.18 As the ICTR put it, “As the plane fell to the earth, Rwanda descended into
violence.”19
B. Executing a Clear Plan during the First Day of the Genocide, the French-Trained
Presidential Guard Assassinated Moderate Politicians, Murdered Belgian Peacekeepers,
Attacked the RPF Residing in the CND Building, and Erected Roadblocks throughout Kigali
Where Many Tutsi Were Butchered.
The crime of genocide, like the crime against humanity, requires, according
to the provisions of the French Penal Code, that they be committed in
execution of a concerted plan. . . . In the present case, the Court considers
that this concerted plan can be inferred from the speed with which the
massacres were carried out, as early as the day after the attack on President
Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane, the existence of barricades throughout
Rwanda, including in Kigali, the development of media propaganda calling
for inter-ethnic hatred, the distribution of arms and the scale of the
massacres, all of which necessarily fall within the competence of a
collective organization.20
– Judgment of the Cour d’Assises of Seine-Saint-Dénis
Less than 50 minutes after the attack on the presidential plane, roadblocks began to emerge
throughout the streets of Kigali.21 Some of these roadblocks were maintained by members of the
Presidential Guard, who appeared “nervous and dangerous,” as they fired shots in the presence of
UN peacekeepers.22 Others were maintained by other Rwandan Army units, while still others were
maintained by the Interahamwe and other civilians wielding machetes and clubs.23 While military
checkpoints had been common in certain areas of Kigali, those that emerged in the late hours of 6
April and into 7 April were far more restrictive and, in many cases, lethal.24 According to findings
by the MIP, Rwandans arriving at checkpoints late that night and into the morning were ordered
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6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
to produce identity cards to the militias that greeted them.25 Tutsi and any other Rwandans lacking
Hutu identity cards were detained and often summarily executed.26 The ICTR would later find that
assailants manning these roadblocks intentionally murdered Tutsi, and that the roadblocks hosted
scenes of “open and notorious slaughter and sexual assault.”27 Several witnesses noted that the
roadblocks throughout Kigali would come to feature piles of dead bodies, including men, women,
and children, many of which were mutilated.28
In addition to providing a staging ground for the unspeakable horror that would come to
characterize the months that followed, the roadblocks also severely limited the mobility of UN
peacekeepers on 7 April and ultimately provided cover for the Presidential Guard to kidnap and
murder its political opponents. UNAMIR forces lacked both the military authority and force
capacity to neutralize the government troops and militia obstructing their path around the city.
UNAMIR Commander General Romeo Dallaire requested authority to use force and was expressly
forbidden from doing so unless first fired upon,29 thereby leaving UN troops unable to send
reinforcements when designated members of the interim government called General Dallaire and
his men fearing for their lives and begging for enhanced protection.30
Around 2:30 a.m. on April 7, Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana told UNAMIR that
she planned to address the nation later that morning.31 UNAMIR quickly agreed to escort her to
Radio Rwanda, so that she could attempt to calm the nation. Within an hour, however, multiple
units of Belgian troops dispatched from UNAMIR headquarters found themselves overwhelmed
by roadblocks and unable to reach Uwilingiyimana. FAR officers at one of the roadblocks
informed the UN peacekeepers that only the minister of defense could authorize Prime Minister
Uwilingiyimana’s appearance on Radio Rwanda.32 Finally, at 5:35 a.m., after several hours of
trying, four UN jeeps with security reinforcements came under fire as they overcame a roadblock
on the way to the prime minister’s home.33 Two of the jeeps were successful in entering the
property, while the others were left on the side of the road and soon rendered unusable amid the
shooting.34 Peacekeepers from all four vehicles made their way into the compound to make contact
with the prime minister.35
By 6 a.m., the prime minister had cancelled her speech, at which point General Dallaire
had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with Radio Rwanda to allow her to address the nation via
telephone.36 The Presidential Guard was blocking the entrances to the station, while technicians
inside had been warned against broadcasting an address of any kind.37 Instead, the station played
classical music.38
By 8:20 a.m., after hours of explosions and gunshots on the streets surrounding her
residence, the prime minister and her family decided to flee, leaving behind the UN peacekeepers
at her residence. In the end, there was no escape. After hiding at the home of a UN volunteer within
the nearby UNDP housing compound, she was captured by Presidential Guard elements who
overran the compound and broke down the door.39 While her children hid behind clothes and
furniture, and were miraculously spared, Uwilingiyimana and her husband were abducted, returned
to their home, and brutally murdered.40 Soldiers sexually assaulted the prime minister, whose body
was found with a bottle lodged in her vagina.41
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Compounding the tragedy of the morning, 10 of the Belgian troops dispatched to protect
the prime minister ultimately became casualties themselves.42 At 8:30 a.m., shortly after the prime
minister fled, FAR soldiers wielding grenades and rifles entered her property and offered to escort
the peacekeepers back to UN headquarters.43 “If you do not do what is asked of you,” one soldier
threatened, “that means you want to die.”44 From there, the situation became frantic as the troops
negotiated terms of surrender.45 Amid the chaos, the Belgians were disarmed and beaten before
being transported to Camp Kigali, the FAR outpost from which forces had been mobilizing
throughout the morning.46 There, FAR troops killed four of the disarmed Belgian soldiers,
attacking them with rifles, crutches, stones, rakes and rifle bayonets.47 Six others managed an
escape to an empty UNAMIR office within the camp, where they came under heavy fire from FAR
troops, and where the survivors among them at one point used one of their deceased colleagues as
a shield from further attacks. Within hours, they, too, were murdered.48
Similar horrors, befalling politically moderate Rwandan dignitaries and overwhelming UN
peacekeeping forces, were repeated throughout the morning of 7 April. As Dallaire remembers, “I
can’t bear to think of how many Rwandans were told that help was forthcoming that day and were
then slaughtered.”49 In one instance, Dallaire was on the line with Hélène Pinsky, a Canadian
national married to Landoald Ndasingwa, the minister of labor and social affairs.50 Minister
Ndasingwa and his wife ran the popular Chez Lando hotel and restaurant, and only weeks earlier
grenade attacks had damaged their property after a political opponent declared that Ndasingwa
was a Tutsi and therefore in league with the RPF.51 As Ms. Pinsky spoke to Dallaire that morning,
he reassured her that UN forces would arrange safe transport for her family of four as soon as
possible, only to hear her voice become “indescribably calm” as she heard troops outside her home
and became resigned to her family’s fate before hanging up the phone.52 At that moment, however,
Ndasingwa called Colonel Luc Marchal, commander of the Belgian UNAMIR battalion, who
remained on the phone, listening, as the entire family, including their children, were murdered on
the other end of the line.53
In the course of the first 24 hours after the president’s plane crash, the Presidential Guard
murdered Ndasingwa and his family, along with the prime minister and her husband, the president
of the Constitutional Court, the minister of information, the minister of labor and community
affairs, and the minister of agriculture—all moderate politicians.54 In that same span, Dallaire
estimated that at least 35 of the UN peacekeepers, many of whom had been guarding political
officials, had either gone missing or been captured.55 As he would later write, “In just a few hours
the Presidential Guard had conducted an obviously well-organized and well-executed plan—by
noon on April 7 the moderate political leadership of Rwanda was dead or in hiding, the potential
for a future moderate government utterly lost.”56
But the atrocities of those early hours were not confined to the homes of politicians. The
attacks following the plane crash “undoubtedly caused not hundreds, but thousands of dead,” in
the words of a delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross who spoke from Kigali
only two days later.57 The people of Kigali bore witness to what UNAMIR’s political head,
Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, described in an 8 April cable as a “very well planned, organized,
deliberate and conducted campaign of terror initiated by the Presidential Guard,”58 and what a
French court of appeals would later find to be “a concerted plan to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group
completely.”59 Indeed, the scale of the inhumanity, as well as its efficiency, suggested efforts that
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were both carefully considered and utterly diabolical. Jean-Hervé Bradol, who oversaw the French
division of Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda at the time, would later testify before the MIP and
observe, “[I]t was not a question of massacres or some mass rage following the death of a president,
but much more of an organized systematic process. It was not an angry mob that carried out the
killings, but militias acting with order and method.”60
In one horrifying scene, at 7 a.m. on 7 April, a group of soldiers descended on Centre
Christus church and ordered all its occupants to produce identification cards.61 When the
congregants explained they were unable to do so because none of them had brought their
identification cards into the chapel, the soldiers separated the congregation into two areas,
grouping foreign nationals in one room, and locking Rwandans in another.62 When the expatriates
were released at 2:20 p.m. later that afternoon, they found 17 dead bodies—eight young women,
four diocesan priests, a visiting social worker, three Jesuit priests, and the cook.63 Almost everyone
murdered was a Tutsi.64 One of the victims, Father Chrysologue Mahame, was a prominent Tutsi
personality in Rwanda and the president of an organization called Volontaires de la Paix, whose
purpose was to work for peace and reconciliation.65 The ICTR would later determine that his name
had likely been included on a list of alleged RPF sympathizers who were to be targeted for arrest
or execution.66
Similar targeted attacks would unfold across Kigali and all of Rwanda. Three hundred Hutu
and Tutsi refugees gathered at the Kibagabaga Mosque due to increasing instability on the morning
of 7 April, and more than 20 Tutsi would later be executed there.67 In Busogo Parish in Ruhengeri,
Interahamwe killed almost 300 Tutsi on 7 April;68 in Mukingo the same.69 In Kiyovu, as in so
many other locations, FAR soldiers detained Tutsi at a roadblock and killed them.70 In Gisenyi,
144 kilometers outside Kigali, civilians supported by FAR soldiers from the local military camp
attacked and killed Tutsi and Hutu viewed as sympathetic to the RPF,71 including two priests at
Nyundo seminary, before returning later that evening to kill a number of Tutsi who had sought
refuge in the seminary’s chapel.72 And when Tutsi were not targeted in groups or at roadblocks,
members of the military targeted Tutsi neighborhoods, traveling from house to house, demanding
identification cards, and executing Tutsi in their homes.73 As one witness later estimated in
testimony before the ICTR, by 4 p.m. on 7 April, there were between 1,000 and 1,500 dead.74
Odette Mupenzi75
Odette was born in 1975 and grew up in Nyamirambo, a suburb of Kigali. She had four
sisters. When the Genocide started, she and her family hid in a nearby seminary school.
The killers kept banging on the classroom door, but no one would open it.
Eventually, they said, “If you don’t open this door, we’ll destroy it.” When my Dad
heard this, he told us to hide under mattresses because people thought that a bullet
couldn’t hurt you after going through a mattress. From my hiding place, I could see
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6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
two soldiers and some of our neighbours who had become Interahamwe . . . . They
were the ones who ordered my father to open the door.
The killers grabbed Dad as soon as he opened the door and started hacking
him with machetes. When my Mum saw this happening, she acted with great
courage. She rushed to take hold of the soldier’s gun, but he pushed her away. Then
the Interahamwe hacked her with their machetes till she lay unconscious.
I was hiding under a mattress just below the window. Suddenly I heard the
glass smash. I was in such a panic that I hadn’t heard the gunshots outside. As I
raised my head to see what was happening, a soldier outside saw me and showered
me with bullets. He hit me on my jaws, on my arms and chest. My injuries were
terrible. I felt so weak that I lay down. I could hear other people near me praying,
then suddenly it all went quiet. The other people were dead.
Finally, the Interahamwe came into the classroom to check if there were any
survivors. I was breathing heavily, but trying hard not to make a noise. They still
saw me. They hacked me with their machetes—I still have the scars on my head. I
must have fallen unconscious then because I canʹt remember what happened next.
When I woke up, I found myself lying amongst dead bodies.
The following morning, one of the religious brothers came. He looked at me
in the light of his torch, lifted me back on the mattress, then left. He came back later
with people to give us medicine, and we spent the whole night and following day
there. The Interahamwe didn’t come back because they thought we were all dead.
Those who could still walk left the school and went to hide somewhere else. I
couldn’t do that—I couldn’t move at all.
Three days later, the Red Cross came and took us by car to Kigali hospital
(Centre Hospitalier de Kigali). On the way there, we were stopped at a roadblock
in Gitega. They were looking for Tutsis, but I looked like a corpse, and the other
wounded were in a very bad state. The Interahamwe got angry with the Red Cross
staff and shouted at them, “We’re killing Inyenzis and you dare to take them to
hospital?” But after a short argument, they let us go on to the hospital.
When we arrived there, the doctors couldn’t do much to help me because of
my terrible injuries. They called for a specialist surgeon, but he didn’t come that
night. In the meantime, my wounds had started to go bad. I could see maggots
moving in the wounds on my chest and armpit. Thank God, they werenʹt in my
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6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
mouth—the acid in saliva stops that happening. The next day, they took me to the
operating room, washed and treated my wounds, then covered them.
We felt safer in the hospital, but the following day, the soldiers came back,
“Why are you healing ‘cockroaches’ when we’re destroying them?” they asked.
They ordered us to leave immediately, and the doctors said there was nothing they
could do. They put us outside in a tent.
Luckily for me, one of the nurses working there was Jeanne, my uncle’s wife.
She came and looked after my wounds outside—until someone reported her for
helping an Inyenzi, and she had to stop. It was the rainy season, and water ran
through our tent. Our wounds really began to stink, but the doctors had been
warned not to look after those ‘cockroaches’.
Some soldiers from Kanombe had taken refuge in the hospital, so the
Interahamwe and Inkotanyi . . . were both firing towards us. The soldiers started
blaming us, saying the ‘cockroaches’ had probably revealed where they were. Every
night the killers abducted people from our group, but they left me alone because I
looked almost dead, and my face was really swollen. My younger sister was taken,
but she was saved by a soldier who knew her. He just told the others to let her go.
Some of the doctors even handed patients over to the killers.76
Among those in Kigali that day, there was little doubt that much of the violence was being
orchestrated by Théoneste Bagosora, the politically connected director of the cabinet and graduate
of the French War School,77 whom many consider to have been the mastermind of the Genocide
Against the Tutsi.78 Dallaire met with Bagosora just two hours after the president’s plane was shot
down, at 10:50 p.m., at Army headquarters, where he presided over a so-called “crisis committee”
comprised of senior military leadership, including Lieutenant Colonel Cyprien Kayumba,
Lieutenant Colonel Ephrem Rwabalinda, and General Augustin Ndindiliyimana.79 While
Bagosora expressed a desire to restore peace, reassure the nation, and continue to fulfill the
promise of the Arusha Accords, he and members of the Presidential Guard balked when Dallaire
suggested that the prime minister (still alive at the time) should be the one to lead that process, in
accordance with the law of succession placing her in charge.80 “Even with the death of the
President,” Dallaire told them, “there is still a government under Prime Minister Agathe.” At this,
Bagosora stood from his seat “and leaned toward [Dallaire], his knuckles pressed hard on the table.
He vehemently insisted that Prime Minister Agathe had no authority.”81 One of his men, smelling
of alcohol, “muttered an insult in French at the mention of Madame Agathe’s name.”82 “She and
her group are not a government,” Bagosora announced in defiance.83
During the day on the 7 April, Gen. Dallaire “harangued Bagosora and Ndindiliyimana
over the violence that was breaking loose throughout the city, over the release of [the UNAMIR
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soldiers] and over their seeming detachment from the whole catastrophe.”84 Bagosora largely
ignored Dallaire as he shuffled papers, and “Ndindiliyimana was nearly asleep,” when “out of the
blue, Bagosora suddenly volunteered that . . . it might be best to get the Belgians out of UNAMIR
and out of Rwanda.”85 Bagosora clearly wanted the best trained and equipped UNAMIR battalion
out of Kigali, and the murder of 10 of their number was part of the plan to drive them away—
successful, it turned out, as Belgium soon called its remaining soldiers home.86
Nothing about the horror of 7 April appeared spontaneous. The forces wreaking havoc were
well-armed, some with assault rifles so new that UN troops noticed they still had packing grease
on the barrels.87 The missions were carefully coordinated, and while Kigali’s roadblocks were in
some cases manned by civilians, “militiamen were working in close coordination with military
personnel at the roadblocks.”88 As the ICTR found and upheld on appeal in Bagosora’s case,
“civilian and military authorities exercised some degree of control or influence over the militia
groups manning the roadblocks,” and they were all “part of an extensive network [of roadblocks]
in an area of strategic importance to the Rwandan Army in its battle for Kigali.”89 The militants
manning checkpoints, the court concluded, were clearly Bagosora’s subordinates, and “the only
reasonable inference from the evidence was that he knew that his subordinates were committing
crimes at Kigali area roadblocks on 7, 8, and 9 April 1994.”90 The court also found that Bagosora
was in command of the FAR units, including the Presidential Guard, that assassinated Prime
Minister Uwilingiyimana; Joseph Kavaruganda, the president of the Constitutional Court; Frédéric
Nzamurambaho, the chairman of the PSD and minister of agriculture; Landoald Ndasingwa, the
vice-chairman of the Parti Libéral and minister of labor and community affairs; and Faustin
Rucogoza, the minister of information.91
In addition to its strikes against Tutsi and moderate members of the government, around 5
a.m. on 7 April (if not earlier), the Presidential Guard began firing upon the RPF, who, in
December 1993, had taken residence at the Parliament building, the CND, in accordance with the
Arusha Accords.92 By this point, UN forces were hearing rocket and grenade fire throughout the
city.93 Inside the CND, the RPF secretary general, Tito Rutaremara, sought refuge in the canteen
on the first floor.94 From there, he eventually reached General Dallaire by telephone.95 “What is
happening?” Rutaremara asked.96 “What is being done now that the situation is getting worse?”97
Dallaire said that Bagosora and other FAR officers—with whom Dallaire, Booh-Booh, and French,
German, Tanzanian, and American diplomats had met prior to Rutaremara’s call—were
assembling a committee to run the country during the crisis.98 Rutaremara exploded.99 The BroadBased Transitional Government set forth in the Arusha Accords—the swearing in of which had
been repeatedly delayed by opponents of the peace agreements, was the appropriate authority to
take charge of the country—Bagosora’s plan was in violation of that.100
Rutaremara next called Ndindiliyimana, head of the Rwandan Gendarmerie, to ask him if
he was capable of stopping the massacres.101 Ndindiliyimana told Rutaremara that only Bagosora
was able to stop the massacres and urged him to call Bagosora.102 “If you don’t stop the killings,”
Rutaremara told Bagosora, “we will leave the CND. We will fight.”103 To that, Bagosora replied,
“Don’t do anything. We are trying to stop them.”104 Soon afterward, as the sounds of violence
continued to envelop the city, Rutaremara tried to reach Bagosora again and found that phone lines
in the CND had been disconnected.105 As Paul Kagame would warn Dallaire in a message later
that day, regardless of their stated intentions, the Presidential Guard and other murderous FAR
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units were leaving the RPF with no choice but to engage. “I have just learned many homes of our
supporters are surrounded by [FAR] soldiers,” Kagame said. “The intention [is] certainly clear.
Informing you that our forces have to react to protect ours [sic].”106 Kagame gave Dallaire until
last light on 7 April to secure the situation, or his forces would move on Kigali.107 But he also
offered the RPF’s assistance in restoring order in the hopes of avoiding a military confrontation.
Kagame offered two of its battalions to assist the FAR in getting the murderous, supposedly
rogue units—especially the Presidential Guard—under control.108 When Dallaire relayed this offer
to Bagosora, like the mention of the prime minister the night before, the possibility of working
with rival factions struck a nerve.109 Bagosora stood from his seat and glowered at the General
before composing himself. “He told me to pass on his thanks to the RPF for the offer,” Dallaire
remembers, “but he couldn’t accept. It was his problem to solve.”110 Without the possibility of the
RPF and the FAR working together to stop the killings, Dallaire pivoted and asked Bagosora to
get his supposedly “rogue” units back to their barracks and to remove the roadblocks.111 Bagosora
pleaded for time and exuded “no sense of urgency,” as he signed papers at his desk “looking every
inch the bored bureaucrat.”112 Dallaire recounted:
Sunlight was pouring through the window onto the freshly painted walls, no phones
were ringing, there were few visitors. He waved me over to the sofa where
Ndindiliyimana was sitting, apparently relaxed, but I didn’t want to sit. He offered
me tea or coffee, as if this were an ordinary visit on a slow day at the office.”113
C. French Officials at the Highest Levels Quickly Became Aware That the French-Trained
Presidential Guard Was Murdering Tutsi Civilians and Moderate Politicians.
The French ambassador to Rwanda, Jean-Michel Marlaud, learned of the attack on the
presidential plane soon after it occurred, having received a call from Habyarimana’s chief of
staff.114 Marlaud “immediately informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris” and left for the
embassy. Though the embassy was not far from his residence, he “had some difficulty” getting
there because of “the roadblocks that had been erected rapidly in various parts of Kigali.”115
Around 7 a.m. on 7 April, Marlaud received two phone calls from the prime minister
designated by the Arusha Accords, Faustin Twagiramungu, who “reported, firstly, that men of the
Presidential Guard were rounding up, kidnapping or assassinating ministers appointed to form the
future Government; then, a few moments later, announced that his life was threatened . . . by the
Presidential Guard who wanted to kill him.”116 Later that morning, Marlaud informed Paris that
“the Presidential Guard was killing a number of personalities; UNAMIR appeared totally helpless,
failing, in particular, to cross the roadblocks erected in the city by the Rwandan Armed Forces;
finally, Mrs. Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the Prime Minister, had been murdered.”117
Ambassador Marlaud knew that the Presidential Guard was not only murdering political
opposition, but also slaughtering Tutsi. “At the same time,” Marlaud would recall, “other murders
were committed. A French family saw the presidential guard kill those who had taken refuge in
their home. The killings affected both members of the opposition parties and Tutsis. They were
both political and ethnic killings.”118 A 7 April French military cable reported similar observations:
“Since this morning, armed units, particularly from the Presidential Guard, have been carrying out
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arrests, kidnappings, and, without doubt, murders. . . . Beyond the opposition political leaders, the
round-ups extend to all Tutsis.”119
The same day, 7 April, in Paris, Bruno Delaye, the head of the Africa Cell, reported to
President Mitterrand:
[T]he presidential guard began the hunt for opponents. Not yet confirmed
information reports arrests of ministers and public figures, Hutu or Tutsi, [who
were] political adversaries of President Habyarimana. . . . [With] [t]he transitional
institutions having not yet been put in place, the death of the President leaves the
country with no recognized authority (the government and parliament have not been
established). We fear a military coup d’état.120
François Mitterrand understood what was taking place in Rwanda. When he learned about
the 6 April plane crash, he said to the Élysée’s secretary-general, Hubert Védrine, “It is going to
be terrible.”121 Mitterrand’s top military adviser, General Christian Quesnot, was equally alert to
the coming horror, telling the MIP: “[W]hen President Habyarimana had been assassinated, . . .
both politicians and the military had immediately understood that the trend was towards massacres
that were incomparable to what had happened before.”122 Védrine told the MIP that for years “the
risk of a resumption of the massacres was known to all.”123
D. Without Evidence, and Contradicted by French Intelligence, Mitterrand’s Advisors in the
Élysée Reflexively Blamed the RPF for Habyarimana’s Assassination.
The attack is attributed to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).124
– Bruno Delaye, Head of the Élysée Africa Cell (1992 –1995)
[The] probable hypothesis of an RPF attack will have to be confirmed by
investigation.125
– Christian Quesnot, Chief Military Advisor (1991 – 1995)
The assumption that these rockets could have been fired by armed elements
of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is not satisfactory.126
– DGSE Report
Despite the ethnic killings and systematic elimination of moderate politicians that began
on 7 April as well as France’s keen awareness of the rise in extremist violence over the previous
months, politicians at the highest levels of the Élysée thought they knew whom to blame for
bringing down President Habyarimana’s plane: the RPF. On 7 April 1994, Bruno Delaye wrote to
Mitterrand, without any substantiation, that “[t]he attack is attributed to the Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF).”127 General Quesnot, writing to Mitterrand the same day, posited the “probable
hypothesis of an RPF attack will have to be confirmed by investigation.”128
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New Zealand’s ambassador to the United Nations, Colin Keating, who had begun a rotation
as the new president of the UN Security Council on 1 April 1994 by reading intelligence reports
on Rwanda, quickly came to a different conclusion. The idea that the RPF was responsible did not
make sense. “They had everything to gain from the process that was in place, and the extremists—
by contrast—had everything to lose from it. They wanted to destroy that process, and they wanted
to kill all the Tutsi, and I had seen that from reviewing a morning’s worth of reports. It should
have been clear to everyone.”129
The DGSE, the French intelligence service, agreed with this conclusion in an 11 April note:
“The assumption that these rockets could have been fired by armed elements of the Rwandan
Patriotic Front (RPF) is not satisfactory” because the perpetrator had to pass several government
and UNAMIR barriers, and therefore had to be “well trained personnel already in the security
perimeter of the airport.”130
By 12 July 1994, the DGSE reported a theory advanced by an unnamed “moderate
Rwandan Hutu” that Col. Bagosora and Col. Serubuga had been the main sponsors of the 6 April
1994 attack, the two having harbored resentments against Habyarimana since their forced
retirements in 1992 before having attained the rank of General and its attendant privileges.131 More
than two months later, on 22 September, the DGSE would reaffirm this theory as still “the most
plausible,” stating: “This operation would have been premeditated for a long time by Hutu
extremists.”132 Officials in the Élysée appear never even to have considered whatever evidence the
DGSE had before it.133 Throughout the Genocide,134 and since, they would blame the RPF for the
downing of the plane—seemingly in an effort to minimize their own responsibility for having
supported and trained the forces instigating and executing the Genocide.135 And, years later, a
French magistrate, with the backing of political officials, would bring an indictment—that would
be dismissed years later for lack of evidence—against several RPF officials for bringing down the
plane (see infra Chapter 11).
The downing of Habyarimana’s plane caught Charles Kayonga, who led the 600 RPF
soldiers stationed at the CND to protect the RPF politicians living and working there, completely
by surprise.136 He did not hear the sound of the plane crash.137 When the announcement was heard
over the radio, he put all RPF soldiers on “stand-by,” then immediately started to gather
information.138 “We stayed put,” recounted Kayonga, even though bullets fired by the Presidential
Guard were raining down on the CND.139
After reports on BBC and other radio stations confirmed the crash, Kayonga spoke to James
Kabarebe at RPF military headquarters in Mulindi (about 50 miles north of Kigali), who had also
heard the news on the radio.140 Kabarebe asked Kayonga, who was the most senior ranking RPF
military officer in Kigali at the time, to track down what happened and find out who shot down
the plane.141 While Kayonga did not have intelligence assets to reveal who was behind the
assassination, he did learn, and reported back to Kabarebe, about attacks on politicians and
civilians in their homes, and that shots were being fired in the direction of the CND.142 Kayonga’s
men were fielding calls from civilians begging for rescue, some while they were being attacked in
their homes.143 Paul Kagame, who was also in Mulindi, received reports describing targeted
killings not only in Kigali but also in other parts of the country.144 He urged General Dallaire to
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use his forces on the ground “to give Rwandans security” and determine “who has killed
Habyarimana and why.”145
E. French Officials Evacuated Their Citizens and Extremist Allies from Rwanda, Reportedly
Delivering Ammunition for Those Allies Who Were Presiding over a Genocide.
Despite the Élysée blaming the RPF for the downing of Habyarimana’s plane, French
officials had little appetite to deploy a Noroît-like deterrence force to ward off the feared renewal
of an RPF offensive—and it was inconceivable that the French government would help the RPF
end the murderous rampage of the French-trained Presidential Guard and their masters in the crisis
committee. Mitterrand, who removed the Noroît companies from Rwanda in late 1993, received a
7 April 1994 message through Bruno Delaye from Prime Minister Balladur (who was in China at
the time)146 and Foreign Minister Alain Juppé: “Matignon and the Quai d’Orsay would like France,
in this new Rwandan crisis that risks being extremely deadly, not to be on the front line, and to
limit our actions to UN interventions.”147 Delaye’s note relayed that the cohabitation government
wanted UNAMIR to perform its security mission in Kigali, but Delaye derisively opined that to
that point UNAMIR had “not really” fulfilled its mission.148 At the same time, the French
ambassador to the United Nations, Bernard Mérimée, called for the UN Security Council to adopt
a formal declaration calling on Rwanda’s armed forces to cooperate with the UN mission, but said
that reinforcing UNAMIR was not necessary.149
The Élysée, however, was not entirely passive. Delaye emphasized two priority items to
President Mitterrand: protecting French expatriates in Rwanda and protecting President
Habyarimana’s family. On the latter, Delaye reported that Habyarimana’s family members were,
“for the time being,” under the protection of the Presidential Guard, adding “if they wish, they will
be welcomed at our Ambassador’s residence, in accordance with your instructions.”150 The night
before, Mitterrand had reportedly called Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana to present his
condolences.151 He followed up with a letter alerting the widow that “in these dramatic
circumstances, France remembers the eminent qualities of this head of state who wished, with
courage and determination, to lead his country toward national reconciliation.”152
On the subject of protecting French nationals, Quesnot reported on 7 April that the armed
forces staff had placed on alert military units stationed on French bases in Africa: “special force
elements could be transported to the city in less than 24 hours.”153 The next day, 8 April, Quesnot
reported to the president that “[f]ollowing your decision to ensure immediately the security of our
citizens in Rwanda,” four military transport planes would fly from the French base in Bangui to
Kigali, landing at 5 a.m. on 9 April with one company of paratroopers and special operations
soldiers to gain control of the airport.154 Each of the planes could carry “about fifty women and
children traumatized by the events, including the widow of one of the pilots of the presidential
Falcon and the wife and children of President Habyarimana.”155 In a comment that would further
reflect the tone for interactions between the French military and UNAMIR, Quesnot said they
would inform the UN secretary-general of the situation on the ground, but would only inform him
of the operation during its execution, not beforehand, “in order not to compromise security.”156
Quesnot noted, however, that the United States, the Central African Republic, and the Belgian
military would be informed.157
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On 8 April, news of the planned operation reached Commandant Grégoire de Saint Quentin
and Warrant Officer José de Pinho, two of the French military cooperants.158 According to de
Pinho, a French lieutenant-colonel (likely Lt. Col. Jean-Jacques Maurin, the deputy defense attaché
and counselor to the FAR état-major) asked de Saint Quentin and de Pinho to “[l]isten carefully to
what I’m going to tell you, the Rwandan Army, and especially the Kanombe paratroopers in your
case, must not learn of our intentions. They may think we are letting them down and oppose the
evacuation of our nationals.”159 The lieutenant-colonel ordered them to be present in the control
tower at all times and to report to him everything that happens.160
Leaving from the meeting and heading toward Kanombe, they passed the position of a
para-commando battalion where, de Pinho claims, either RPF or UNAMIR peacekeepers shot at
their vehicle.161 In de Pinho’s recollection, as he and de Saint Quentin sped away from the shots,
they “saw a whole crowd of soldiers, including peacekeepers at the back of a small square. . . . We
left, dumbfounded by what we have just experienced, the UN peacekeepers firing at the French
cooperants and the regular Rwandan Army.”162 That UNAMIR soldiers strictly avoided shooting
so as not to become targets163 throws doubt on de Pinho’s recollection, which, accurate or not,
reflects the sour relationship between UNAMIR and French soldiers that would persist throughout
the Genocide.
Further reflecting the tension between UNAMIR and France, General Dallaire had to be
roused from his bed in the middle of the night to be told that the first French planes, to be followed
by Belgian planes, would be landing in 45 minutes.164 As he recounted in his book, Shake Hands
with the Devil, “I was livid, and not only because of the short notice. . . . I no longer controlled the
airport. What if the RGF [the Rwandan government forces] (or as they had threatened, the RPF)
shot down the aircraft?”165 Dallaire asked his staff to contact the RPF and urge restraint.166
It was the RPF military high command at Mulindi who informed the CND that the planes
landing in Kigali were “the French,” who were coming to Rwanda to evacuate “their people.”167
Despite that, “we always took French statements with a grain of salt,” recounted Charles Kayonga,
who led the RPF security forces at the CND.168 Kayonga said he was informed by RPF intelligence
that the French planes brought arms and ammunition with them for delivery to the FAR.169 “My
concern with Amaryllis was the fact that the French came and saw the Genocide happening in the
raw,” Kayonga lamented. “They took away their people and left Rwandans being killed by the
Interahamwe.”170
Meanwhile, de Saint Quentin and de Pinho had managed to talk their way into the airport
control tower.171 As de Pinho waited in the control tower, de Saint Quentin left to convince Aloys
Ntabakuze, the para-commando commander and Genocide leader, to remove the vehicles blocking
the runway.172 De Saint Quentin returned to the control tower and instructed de Pinho not to tell
Ntabakuze that the planes were coming for an evacuation.173 Once the vehicles were removed,
Ntabakuze returned to the control tower, apparently under the impression that French forces were
on their way to support the FAR, as they had done in years past. When a reconnaissance plane
landed and immediately took off again without unloading on the evening of 8 April, Ntabakuze
was perplexed. But upon hearing the pilot on the radio say, “OK, see you tomorrow morning,”
Ntabakuze “in a gesture of euphoria, threw his arms around our necks and said: ‘Thank you France,
you are going to save us.”174
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The first French military transport plane arrived shortly after 3 a.m. Kigali-time on the
morning of 9 April 1994 to begin a mission dubbed Operation Amaryllis.175 The mission for the
French soldiers on board was to take control of the airport before dawn, to welcome French and
Belgian reinforcements, and to participate in the evacuation of foreign nationals.176 The mission
orders called for Ambassador Marlaud to choose about 60 French nationals for evacuation on the
first plane out, with more evacuations to occur on subsequent planes.177
Within a quarter of an hour, 151 French soldiers unloaded from four C160 planes to set up
near the runway.178 By the afternoon of 9 April, the number of Amaryllis soldiers would increase
to 359, and by 10 April, it would be 464.179 Within less than an hour and a half of the first arrival,
French soldiers had taken control of the airport.180
Ntabakuze’s hope for French assistance was not entirely in vain. According to Colonel Luc
Marchal, the commander of UNAMIR’s Belgian contingent, one of the first French planes to arrive
for Operation Amaryllis delivered ammunition to FAR soldiers: “Two of those three planes were
carrying personnel. And one was carrying ammunition . . . for the Rwandan Army . . . [T]hey just
remained a few minutes in the airfield, and immediately after [the ammunition] was loaded in the
vehicles they moved to the Kanombe camp.”181 Asked about Marchal’s statement by the
rapporteurs of the French MIP, the Belgian Ministry sent them the following written response:
Colonel Marchal confirmed that one of the UN observers under him at the Kigali
airport, a Senegalese officer, orally reported to him in the course of the night of
April 8 to 9, that mortar ammunition boxes had been unloaded from one of three
French military aircraft that landed in Kigali that night, and that they had been
loaded onto Rwandan Army vehicles.182
Paul Rwarakabije, the operational commander of the Rwandan Gendarmerie, similarly received a
report over the radio from a Gendarmerie detachment stationed at the airport that the French Army
had delivered ammunition.183
Responding, in 1995, to Marchal’s account, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied
the delivery of ammunition during Amaryllis.184 However, President Mitterrand’s top advisor,
Hubert Védrine, would later acknowledge that French weapons deliveries to the FAR continued a
“few days” into the Genocide.185
Marchal, for his part, rationalized the ammunition delivery he reported: “It is absurd to
blame [the French] for the genocide because of these boxes of ammunition. These were intended
for combat.”186 This, of course, tries to excuse French officials for their continuing support of allies
with a history of sponsoring ethnic massacres. That aside, sending ammunition into a situation that
a Le Monde editorial, printed the day before the ammunition delivery, dubbed a “powder keg”
irresponsibly risked an explosion.187
On 9 April 1994, the same day the ammunition reportedly arrived from France, Jean
Kambanda, who would later plead guilty to genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide, among
other crimes,188 gave a speech at the investiture ceremony of the new interim Rwandan government
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(IRG) in which he would serve as prime minister. The speech, broadcast over the radio, urged
Hutu civilians to arm themselves: “Each and every person can have his own gun. . . . These young
Tutsi who have joined the ranks of the RPF, what more do they have than you? Strength?
Intelligence? What they have more than you are guns. . . . Take the gun and practice shooting.”189
A first shipment of weapons, he assured listeners, had just arrived, but these would go to trained
soldiers: “Yesterday, the first shipment [of weapons] arrived. I don’t believe that is a secret
(applause). The weapons that came yesterday will be given to those who have trained and fought
with the armed forces.”190
F. French Officials Were Willing to Exceed the Mission of Operation Amaryllis to Evacuate
Some Rwandans, Including Some Later Charged with Genocide, but When Asked about
Their Failure to Aid the Victims, Their Answer Was: That Was Not Our Job.
Laurent Larcher (journalist): . . . I’ll take the concrete example of Amaryllis,
where you have French soldiers crossing the roadblocks to fetch Europeans
from the schools, the gathering places, they see what happens at these
roadblocks. They see that there are people who are slaughtered.
Juppé: Yes! I always come back to the same answer and will not give you
another: it wasn’t our mission.
Larcher: But wasn’t it our duty?
Juppé: (Silence.) Yes—maybe. But—in politics, duty and mission do not
always coincide . . . . I have no other answer to give you: France wasn’t
there to lead a war operation at the time.191
– Interview with Alain Juppé, French Minister of Foreign Affairs
(1993 – 1995)
The first meeting between General Dallaire and Colonel Henri Poncet, the commander of
the Amaryllis troops, would foreshadow the tone for relations between UNAMIR and the French
military during Amaryllis and throughout the Genocide.192 Dallaire described the conversation as
“curt” and wrote that Poncet had “showed no interest in co-operating with us.”193 “This unhappy
exchange was an indication of how the French evacuation task force, Operation Amaryllis, would
continue to behave with UNAMIR,” Dallaire observed.194 Dallaire rightly sensed disdain from
Poncet, who would write in an after-action report on Amaryllis that, in the wake of President
Habyarimana’s death and the ensuing chaos, “[t]he peacekeepers remained helpless and
passive.”195
In fact, Dallaire and many of his troops were concerned with how to protect Rwandan
civilians from the orgy of violence that had been systematically unleashed, while simultaneously
cajoling its perpetrators to rein in their excesses. They were also responding to calls for help from
targeted moderate politicians and other civilians, primarily Tutsi, while pleading with superiors at
the United Nations in New York to provide them with the means and authority to address the
catastrophic situation.196 In fact, on the day Col. Poncet arrived, Maj. Brent Beardsley, Dallaire’s
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aide-de-camp and co-author of Shake Hands with the Devil, encountered “the first evidence of
wholesale massacre.”197 Beardsley responded to a desperate plea for help from the Gikondo Parish
Church, which was run by Polish priests. Beardsley and a Polish officer billeted in the church
responded to the plea, which had come in over UNAMIR’s open radio system. They made their
way through Kigali, passing through the “ever-increasing and chaotic militia roadblocks,” where
they saw “the bodies of men, women and children,” to the church, where across the street from the
church was “an entire alleyway . . . littered with the bodies of women and children . . . .”198 Inside
the church, the scene was even more horrific, “the first such scene UNAMIR witnessed” but not
the last:
In the aisles and on the pews were the bodies of hundreds of men, women and
children. At least fifteen of them were still alive but in a terrible state. The priests
were applying first aid to the survivors. A baby cried as it tried to feed on the breast
of its dead mother, a sight Brent has never forgotten.199
The night before, the Rwandan Army had cordoned off the area, and the Gendarmerie had gone
door to door checking identity cards and ordering Tutsi into the church before welcoming in militia
armed with machetes to murder everyone.200 Dallaire and Beardsley described the scene as
“evidence of the genocide, though we didn’t yet know to call it that. . . . The massacre was not a
spontaneous act. It was a well-executed operation involving the Army, Gendarmerie, Interahamwe
and civil service.”201
Scenes like this were irrelevant to Amaryllis’ mission of protecting expatriates. Father
Richard Kalka, a military chaplain accompanying the French forces, has described how French
soldiers remained passive in the face of the butchery of Tutsi:
The driver of one of the commandos charged with the evacuation [from the French
school in Kigali] . . . took a road that bypassed the capital from the west, avoiding
the most lively axis of the city. Suddenly, a Tutsi woman, chased by a group of
Hutu armed with batons and knives, threw herself against the hood of the first
vehicle hoping, in her tragic despair, to find refuge there. The driver braked harshly.
The two occupants did not move, dazed by the event’s complexity. What to do?
How to react? These few moments of hesitation were enough for the Hutu torturers
to understand that the French soldiers would not defend the woman. On the way
back, the vehicle’s passengers were able to see her corpse, stomach open, lying on
the side of the road. The assassins, with a smile and a friendly wave, kindly
acknowledged them.202
The soldiers had followed orders.
Reporter Catherine Bond experienced a similar scene as she traveled with a convoy of
French soldiers and Belgian evacuees on 11 April.203 On their way from the Kigali airport, Bond
later wrote, the convoy witnessed on the side of the road “the bleeding corpses of two people—a
man and a woman, the woman with her legs cut off.”204 On their return to the airport about an hour
later, the “French paratroopers halted the convoy . . . for perhaps 10 minutes” near that location
“to wait for gangs carrying kitchen knives, machetes, hammers and clubs to finish killing a number
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of adults on the road ahead.”205 By the time the vehicles proceeded, “four more women had been
butchered just ahead of our convoy in the same place outside a mud hut. Four men had also been
killed with machetes and their bodies were lying in grassy ditches by the road.”206 Bond wrote:
The scene produced in me a mixture of nausea and tears. Seemingly unmoved,
however, the French paratroopers I was travelling with turned up the volume of the
disco music on their car cassette. The attackers lined the road, cheering the French
troops and heckling the Belgians.207
Stopping the killings “was not their responsibility,” French soldiers later explained to her.208
Col. Poncet in his after-action report praised the Amaryllis soldiers for their “sangfroid”—
literally translated as “blood cold” and meaning composure under pressure.209 Those soldiers had
been chilled by the decisionmakers in Paris, who chose not to act—not just militarily, but in any
meaningful way to protect Tutsi civilians from the génocidaires’ non-stop violence against them.
While the operation order for Operation Amaryllis did not call for assisting Rwandan
civilians,210 President Mitterrand had personally instructed the evacuation of President
Habyarimana’s family.211 Accordingly, the first French evacuation plane left Kigali at 5 p.m. on 9
April carrying, as General Quesnot and Dominique Pin (Bruno Delaye’s deputy at the Africa Cell)
reported to Mitterrand, “about forty French and, according to your instructions, twelve members
of the close family of the President HABYARIMANA.”212 Father Kalka described how the
deference shown Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana cost the lives of Tutsi employees at the French
embassy:
Used to giving the orders that allowed not even the slightest refusal, [Agathe
Kanziga Habyarimana] demanded her immediate evacuation as well as that of all
the members of her family. The 4X4 vehicles filled in record time. The [Amaryllis]
paratroopers sorted the baggage in order to leave room for the half-dozen [French]
Embassy employees, all Tutsi. “It’s out of the question to leave our bags behind!”
roared Mrs. Habyarimana. The paratroopers complied, unloaded the employees and
promised them to come back and get them. An hour later, the Tutsi employees were
laying with their throats slit on the same tiled floor of the Embassy.213
Following their evacuation from Rwanda to the French military base in the Central African
Republic, Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana — the notorious head of the Akazu — and her family
would make their way to Paris on business class paid for by the French government.214
In 2019, General Quesnot defended France’s evacuation of Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana
and tried to minimize her “behavior”:
Heads of State . . . get to this position after overcoming many obstacles, and there
is a sort of . . . informal solidarity. So, it seemed normal that the President wanted
to save the family of President Habyarimana even if the behavior of Mrs.
Habyarimana could raise questions.215
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Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana was not the only extremist to benefit from French protection
at the outset of the Genocide. On 8 April, just two days after the killing began, French Cooperation
Minister Roussin confirmed that roughly 50 senior Rwandan officials and their families were
taking shelter at the French embassy in Kigali.216 The group included at least seven ministers in
the coalition government, of whom six were members of the MRND.217 The French government
would include most of these men, and some of their family members, on a list of “at-risk
individuals” who were deemed eligible to be evacuated abroad (though, in fact, the ministers
themselves would ultimately opt to remain in Rwanda).218
All seven of the ministers who are known to have taken refuge at the embassy during this
time—Daniel Mbangura, Prosper Mugiraneza, Justin Mugenzi, Augustin Ngirabatware, Casimir
Bizimungu, André Ntagerura, and Callixte Nzabonimana—would go on to serve in the interim
Rwandan government (IRG), the provisional authority that presided over the Genocide.219 Two of
these men—Ngirabatware and Nzabonimana—have since been convicted for their role in the
Genocide.220
Among the other notables who took refuge at the French embassy in the opening days of
the Genocide was Ferdinand Nahimana,221 the head of RTLM, who would also be convicted in the
ICTR and whom the French government had received in Paris after he incited the Bugesera
massacres in 1992.222 Ambassador Marlaud would later confirm that Nahimana was among the
Rwandans evacuated during Amaryllis.223
All told, between 9 and 12 April 1994, Operation Amaryllis evacuated 1238 people,
including 454 French citizens and 394 Rwandans (with the remainder coming from other
countries).224 While the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorized the Rwandan evacuees as
“40% Tutsi, 60% Hutu,” in a document it provided to the MIP, there is no discussion of how the
ethnicity of the evacuees was ascertained.225 French officials have denied that they had a
premeditated policy to choose which Rwandans would leave with French nationals. Foreign
Minister Alain Juppé, for example, told French journalist Laurent Larcher in 2019 that if relatives
of génocidaires were evacuated, it was only due to “the chaos” in which the French military was
operating.226 However, Michel Cuignet, head of the French Civil Cooperation Mission in Kigali
when the Genocide began, told French documentarian Jean-Christophe Klotz in a recent interview
that he warned Ambassador Marlaud of the danger his primarily Tutsi employees faced. Marlaud
had replied, “The French soldiers are going to come defend them.”227 But instead, Marlaud
evacuated “Rwandan officials . . . the people responsible for the genocide.”228 Most of Cuignet’s
employees died in the Genocide, some before his eyes.229 (Marlaud told the MIP that he was never
notified of the presence of Cuignet’s employees at the French Cultural Center.230)
Marlaud also told the MIP that “it was monstrous to imply that a screening would have
been carried out among the embassy’s staff, or that evacuation would have been knowingly
refused.”231 As for anyone taking refuge at the French embassy, Marlaud “considered it
inconceivable to expel them . . . . The choice was simple: either to evacuate all those who wished
it, or to carry out a triage. The decision was made . . . to evacuate all those who were refugees at
the embassy and who wished to leave.”232 Marlaud insisted that “[a]ll who came were welcomed.
It is true that the vast majority of them . . . were supporters of President Habyarimana.”233 But that
should have surprised no one. Supporters of President Habyarimana, of course, took refuge in the
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embassy of France, because the French government had been a stalwart friend to the Habyarimana
regime since the beginning of the war.
G. As Operation Amaryllis Came to an End, Advisors in the Élysée and Soldiers on the Ground
Mourned What They Saw as the Abandonment of Their Allies and Even Began a ShortLived Secret Operation Meant to Oppose the RPF.
The departure of the French from Rwanda is fraught with consequences for
this unfortunate country where, after very bloody battles, the RPF will
control the power by force and a period of guerrilla warfare will follow. The
Hutu majority will never accept this undivided power. This state of affairs
will have destabilizing consequences in Burundi, Zaire and Tanzania.234
– Christian Quesnot, Chief Military Advisor to Mitterrand
(1991 – 1995)
If, in sheltering and evacuating senior Rwandan leaders and their families, the French
government was showcasing its enduring fidelity to the ancien régime, it was also signaling its
interest in what was to come next. Both in Paris and in Kigali, French officials were keeping an
eye on the maneuverings some hardliners had undertaken to fill the political vacuum that had
formed following the downing of the president’s plane and the ensuing assassinations of Prime
Minister Uwilingiyimana and other opposition leaders.
On the morning of 8 April, Ambassador Marlaud called various Rwandan ministers into
his office for a meeting.235 According to testimony given to the ICTR by Justin Mugenzi, one of
the ministers present, Marlaud updated the ministers on the violence and confirmed that some of
their colleagues in the coalition government had been assassinated.236 Marlaud also “urged the
ministers . . . to try and do something to get the country out of the chaos into which it was
sinking.”237
Marlaud has personally attested that a meeting of Rwandan ministers did, in fact, take place
at the French embassy that morning and has said that one of the aims of the meeting was to discuss
the need “to replace dead or missing ministers or officials.”238 (Other goals, according to Marlaud,
were “to try to regain control of the Presidential Guard in order to stop the massacres and,
ultimately, to reaffirm their commitment to the Arusha Accords.”239)
While some writers have asserted that the IRG was formed at the French embassy, the
ICTR has credited testimony indicating that the talks were held exclusively at the Rwandan
Ministry of Defense, where Colonel Bagosora gathered leaders from the extremist wings of several
major political parties to work out the distribution of seats in the new government.240 Mugenzi has
testified that Bagosora gave the opening remarks, telling the assembled party leaders that he had
invited them to the Ministry “to discuss . . . ways and means of providing the country with a
government which could get the country out of the chaos in which it was plunging.”241
The talks at the Ministry culminated in the IRG’s inauguration on 9 April,242 with the
presidency awarded to Théodore Sindikubwabo, who had been president of Rwanda’s parliament.
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In an address to the nation, Sindikubwabo pledged to “continue negotiations with the RPF so as to
enable organs of the Broad-based Transitional Government to be set up within six weeks as the
United Nations had asked the Government of Rwanda.”243 His rhetoric would quickly prove
hollow. The new authorities were unreservedly hostile to the country’s Tutsi minority,244 whose
sufferings would only worsen under the new government’s leadership.
After the negotiations had ended, Marlaud called Johan Swinnen, the Belgian ambassador
to Rwanda, to inform him of the composition of the new rump government. “He gave me the
impression of being quite happy, quite satisfied with this result,” Swinnen told the French
documentarian Jean-Christophe Klotz.245 “And I told him no, really . . . I’m not sure these people
are going to do everything they can to stop the massacres.”246 Swinnen underlined that IRG
Minister of Foreign Affairs Jérôme Bicamumpaka was not received by Willy Claes, Belgium’s
minister of foreign affairs, because “we didn’t trust this government.”247 (As discussed in Chapter
9, Paris would, at the end of April 1994, receive Bicamumpaka and Minister of Foreign Affairs
and Cooperation Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, who was the most influential leader in the extremist
anti-Tutsi CDR party.)
Marlaud apparently allowed himself to be taken in by the superficial fact that “the
distribution of ministries and ministerial portfolios between political parties remains identical to
what it was before in the context of power-sharing, which had been envisaged by the Arusha
Accords,” as he told a reporter for Jeune Afrique on 11 April 1994.248 He conceded, however, that
“[n]ow in regards to the evaluation of the relationship between political forces within this
government, there anyone can have a different assessment.”249
In Paris, Dominique Pin and General Christian Quesnot offered a similar take, writing in a
9 April note to President Mitterrand: “Politically, an interim government was established by the
various Rwandan political parties in accordance with the proportions provided for in the Arusha
agreements. Only the RPF refused to participate, broke the cease-fire and began an offensive
towards Kigali.”250 (In fact, the RPF would not begin its offensive until the next day.251)
Within the French government, only the DGSE appears to have expressed strong
reservations concerning the IRG: “The main leaders of the opposition, in favor of the political
integration of the RPF were either already assassinated (1) or ignored (2). The government thus
formed is characterized by neither its openness, nor its balance.”252 The DGSE then reported the
obvious: “Some Hutu personalities close to power admit in private that the reactionary nature of
the interim government is not of a nature to arouse a conciliatory attitude on the part of the Rwanda
Patriotic Front (RPF).”253
The DGSE was right: The RPF, for its part, saw the formation of the IRG and its
announcement of ministers as “an overt declaration of war,” in the words of General Dallaire.254
In a 9 April interview with Dr. Emile Rwamasirabo, the former RPF Commissioner of Supply and
Logistics255 and later Commissioner for Rehabilitation,256 French historian Dominique de
Courcelles posed questions that presumed the RPF should have recognized the rump Rwandan
government presiding over the Genocide and laid down its arms:
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de Courcelles: Was there no hope from the [interim] government that maybe the
massacres could stop?
Rwamasirabo: We would have expected the international community to vigorously
denounce the government as well as the Army, the presidential guards who
perpetrated the massacres of innocent people. I do not think that anyone should
condemn us for resuming the war. We resumed the war. The government is
absolutely not an interlocutor for us.
de Courcelles: For you, right now the only solution is to resume the war, there is
no possible negotiations?
Rwamasirabo: There is no possibility of negotiation because we have to deal with
savage gangs who are currently systematically massacring the people.
The RPF had, at first, observed what the DGSE described on 8 April as “an ostensible
neutrality.”257 To be sure, no reports during this time blamed the RPF for the violence against
civilians. General Dallaire would later recall the night of 8 April into the early morning of 9 April,
when the RPF (which had left the CND to fight the Presidential Guard) took control of the area
where UNAMIR had its headquarters:
By dawn there were no crowds, no mobs, no militia, only disciplined and cooperative RPF soldiers who had secured our area either to protect us . . . or more
likely, to safeguard the thousands of terrified people in [Amahoro] stadium [where
civilians had taken refuge and many UNAMIR troops were garrisoned—ed.].258
While the RPF focused on stopping the Genocide, officials in the Élysée remained focused
on the RPF. Pin and Quesnot told President Mitterrand in an 11 April note that they feared RPF
control of Rwanda would destabilize the region: “The departure of the French from Rwanda is
fraught with consequences for this unfortunate country where, after very bloody battles, the RPF
will control the power by force and a period of guerrilla warfare will follow. The Hutu majority
will never accept this undivided power. This state of affairs will have destabilizing consequences
in Burundi, Zaire and Tanzania.”259 While the note mentioned ongoing massacres in passing, the
authors’ concern was clear: the RPF.260
The 600 RPF soldiers at the CND fanned out in five companies to take Kigali and protect
its civilians from further bloodshed.261 By 11 April, the RPF took Mount Rebero, which, according
to the 600’s commander, Charles Kayonga, was “the turning point in the war” because of Mt.
Rebero’s strategic location:
If the RPA had not taken and maintained Rebero, they would not have held the
Amahoro stadium or the CND because Rebero was on the high ground, from which
they could see and control the field of battle, and advance to take, defend and hold
additional locations. From Rebero, the RPA could also launch rescue operations in
Nyamirambo and Kiyovu (neighborhoods within Kigali).262
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French officials knew Rebero’s significance as well.263 “The French Ambassador was said to have
been so disappointed with the FAR, once he saw the RPF had captured Mount Rebero, that he
concluded Kigali would fall to the RPA,” Kayonga said.264 The next day, 12 April, Ambassador
Marlaud left Rwanda and returned to France.265
The RPF, speaking through RPF Second Vice President Denis Polisi,266 warned the French
government “‘not to interfere’ in Rwanda and to ‘limit its action to evacuating its nationals.’”267
Recent history was on Polisi’s mind: “We do not want France to support the presidential guard,
this gang of criminals who wanted to form a bogus government. It is a shame for France to have
armed and trained this presidential guard.”268
The RPF was right to suspect that France might extend military support to the Rwandan
government. Not only did French troops reportedly deliver ammunition on an Amaryllis plane,
but, by 13 April 1994, French officials had decided to leave a special operations unit in Kigali after
the final evacuations of expatriates, the diplomatic corps, and MAM cooperants, as well as the
withdrawal of the other Amaryllis troops.269 Lt. Col. Maurin, the deputy defense attaché and
counselor to the FAR état-major, led the detachment, with 33 COS (special operations) soldiers
and two AMTs placed under his command.270 He reported directly to Admiral Lanxade.271
According to the MIP, their mission was:
-
To extract citizens who do not consent to it as of yet and who may later
want to, or any other new case;
To try to locate the missing aid workers;
To learn about the local situation;
To propose attitudes or modes of action depending on the evolution of
events;
To guide any air support operation;
To exfiltrate themselves if necessary.272
The mission lasted less than a day before Maurin called it off on 14 April because of a “situation
that continued to deteriorate.”273
Placing Maurin, counselor to the FAR état-major, in charge of a secret mission that
included guiding air support strongly suggests the mission was aimed at stopping the RPF. Even
the MIP hinted at this in its brief analysis:
[Had the mission not ended on 14 April], one could legitimately question the idea
of maintaining the COS in Kigali while we had no more diplomatic representation.
One must in particular question the mission of guiding any air support operation,
when it is not clear whom it may benefit, if not the FAR.274
Few documents are available detailing the mission, and Maurin’s interview with the MIP is not
publicly available, but an after-action report claimed the purpose of the air support was to protect
the departure of the last aircraft against a possible RPF attack.275 Whoever initiated the mission
was focused on the RPF as a threat.
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At a 13 April 1994 Restricted Council meeting, Admiral Lanxade, who as chief of defense
staff ultimately oversaw the special forces, went a step further by suggesting the RPF posed a
threat not only to French forces, but also to Rwandan civilians. When President Mitterrand asked
whether “the massacres [will] spread,” Admiral Lanxade responded, “They are already significant.
But now, it is Tutsis who will massacre Hutus in Kigali.”276
Looking back at this time, some French soldiers have gone so far as to suggest French
military advisors should have stayed in Rwanda and helped the FAR continue to fight the RPF,
even in the midst of a genocide. Colonel Jacques Balch, for example, who in December 1993 (then
a Lieutenant Colonel) had received the highest honor from Rwanda for French military assistants,
The National Order of the 1,000 Hills,277 offered his “personal analysis” to the MIP. “[T]here was
nothing that would foreshadow an RPF victory,” he wrote. “[T]he FAR were resisting the push of
the Inkotanyi quite well. It would have taken very little (some French military advisers) to turn the
situation around. June 1992 and February 1993 could very well have been ‘reenacted’ in April
1994.”278 In other words, France should have reinforced the FAR, the way it did to help the FAR
counter RPF offensives in June 1992 and February 1993.
Warrant Officer José de Pinho struck a similarly mournful tone when writing about his 12
April departure:
During the whole flight [from Kigali to Bangui], an enormous amount of things
would go through my head. The feeling of having saved my family and my skin
was dominated by the immense sadness of having abandoned these unfortunate
Rwandan people, so endearing, and who absolutely did not deserve the tragedy that
was happening.
Inside the plane, there was total silence; my colleagues and I looked at each other
without saying a word. I was completely paralyzed, a gun between my legs. When
I looked at the gun, I regretted not having thrown it away before getting on the
plane, even though by doing so, I would not have followed instructions. I thought,
“What did you do there, that gun belongs to the Para Battalion and it was useful to
them.” On top of all the other worries, I felt like I stole that gun. It’s a horror!279
After returning to France, de Pinho was told that he must “be ready to leave for Rwanda in less
than 48 hours by a simple phone call.”280 He did not explain (if he was even told) why his superiors
anticipated that possibility, which never came to pass. “The next three months,” he wrote, “waiting
for a hypothetical phone call, would seem like an eternity.”281
Mitterrand, however, remained phlegmatic. During his 13 April Restricted Council
meeting, Minister of Cooperation Michel Roussin reported the RPF had reached out to signal that
“France still had its place in Rwanda.” Mitterrand replied, “This is a situation that we’ve known
elsewhere. France still appears essential, once the crisis has passed. We knew that in Chad. Here,
it’s a bit particular because Rwanda is a former Belgian colony. But we’ve already been
signaled.”282
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Mitterrand’s thoughts on Rwanda, as they had been since October 1990, were grounded in
a vision of France’s place in Africa, in general. His policy in Rwanda, even at the start of the
Genocide, was Françafrique.
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Notes to Chapter VIII
1
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 79-80 (2014).
2
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 48 (arrival
date), 52-53 (mission) (2014).
3
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 81 (2014). De
Pinho did not name his neighbor, referring instead to “the Rwandan Lieutenant-Colonel in command of the ParaCommando Battalion.” While Ntabakuze was a Major, and not a Lieutenant-Colonel, he was the commander of the
Para-Commandos, see Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶
59, 61 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008). Other testimonies corroborate that it was Major Ntabakuze who
was with the French cooperants that morning. See e.g., Interview by LFM of Gonzangue Habimana, Ex-FAR (22 Sept.
2017). It seems likely that Pinho simply misidentified Ntabakuze’s rank in his book published 20 years after these
events.
4
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 80-81 (2014).
5
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 81 (2014).
6
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 81-83 (2014).
Ntabakuze testified before the ICTR that he took de Saint Quentin to the crash site at approximately 10 p.m. that night.
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 832 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008). Former FAR paracommando Gonzangue Habimana likewise stated that he saw Ntabakuze
travel to the crash site with de Saint Quentin and two other French soldiers. Interview by LFM of Gonzangue
Habimana, Ex-FAR (22 Sept. 2017).
7
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 81-82 (2014).
8
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 82 (2014);
Trois Français parmi les victimes de l’avion qui s’est écrasé à Kigali [Three French People Among the Victims of the
Plane that Crashed in Kigali], AFP, 6 Apr. 1994.
9
Cable from Lt. Colonel Jean-Jacques Maurin, Deputy Defense Attaché to Rwanda, to the DRM (Direction du
Renseignement Militaire) (6 Apr. 1994) (no subject); ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, FROM WAR TO GENOCIDE: CRIMINAL
POLITICS IN RWANDA 1990- 1994 (2010, ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2015, Box 6: Extended family of Juvénal
Habyarimana and his wife, Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana).
10
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 225 (2003).
11
See JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 82-83
(2014). Although de Pinho could not specify whether Natabakuze identified the body of the “the Chief of the Defense
Staff or the Minister of Defense,” it could only have been the chief of defense staff because the minister of defense
was not on board the plane.
12
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 83 (2014).
13
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 797, 803, 805-06,
814, 819, 823, 858 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
14
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 801 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
15
See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 802 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008) (summarizing the testimony of a paracommando who described going door to door with
Interahamwe in Akajagali at approximately 6 a.m. on 7 April, raping women and killing anyone who was a Tutsi).
16
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 858-67 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008) (concluding in paragraph 866, “The lack of coherence in the Prosecution evidence
about the sequence of events at Camp Kanombe after the death of President Habyarimana coupled with the evidence
presented by the Ntabakuze Defence leave the Chamber with doubt about what actually transpired. That said, the
Chamber is also not fully convinced by the Defence evidence, in particular that the entire battalion remained on the
tarmac for nearly 18 hours after the death of the President awaiting orders for deployment.”).
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17
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 2160 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008); Aloys Ntabakuze v. Prosecution, Case No. ICTR-98-41A-A, Appeal Judgement (8
May 2012) (reducing Ntabakuze’s life sentence to 35 years in prison).
18
Reports differ on the exact time the killings began. Various witnesses who testified at Bagosora’s ICTR trial indicate
that large-scale killings of civilian Tutsi began shortly after either 4 a.m., 6 a.m., or 7 a.m. on 7 April. Prosecutor v.
Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 802, 824, 826 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008). Linda Melvern reports a witness seeing the Interahamwe “killing people in the open” by 6
a.m. LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 199 (1st ed. 2000). Belgian soldiers reported “ethnic cleansing operations”
by 11:43 a.m. KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 18
(1995). An Africa Rights report from May 1994 suggests that the first people killed, beginning at approximately 5
a.m., were political leaders who opposed the MRND and CDR. See AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING;
WHO IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 10 (1994). An ICTR witness testified that the prime minister’s compound came
under attack at 5 a.m. before she was murdered later that day. Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 701 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
19
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 15 & 650 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
20
Appeal Ruling by La Cour d’Assises de la Seine-Saint-Denis of Pascal Senyamuhuara Safari, a.k.a. Pascal
Simbikangwa, Former Rwandan Intelligence Chief, Seine-Saint-Denis (3 Dec. 2016). This opinion upheld on appeal
the conviction of Pascal Simbikangwa for genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity.
21
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (“At 2118
hours a platoon of Presidential Guard established a roadblock at the Meridien traffic circle and blocked traffic. Several
shots were fired. No reported casualties.”). (Note that this document skips from paragraph number 17 to 19, which
appears to be a typographical error.)
22
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of President of Rwanda”) (“At 2118 hours a platoon of Presidential
Guard established a roadblock at the Meridien traffic circle and blocked traffic. Several shots were fired. No reported
casualties.”).
23
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶1907 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
24
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 12 (1995) (“The
whole ‘presidential’ neighbourhood of the city centre, which in normal times was protected by many FAR checkpoints,
was then completely closed with roadblocks reinforced with AML (light tank of the FAR).”); MIP Tome I 294;
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 2124-25 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008) (“The assailants checked the identity cards of the victims and targeted mainly Tutsis
along with Hutus suspected of being sympathetic to the RPF.”).
25
MIP Tome I 294.
26
MIP Tome I 294.
27
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1908 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
28
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1908 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
29
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 229 (2003) (Iqbal Riza, chief of staff to UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan: “UNAMIR is not, repeat not, to fire unless fired upon”).
30
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “UN’s Evacuation Plans for, and
Statement to Security Council on, Rwanda”); ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003).
31
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 13 (1995).
32
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 13 (1995).
33
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 13 (1995).
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
34
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 13 (1995); Belgian
Senate Report 404 (1997).
35
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 13 (20 Sept. 1995).
36
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of President of Rwanda”).
37
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 230 (2003); Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations
Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of
President of Rwanda”).
38
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 230 (2003); Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations
Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of
President of Rwanda”).
39
US Department of State, Spot Intelligence Report (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda/Burundi: Turmoil in Rwanda”);
Belgian Senate Report 404 (1997) (1997).
40
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 245 (2003); Belgian Senate Report 404 (1997) (“Ms. Agathe
fled with the gendarmes assigned to her security, who hid her in the house of a neighbor, Mr. Daff, a United Nations
volunteer. She is discovered there by members of the presidential guard who take her back to her home, where she
and her husband are killed around 11:45 am.”).
41
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 705, 2219 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
42
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 2174 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
43
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 14 (1995); Belgian
Senate Report 404 (1997).
44
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 14 (1995).
45
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 14 (1995).
46
KIBAT Chronique 06 Avr – 19 Avr 1994 [KIBAT Calendar of Events 6 April – 19 April 1994] 14 (1995); Belgian
Senate Report 404 (1997); Théoneste Bagosora et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶
628 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Nov. 2011).
47
Belgian Senate Report 405-07 (1997).
48
Belgian Senate Report 405-07 (1997).
49
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003).
50
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003); AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING; WHO
IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 11 (1994).
51
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003); Cable from David Rawson to US Secretary of State
(24 Mar. 1994) (Subject: DAS Bushnell and AF/C Director Render Push for Transition to Begin”).
52
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003).
53
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003).
54
Cable from Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh to Kofi Annan (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “An Update on the Current Situation
in Rwanda and Military Aspects of the Mission”); AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING; WHO IS DYING;
WHAT IS TO BE DONE 10-11 (1994).
55
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 242-243 (2003).
56
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 232 (2003).
57
Des milliers de morts à Kigali selon le délégué du CICR [Thousands of Dead People in Kigali According to ICRC
Delegate], AFP, 8 Apr. 1994.
58
Cable from Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh to Kofi Annan (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “An Update on the Current Situation
in Rwanda and Military Aspects of the Mission”).
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
59
Appeal Ruling by La Cour d’Assises de la Seine-Saint-Denis of Pascal Senyamuhuara Safari, a.k.a. Pascal
Simbikangwa, Former Rwandan Intelligence Chief, Seine-Saint-Denis (3 Dec. 2016).
60
MIP Tome I 295.
61
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 886 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
62
AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING; WHO IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 14 (1994); Prosecutor v.
Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 872-873 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
63
AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING; WHO IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 14 (1994).
64
AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING; WHO IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 14-15 (1994).
65
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 871, 2180 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
66
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 890, 2180 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
67
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 902 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
68
Prosecutor v. Edoaurd Karemera and Matthieu Ngirumpatse, Case No. ICTR-98-44-T, Judgement and sentence, ¶
1244 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 2 Feb. 2012).
69
Prosecutor v. Edoaurd Karemera and Matthieu Ngirumpatse, Case No. ICTR-98-44-T, Judgement and sentence, ¶¶
1364, 1372 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 2 Feb. 2012)
70
Prosecutor v. Protais Zigiranyirazo, Case No. ICTR-01-73-T, Judgement, ¶¶ 219, 243 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda
18 Dec. 2008).
71
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora and Anatole Nsengiyumva, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 119,
236 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
72
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 2150 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
73
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 926 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008) (“The Chamber finds beyond reasonable doubt that, on 7 and 8 April, members of the Para
Commando Battalion were going from house to house in the Kabeza area and killing civilians. . . . Kabeza was
predominately Tutsi and viewed as sympathetic to the RPF.”); Id. at ¶ 2140-41 (“On 7 April 1994, militiamen
supported by plainclothes soldiers from the Gisenyi military camp conducted targeted killings in the vicinity of the
camp, and primarily in Bugoyi cellule. Soldiers accompanied militiamen to the house of a Tutsi teacher, where both
groups participated in killing him and his daughter. Hutus suspected of being accomplices, such as Rwabijongo and
Kajanja, were also killed by militiamen, as was Rwabijongo’s Tutsi wife. These attacks were followed by the killings
of Gilbert, a Tutsi, and another Tutsi man hiding in a compound with him. Mukabutare, a Tutsi, and her daughter were
also singled out and killed. The Chamber finds that these assailants intentionally killed members of the Tutsi ethnic
group.”).
74
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 802 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
75
Account taken from WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 102 – 112 (2006).
76
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA (2006).
77
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 44 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
78
Théoneste Bagosora et. al v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda
14 Nov. 2011) (affirming trial court’s convictions for extermination and persecution in relation to the killings of Prime
Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Joseph Kavaruganda, Frédéric Nzamurambaho, Landoald Ndasingwa, and Faustin
Rucogoza, as well as the killings at Centre Christus); Id. ¶ 647 (affirming trial court’s finding that Bagosora had actual
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
knowledge that his subordinates were about to commit the crimes at Centre Christus, Kabeza, Kibagabaga Mosque,
the Saint Josephite Centre, Karama Hill, Kibagabaga Catholic Church, and Gikondo Parish).
79
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of President of Rwanda”); ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, FROM WAR TO
GENOCIDE: CRIMINAL POLITICS IN RWANDA, 1990-1994, Box 11 (2015) (Notes on the Crisis Committee of 6-7 April
1994). The so-called “crisis committee” would be reconstituted more formally the following day, at which point
members would include Bagosora, Ndindiliyimana, Joseph Murasampongo, Tharcisse Renzaho, Léonidas Rusatira,
and Balthazar Ndengeyinka, among others. The committee held two formal meetings before the interim government
was installed on the evening of 8 April, when Ndindiliyimana announced the mission of the committee had ended.
80
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of President of Rwanda”); AFRICAN RIGHTS, RWANDA: WHO IS
KILLING; WHO IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 10-11 (1994).
81
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 224 (2003).
82
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 224 (2003).
83
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of President of Rwanda”).
84
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 250-51 (2003).
85
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 251 (2003).
86
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 294 (2003); see also MIP Tome I 299 (“The Belgian
government’s decision, announced on April 12, to withdraw its contingent (with an effective withdrawal starting on
the 13th) following the assassination on April 7 of ten Belgian peacekeepers in charge of protecting Prime Minister
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, had the further effect of completely destabilizing UNAMIR’s organization.”).
87
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 226 (2003).
88
Théoneste Bagosora et. al v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 714 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 14 Nov. 2011).
89
Théoneste Bagosora et. al v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 714 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 14 Nov. 2011).
90
Théoneste Bagosora et. al v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 714 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 14 Nov. 2011).
91
Théoneste Bagosora et. al v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶¶ 574, 576, 652 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 14 Nov. 2011).
92
Compte-Rendu du Colonel Cussac et Lieutenant-Colonel Maurin (19 Apr. 1994) in MIP Tome II, Annex 8.2
(Subject: “Action des AMT lors de l’opération d’évacuation des ressortissants français à Kigali du 8 au 14 avril 1994”
[AMT action during the operation to evacuate French nationals in Kigali from April 8 to 14, 1994])); AFRICAN RIGHTS,
RWANDA: WHO IS KILLING; WHO IS DYING; WHAT IS TO BE DONE 10 (1994) (“The first people to be killed, starting at
about 5:00 a.m. on 7 April were the leaders of the political parties opposed to the hard-line Hutus of the MRND and
CDR.”); Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba (recalling that the attacks on the CND began earlier in the morning
than 5 a.m.).
93
Cable from Roméo Dallaire to United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Significant Incident Report – Reported Death of President of Rwanda”).
94
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
95
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
96
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
97
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
98
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
99
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
100
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
101
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara; Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., No. ICTR-98-41-T, CrossExamination of Alison Des Forges, 78 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 Sept. 2002) (citing statement by Augustin
Ndindiliyimana).
102
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara; see also Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., No. ICTR-98-41-T,
Cross-Examination of Alison Des Forges, 78 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 Sept. 2002) (citing statement by
Augustin Ndindiliyimana). According to Ndindiliyimana, he told Rutaremara that the crisis committee was going to
do everything possible to restore order and called Bagosora to see if he could convince Rutaremara that the RPF at
the CND should not fight.
103
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora, et al., No. ICTR-98-41-T, Cross-Examination of Alison Des Forges, 78 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 Sept. 2002).
104
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
105
Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
106
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 244-45 (2003); see also COLIN WAUGH, PAUL KAGAME AND
RWANDA 65-67 (2004).
107
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS
RWANDA 65-67 (2004).
WITH THE
DEVIL 247 (2003); see also COLIN WAUGH, PAUL KAGAME
108
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 247 (2003).
109
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 248 (2003).
110
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 248 (2003).
111
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 248 (2003).
112
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 248-49 (2003).
113
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 248 (2003).
114
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 294.
115
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 295.
116
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 295.
117
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 295-96.
118
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 304.
AND
119
Notes on TD Kigali (7 April 1994) (Subject: “Escalation of violence in Kigali”). A DGSE report on 11 April 1994
elaborated: “Equipped with pre-established lists, the soldiers of the Presidential Guard undertook to massacre all the
Tutsis, as well as the Hutus from the south or those supporting the opposition parties. Most often, these liquidations
did not spare women or children.” Duclert Commission Report 701 (quoting DGSE/Diffusion, fiche no. 18502/N of
11 April 1994).
120
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Attentat contre les President du
Rwanda et du Burundi”) (emphasis in original).
121
MIP Audition of Hubert Védrine, Tome III, Vol. 1, 204.
122
MIP Audition of General Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1, 344.
123
MIP Audition of Hubert Védrine, Tome III, Vol. 1, 206.
124
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Attentat contre les President du
Rwanda et du Burundi”).
125
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda-Burundi – Situation
après la mort des deux présidents”).
126
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Précisions sur la Mort
des Présidents Rwandais et Burundais”).
127
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye, Head of the Élysée Africa Cell, to President François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994)
(Subject: “Attentat contre les Présidents du Rwanda et du Burundi”).
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
128
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda-Burundi – Situation
après la mort des deux présidents”).
129
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
130
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Précisions sur la Mort
des Présidents Rwandais et Burundais”).
131
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (12 Jul. 1994) (Subject: “Responsabilités de
l’attentat”).
132
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Hypothèse du service
sur les responsabilités de l’attentat contre l’avion du Président Habyarimana”).
133
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Hypothèse du service
sur les responsabilités de l’attentat contre l’avion du Président Habyarimana”). The note relied on the testimony of a
former FAR officer who said that the transfer of unusually large quantities of fuel, arms, and ammunition had been
authorized for transfer to the Presidential Guard on 1 August 1994. The officer also claimed that about 300
paratroopers had been transferred out of Kanombe camp shortly before the attack to allow the Presidential Guard to
“perform its work on April 6.”
134
Note from Bruno Delaye to President François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994); Note from General Christian Quesnot to
President François Mitterrand, President of France (7 Apr. 1994).
135
MIP, Audition de George Martres, French Ambassador in Kigali, 154, Tome III, Vol. 1; See, e.g., GABRIEL PÉRIÈS
& DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [A DARK WAR:
INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 10 (2007) (arguing that attention given the downing of
the plane was intended to “avoid asking the right questions by drawing the attention of public opinion”).
136
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
137
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
138
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
139
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
140
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
141
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
142
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
143
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga. Kayonga explained that they had gotten to know many people during
their stay at the CND and that there were fixed telephones.
144
Interview with Paul Kagame, PBS FRONTLINE, 30 Jan. 2004.
145
Interview with Paul Kagame, PBS FRONTLINE, 30 Jan. 2004.
146
Les Forces françaises se retireront dès que tous les Français seront évacués [The French Forces Will Withdraw
as Soon as All French People Are Evacuated], AFP, 10 Apr. 1994.
147
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Attentat contre les Président du
Rwanda et du Burundi”). Minister of Cooperation Michel Roussin sought to limit France’s role at the outset of the
Genocide and deferred to the UN in public comments. See, e.g., Combats à Kigali entre les forces gouvernementales
et le FPR, selon le ministre de la Coopération [Fighting in Kigali Between Government Forces and the RPF,
According to the Minister of Cooperation], AFP, 8 Apr. 1994 (citing an interview with Roussin, in which he “ruled
out any French military intervention, such as what took place between October 1990 and December 1993”); Les Forces
françaises se retireront dès que tous les Français seront évacués [The French Forces Will Withdraw as Soon as All
French People Are Evacuated], AFP, 10 Apr. 1994 (“‘As soon as the French are evacuated our forces will leave,’ he
[Roussin] said, stressing that it was up to the UN to assume its responsibilities and that the French forces were not
going to be involved in clashes between Rwandans.”).
148
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Attentat contre les Présidents
du Rwanda et du Burundi”).
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
149
La France souhaite que le Conseil de sécurité demande aux forces armées de coopérer avec l’ONU [France Wants
the Security Council to Ask the Armed Forces to Cooperate with the UN], AFP, 7 Apr. 1994.
150
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Attentat contre les Présidents
du Rwanda et du Burundi”).
151
Deposition of Jean Birara, Auditorat Militaire Bruxelles (26 May 1994).
152
COLETTE BRAECKMAN, RWANDA: L’HISTOIRE D’UN GENOCIDE [RWANDA: HISTORY OF GENOCIDE] 262-63 (1994).
153
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda-Burundi – Situation
après la mort des deux présidents”).
154
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Sécurité de nos
ressortissants”).
155
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Sécurité de nos
ressortissants”).
156
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Sécurité de nos
ressortissants”).
157
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Sécurité de nos
ressortissants”).
158
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 92 (2014).
159
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 92 (2014);
see also Compte-Rendu du Colonel Cussac et Lieutenant-Colonel Maurin (19 Apr. 1994) in MIP Tome II, Annex 8.2
(Subject: “Action des AMT lors de l’opération d’évacuation des ressortissants français à Kigali du 8 au 14 avril 1994”)
(stating that an AMT team was put in place at the airport to assure control of the tower and to clear the runway).
160
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 92 (2014).
161
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 93 (2014).
162
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 93 (2014).
163
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 229, 233-234 (2003).
164
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 275 (2003). Dallaire wrote that he was roused “around 0330,”
but it was likely closer to 2:30 a.m., since the first plane landed at 3:10 a.m.
165
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 275 (2003).
166
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 275 (2003).
167
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
168
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
169
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
170
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
171
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 94 (2014).
172
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 96 (2014).
173
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 97 (2014).
174
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 98 (2014).
175
Report from Henri Poncet to Jacques Lanxade (27 Apr. 1994). The document lists the time as 01:10 UT, which
was 3:10 a.m. in Kigali.
176
Cable from ARMEES CENTOPS Paris to MILFRANCE Kigali and COMELEF Bangui (8 Apr. 1994) in MIP
Tome II, Annex 8.1 (Subject: “Operation Amarillys”) [sic]); MIP Tome I 265 (describing Amaryllis objectives).
177
Cable from ARMEES CENTOPS Paris to MILFRANCE Kigali and COMELEF Bangui (8 Apr. 1994) in MIP
Tome II, Annex 8.1 (Subject: “Operation Amarillys” [sic]).
178
MIP Tome I 270.
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Chapter VIII
179
MIP Tome I 270.
180
MIP Tome I 270.
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
181
The Bloody Tricolour (BBC 1995) (including interview with Col. Luc Marchal); Jean de la Gueriviere, Un officier
belge maintient ses déclarations sur l’attitude de la France lors du génocide rwandais [Belgian Officer Maintains His
Statements on France’s Attitude During the Rwandan Genocide], LE MONDE, 23 Aug. 1995.
182
MIP Tome I 278.
183
Interview by LFM of Paul Rwarakabije.
184
Paris dément avoir livré des munitions au Rwanda [Paris Denies Delivering Ammunition to Rwanda], REUTERS,
20 Aug. 1995; Rwanda/livraisons d’armes-nouveau démenti de Paris [Rwanda/Arms Deliveries-New Paris Denials],
REUTERS, 21 Aug. 1995.
185
Hubert Védrine, Rwanda: les faits [Rwanda: The Facts], INSTITUT FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND (15 June 2004).
186
Jean de la Gueriviere, Un officier belge maintient ses déclarations sur l’attitude de la France lors du génocide
rwandais [Belgian Officer Maintains His Statements on France’s Attitude During the Rwandan Genocide], LE
MONDE, 23 Aug. 1995.
187
Bulletin Rwanda-Burundi: la poudrière [Rwanda-Burundi News: The Powder Keg], LE MONDE, 8 Apr. 1994; see
also Cable from Robert Korengold to United States Information Agency (USIA) (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Daily media
reaction report”).
188
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR 97-23-S, Judgement and Sentence (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 4
Sept. 1998).
189
Jean Kambanda, Speech announcing composition of the interim government (9 Apr. 1994) (transcribed by the
ICTR).
190
Jean Kambanda, Speech announcing composition of the interim government (9 Apr. 1994) (transcribed by the
ICTR).
191
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 810-11 (2019).
192
While Col. Poncet commanded the troops, Lt. Col. Maurin was appointed operation commander until Col. Cussac,
the defense attaché, returned from France on 9 April. Cable from ARMEES CENTOPS Paris to MILFRANCE Kigali
and COMELEF Bangui (8 Apr. 1994) in MIP Tome II, Annex 8.1 (Subject: “Operation Amarillys” [sic]); MIP Tome
I 267-70.
193
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 282 (2003).
194
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 282 (2003).
195
Report from Henri Poncet to Jacques Lanxade (27 Apr. 1994).
196
See generally ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 221-327 (2003) (Chapters 10 & 11).
197
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 279 (2003).
198
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 279 (2003).
199
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 279 (2003).
200
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 279-80 (2003).
201
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 281 (2003).
202
RICHARD KALKA, DIEU DÉSARMÉ [GOD, UNARMED] 71-72 (2013). During his 35 years as a military chaplain to
French forces deployed around the world, Father Kalka earned many decorations, “including the rank of Knight of the
Legion of Honor, the Croix de guerre des théâtres d'opérations extérieurs with distinction, the Croix de la valeur
militaire with distinction[,] and on May 8, he was elevated to the rank of Commander of the National Order of Merit,
for which he was awarded the medal by Major General Frédéric Thuet.” Mazères, Le Père Kalka commandeur de
l’ordre national du Mérite [Father Kalka, Commander of the National Order of Merit], LA DÉPÊCHE DU MIDI, 5 May
2018.
203
Catherine Bond, Listening Carefully, Looking Harder, in THE MEDIA AND MASS ATROCITY 60 (Allan Thompson
ed. 2019). See also LFM Interview with Catherine Bond.
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
204
Catherine Bond, Listening Carefully, Looking Harder, in THE MEDIA AND MASS ATROCITY 60 (Allan Thompson
ed. 2019) (quoting Catherine Bond, Cabinet Joins Flight of 100,000 from Kigali, THE TIMES (London), 13 Apr. 1994).
205
Catherine Bond, Listening Carefully, Looking Harder, in THE MEDIA AND MASS ATROCITY 60 (Allan Thompson
ed. 2019) (quoting Catherine Bond, Cabinet Joins Flight of 100,000 from Kigali, THE TIMES (London), 13 Apr. 1994).
206
Catherine Bond, Listening Carefully, Looking Harder, in THE MEDIA AND MASS ATROCITY 60 (Allan Thompson
ed. 2019) (quoting Catherine Bond, Cabinet Joins Flight of 100,000 from Kigali, THE TIMES (London), 13 Apr. 1994).
207
Catherine Bond, Listening Carefully, Looking Harder, in THE MEDIA AND MASS ATROCITY 61 (Allan Thompson
ed. 2019) (quoting Catherine Bond, Cabinet Joins Flight of 100,000 from Kigali, THE TIMES (London), 13 Apr. 1994).
208
LFM Interview with Catherine Bond.
209
Report from Henri Poncet to Jacques Lanxade (27 Apr. 1994).
210
Cable from ARMEES CENTOPS Paris to MILFRANCE Kigali and COMELEF Bangui (8 Apr. 1994) in MIP
Tome II, Annex 8.1 (Subject: “Operation Amarillys” [sic]).
211
Note from Christian Quesnot and Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (9 Apr. 1994)) (Subject: “Rwanda –
Situation”) (reporting back to President Mitterrand that his instructions to evacuation the close family of President
Habyarimana had been followed) (emphasis in original).
212
Note from Christian Quesnot and Dominique Pin to François Mitterrand (9 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda –
Situation”) (emphasis in original); MIP Tome I 270 (indicating that the first transport aircraft took off at 5 p.m.).
213
RICHARD KALKA, DIEU DÉSARMÉ [GOD, UNARMED] 72 (2013).
214
Memorandum from Christine Butel (14 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Prise en charge du voyage de la famille présidentielle
rwandaise”) (requesting that the Ministry of Cooperation pay for the plane tickets used to transport the Habyarimana
family to Paris in business class). The Habyarimana family spent several days in the Central African Republic (CAR).
On 13 April, French Foreign Minister Juppé informed Mitterrand that CAR President Ange-Félix Patassé “wants to
get rid of them.” Duclert Commission Report 369 (quoting AN/PR-BD, AG/5(4)/BD/60; File 2, Restricted Council of
Wednesday, 13 April, “Situation au Rwanda”). The options, Juppé said, were to take the family to Zaire or to France.
“If they want to come to France, France will naturally welcome them,” Mitterrand said. Id. (quoting AN/PR-BD,
AG/5(4)/BD/60; File 2, Restricted Council of Wednesday, 13 April, “Situation au Rwanda”).
215
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019 (containing
interview with General Christian Quesnot at approximately 0:42:00).
216
Officials Take Refuge in French Embassy as Clashes Continue, AFP, 8 Apr. 1994.
217
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 51, 53, 56 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005); Gouvernements, Représentation Publique, Principaux Corps d’État, Institutions de la
Société Civile [Governments, Political Representation, Main Bodies of State, Institutions of Civil Society] 7 (20 Mar.
2000).
218
ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, FROM WAR TO GENOCIDE: CRIMINAL POLITICS IN RWANDA, 1990-1994, Annex 83.2 (2015)
(“liste des personnes à risque”). The list included six ministers in the coalition government: Minister of Health Casimir
Bizimungu; Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Culture Daniel Mbangura; Minister of Planning
Augustin Ngirabatware; Minister of Transportation and Communications André Ntagerura; Minister of Youth and
Associations Callixte Nzabonimana; and Minister of Commerce, Industry and Crafts Justin Mugenzi. Id. These
ministers were not, ultimately, among the Rwandans evacuated during Operation Amaryllis. Ambassador Marlaud
told the MIP in 1998 that a number of Rwandan ministers preferred to stay in Rwanda while their families left the
country. MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 300.
219
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 51, 53, 56 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005); Gouvernements, Représentation Publique, Principaux Corps d’État, Institutions de la
Société Civile [Governments, Political Representation, Main Bodies of State, Institutions of Civil Society] 10-11 (20
Mar. 2000).
220
See Augustin Ngirabatware v. Prosecutor, Case No. MICT-12-29-A, Appeal Judgement Summary (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2014) (Trial Chamber Case No. ICTR-99-54-T) (showing that the appeals chamber reduced
Ngirabatware’s sentence from 35 years to 30 years while affirming his convictions for committing direct and public
incitement to commit genocide and for instigating and aiding and abetting genocide); Callixte Nzabonimana v.
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-44D-A, Judgement ¶ 497 (Int’l Trib. for Rwanda 29 Sept. 2014) (affirming
Nzabonimana’s convictions for conspiracy to commit genocide, among other crimes, and affirming his sentence of
life imprisonment). Bizimungu, Mugenzi, and Ntagerura were indicted but acquitted in the ICTR. See Prosecutor v.
Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Judgement and Sentence (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 30 Sept.
2011) (finding Bizimungu not guilty but convicting Mugenzi of conspiracy to commit genocide and direct and public
incitement of genocide, convictions later overturned on appeal); Justin Mugenzi and Prosper Mugiraneza v.
Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-99-50-A, Appeal Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 4 Feb. 2013); Prosecutor v.
André Ntagerura et al., Case No. ICTR-99-46-T, Judgement and Sentence (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 Feb. 2004).
221
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 53 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005).
222
Ferdinand Nahimana et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-99-52-A, Appeal Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda
28 Nov. 2007) (sentencing Nahimana to 30 years imprisonment).
223
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 300. Addressing the MIP in 1998, Marlaud justified
France’s decision to include Nahimana among the evacuees, noting that Nahimana had been designated to serve as
minister of higher education and scientific research in the Broad-Based Transitional Government that was supposed
to take office before the Genocide. “In that role, he had been accepted by the RPF,” Marlaud asserted. Id.
224
MIP Tome I 280. Col. Poncet’s after-action report listed a slightly different number of evacuated Rwandans: 400
as opposed to 394. See Report from Henri Poncet to Jacques Lanxade (27 Apr. 1994).
225
MIP chronologie de la crise Rwandaise [Chronology of the Rwandan Crisis] in MIP Tome II, Annex 1.3 (produced
by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
226
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA : ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 808 (2019); see also MIP Audition of Alain
Juppé, Tome III, 99. Before the MIP, Minister of Defense Leotard also claimed to be unaware of any ethnic
discrimination on the ground. See MIP Hearing of François Léotard, Tome III, Vol. 1, 98.
227
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019)
(containing interview with Michel Cuingnet at approximately 0:39:50).
228
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019)
(containing interview with Michel Cuingnet at approximately 0:39:50).
229
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019)
(containing interview with Michel Cuingnet at approximately 0:39:50); MIP Audition of Michel Cuingnet, Tome III,
Vol. 1, 175. The MIP, however, noted that Venuste Kayimahe, a Tutsi employee at the French cultural center, had
testified that after French military had refused to evacuate him, Cuingnet told him, “[W]e are not charged with saving
Rwandans.” MIP Tome I 284. Kayimahe said in a recent interview, however, that the soldiers, not Cuingnet, had told
him that Ambassador Marlaud had given the order not to evacuate Rwandans. Interview by LFM with Venuste
Kayimahe.
230
MIP Tome I 284 (also noting that Jean Marc Rochereau de la Sablière had said that “the ambassador would have
evacuated the local staff that was absent from the embassy, if they could have been reached”).
231
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 299.
232
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 299; see also Officials Take Refuge in French Embassy
as Clashes Continue, AFP, 8 Apr. 1994.
233
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 299.
234
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Dominique Pin (11 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
235
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 59 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005). The number and identity of the ministers in attendance remains unclear. However, one of the
ministers present has testified that the attendees included several ministers who ultimately retained their positions in
the soon-to-be-formed interim Rwandan government (IRG).
236
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 59 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005).
237
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 59 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005).
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Chapter VIII
238
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 296.
239
MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1, 296.
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
240
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence ¶¶ 1291, 1308-09 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008). Justin Mugenzi also has testified that shortly after the ministers’ meeting in
Ambassador Marlaud’s office on 8 April, a Rwandan Army convoy picked him up and took him to the Ministry of
Defense. Mugenzi said he was summoned to the Ministry because of his position as leader of the Parti libéral; the
other ministers who had been with him at the French embassy that morning did not follow. See Prosecutor v. Casimir
Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 51 & 60 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005).
241
See Prosecutor v. Casimir Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Trial Transcript 60, 62 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 8 Nov. 2005).
242
MIP Tome I 339.
243
Theodore Sindikubwabo, Speech to the Rwandan People (8 Apr. 1994).
244
See Duclert Commission Report 355 (referring to the interim government’s “reactionary nature” (quoting
DGSE/Diffusion, fiche no18499N, 9 Apr. 1994, Rwanda éléments sur le gouvernement intérimaire.)); Memorandum
from Arlene Render to George Moose, 11 Apr. 1994 (Subject: “Political Strategy for Rwanda”) (describing the newly
formed interim Rwandan government as having a “rightist bent”).
245
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019)
(containing interview with Johan Swinnen at approximately 0:43:20).
246
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019)
(containing interview with Johan Swinnen at approximately 0:43:20).
247
Jean-Christophe Klotz, Retour à Kigali: une affaire française [Return to Kigali: A French Affair] (2019)
(containing interview with Johan Swinnen at approximately 0:43:20).
248
Interview with Jean-Michel Marlaud by Christophe Boisbouvier, JEUNE AFRIQUE, 11 Apr. 1994.
249
Interview with Jean-Michel Marlaud by Christophe Boisbouvier, JEUNE AFRIQUE, 11 Apr. 1994. Marlaud would
say much the same to the MIP. See MIP Audition of Jean-Michel Marlaud, Tome III, Vol. 1 297 (“The composition
of this government was apparently in line with the Arusha Accords, as it provided for the allocation of portfolios
between political parties. However, one could question [the IRG’s] real representativeness. With each party divided,
the nominees represented rather a shift in favor of the most extreme trend.”).
250
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Dominique Pin (9 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Situation”).
251
MIP Tome I 271 (“An April 10 message from the defense attaché says: ‘On the 10th, in the provinces, the RPF
implemented its threat and advanced in the afternoon, the equivalent of two battalions to 10 and 15km north of Kigali,
while attempting to cut off the road going South from Kagitumba.’ This information given by French soldiers and
confirmed in Kigali by Rwandan authorities during the rapporteurs’ visit, definitively rejects the argument that the
RPF would have proceeded, starting on the morning of April 6th, with troop movements in order to reach Kigali by 6
p.m. that evening, which could have led to believe that they knew of the planned attack against the presidential
plane.”).
252
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (9 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Elements sur le
Gouvernement Interimaire”).
253
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (9 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Elements sur le
Gouvernement Interimaire”).
254
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 276 (2003).
255
Memorandum from Alex Kanyarengwe (24 May 1992) (Subject: “Appointments - Executive Committee”).
256
Memorandum from the RPF (28 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Abagize Gouvernement Y’inzibacyuho Muri FPR”).
257
Fiche Particulière, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (8 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Analyse de la situation a
12 heures”).
258
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 276 (2003).
259
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Dominique Pin (11 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
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Chapter VIII
6 April 1994 – 14 April 1994
260
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Dominique Pin (11 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (“On the military
side, the situation is very worrying. In Kigali heavy fighting and massacres continue. The RPF increases its pressure
on the capital. He managed to inflict 400 men about ten kilometers from Kigali, could quickly threaten the security of
the airport and control a portion of the access routes.”).
261
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
262
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
263
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
264
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
265
Interview by LFM with Charles Kayonga.
266
During the Genocide, Polisi acted as a spokesperson for the RPF, often writing RPF press releases and interacting
with Western media, international bodies, and international NGOs. A teacher in Burundi, Polisi moved to Rwanda
and, in 1993, was part of the team assigned to conduct political mass mobilization in areas controlled by the RPF.
Memorandum from the PMM Commission (9 Sept. 1993) (Subject: “Report of the Commission on Social Welfare
and Labor Policy for 3 months (6 June – 9 September 1993 in the DMZ)”). Tactical strategies of youth mobilization
became the focus of his training sessions. Memorandum from Angelo Semwaga (8 Sept. 1993) (Subject: “Ubuyobozi
Bw’Urubyirko No Gushaka Abatabazi”). In December 1993, the RPF officially announced its new leadership and
participants in the transitional government and parliament. Polisi was announced as “Second Vice President” of the
RPF. Memorandum from Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe, RPF President (27 Dec. 1993) (Subject: “Leaders Du FPRInkotanyi”); see also Cable from American Embassy in Kigali (Signed by David Rawson, US Ambassador to Rwanda)
to US Secretary of State (28 Jan. 1994) (Subject: “Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) New Leadership”).
267
Graham Brown, Westerners Flee Rwanda as Rebels March on the Capital, AFP, 9 Apr. 1994.
268
Le FPR demande à la France de rester neutre [The RPF Asks France to Remain Neutral], AFP, 9 Apr. 1994.
269
MIP Tome I 271-72, 277. There is some indication, too, that 2 DGSE officers remained in Kigali after Amaryllis
ended to continue providing intelligence on developments in Rwanda during the Genocide. See Duclert Commission
Report 897 (citing SHD, GR 203 17 1, Fiche 20 Mar. 1998).
270
MIP Tome I 272. An after-action report puts the number of COS soldiers at 35, not 33. End of Operation Report
for Amaryllis, état-major des armées, (15 Apr. 1994).
271
Cable from ARMEES CENTOPS Paris to COMELEF Bangui and COMOPS Kigali (12 Apr. 1994) (Subject:
“Operation Amaryllis”).
272
MIP Tome I 278.
273
MIP Tome I 278.
274
MIP Tome I 278.
275
End of Operation Report for Amaryllis, état-major des armées, (15 Apr. 1994) (“[T]he RPF having consolidated
its positions around the capital and the airport, the possibility of a fire support to protect the departure of the last
aircraft is envisaged. To this end, the C 135 put in place on April 10 in N’Djamena is positioned in Bangui where with
two Jaguars armed with rockets, it will be on alert on April 14 at 04:00Z.”).
276
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (13 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
277
See Ceremonial de reception dans les ordres nationaux des militaires francais de l’assistance technique ainsi que
ceux du detachement Noroît, detachements d’assistance militaire d’instruction (DAMI) Egena et Panda [Reception
Ceremony into the National Orders for the French Technical Assistance soldiers as well as those from the Noroît
Detachment, [and] Military Assistance Training Detachments (DAMI) Egena and Panda], 16 November 1993, LE
JOURNAL DES FORCES ARMÉES RWANDAISES 7 (Dec. 1993).
278
MIP Tome I 277.
279
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 109 (2014).
280
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 111 (2014).
281
JOSÉ DE PINHO, COMPRENDRE LE GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [UNDERSTANDING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 111 (2014).
282
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (13 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
Page | 355
CHAPTER IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
A. As Genocidal Massacres Continued in April and May of 1994, French Officials Blamed the
RPF—the Only Force in the World Trying to Stop the Genocide—and Insisted That the
RPF Lay Down Its Arms and Negotiate with the Génocidaires.
The RPF is the most fascist party I have encountered in Africa. It can be
equated to the ‘khmers noirs.’1
– Christian Quesnot, Chief Military Advisor to President Mitterrand
(1991 – 1995)
As days passed and the casualties mounted, French decision-makers continued to treat the
situation in Rwanda not as the Genocide that it was, but as a war between two armies. Their
position, in short, was that Rwanda’s problems could be solved if only the two sides would stop
fighting each other on the battlefield and reconvene at the negotiating table. “In general, for a
certain time after the shoot down of the Habyarimana plane, we felt we had to do everything to
save Arusha,” Hubert Védrine would recall during a 2014 symposium. “This may seem naïve and
unrealistic today, but that is the way we saw it at the time.”2
It was a worthy enough goal, in the abstract. Indeed, RPF leaders said they, too, hoped to
see the Arusha Accords restored, believing the accords could yet “form the basis of a new
government” once the fighting had concluded.3 There was a reason, though, why the fighting
remained ongoing: it was because the leaders of Rwanda’s self-proclaimed government were
orchestrating the extermination of the Tutsi. To RPF leaders, there was no imperative more
pressing than ending the slaughter of civilians. “The most important thing now,” the RPF declared
in a 10 April press release, “is to stop the gang [i.e., the interim government—ed.] from killing
and to neutralise them.”4
French officials were of an entirely different mindset. As Defense Minister François
Léotard told reporters on 14 April 1994, the French government’s view was that there could be
“no military solution” to the conflict—only a “resumption of political dialogue.”5 To that end,
Léotard said, “We are currently trying to converse with everyone to prevent a bloodbath from
developing.”6
It was, of course, already too late to “prevent a bloodbath.” French officials, nevertheless,
felt it was incumbent on the RPF—the only force in the world trying to stop the génocidaires—to
lay down its arms. On 15 April, according to a US cable, officials from the Quai d’Orsay met with
an unnamed RPF representative in Paris and “urged an end to the RPF offensive as the only way
to end ethnic strife.”7 By that point, as noted in Chapter 8, Section C, French officials knew of the
Presidential Guard’s leading role in the massacres. And, by 19 April, a French army intelligence
assessment acknowledged the participation of the FAR in the killings: “the Rwandan Armed
Forces (FAR), the Presidential Guard and the Hutu militias, with the help of the population,
massacre many Tutsis.”8
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While much of the world was ready to condemn the perpetrators of the Genocide, French
officials had no doubt that the international community had it backward. As Jean-Michel Marlaud,
the French ambassador to Rwanda, elaborated to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 25
April 1994:
The argument that [the RPF] will stop the fighting only when the [abuses] and the
massacres are interrupted reverses the chain of causalities. If it is true that at the
time the President’s death was announced, the [abuses] immediately began and
provided a foundation for the armed intervention of the RPF, today the situation is
quite the opposite: The Hutu, as long as they have the feeling that the RPF is trying
to seize power, will react by ethnic massacres. Only a stop to the fighting could
allow a progressive recovery of the situation in hand.9
Few senior French officials offered as inverted a perspective, and were as outspoken in
private, as General Christian Quesnot, President Mitterrand’s top military adviser. In the three years
since Quesnot had advised Mitterrand to withdraw Noroît troops, Quesnot had become convinced
that “the RPF is the most fascist party I have encountered in Africa,” as he would put it to Bruno
Delaye on 29 April 1994. “It can be equated to ‘khmers noirs’” (a reference to Cambodia’s
totalitarian, Communist, genocidal Khmer Rouge regime10).
In the same meeting, Quesnot seemed to accept the targeted murder of political opponents
and the genocidal massacre of Tutsi as the understandable reaction to the loss of one of its leaders
by the Presidential Guard.11 (The Guard’s second-in-command, Major Thaddée Bagaragaza, had
been traveling in Habyarimana’s plane when it was shot down.)12 “It was mercenaries, recruited
by the RPF or from it, who shot down the airplane,”13 Quesnot alleged without detail or evidence
(and despite the DGSE’s rejection of this theory more than two weeks earlier),14 recasting an
accusation he had made, also without evidence, less than 24 hours after the plane went down.15
“And so, the Presidential Guard, whose head had been killed along with the President and which
is not composed of choirboys, began to massacre: their President had been killed.”16
For Quesnot, France’s involvement in Rwanda from 1990 to 1993 had kept the peace
instead of enabling government massacres, and what was happening now was a byproduct of the
withdrawal of French troops. “As long as we had about a company of parachutists on the ground
to train the Rwandan soldiers, there were no massacres,” Quesnot said, a flagrant falsehood
ignoring the thousands of civilians who had been killed by, and at the direction of, elements of the
Rwandan government. “Our military presence prevented the RPF from seizing power by force and
allowed the two parties to come to the negotiation table and sign the Arusha Accords. Our military
presence would have stopped the massacres.”17 The implication was clear and the logic twisted: if
French troops had stayed in Rwanda, they would have remained a deterrent to the RPF advance
(just as they had done in October 1990, June 1992, and February 1993) and in so doing, would
have removed the impetus for the FAR and militias to respond by massacring civilians.18
The DGSE, the main French intelligence service, often had a more accurate read of the
situation. As an intelligence report from 2 May would put it:
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Any specific action in Rwanda faces a real dilemma: how to help Rwanda—
especially politically—when the only truly representative interlocutor of the
majority ethnic group, the interim government, bears obvious responsibility for the
current massacres? In order to be truly effective, France’s action could perhaps
begin with an irrevocable condemnation of the actions of the [Presidential Guard]
and more specifically of Colonel Bagosora, the director of the cabinet of the
minister of defense, who is considered to be the main instigator of the murders—
very “targeted”—at the beginning of the crisis.19
But the French government did not issue these condemnations, certainly not in a way that would
have made a difference. As discussed below, they urged IRG leaders to exercise restraint while
sending signals of support and, according to some reports, sending military assistance. As it had
been with Habyarimana when his government massacred Tutsi, the French government’s ultimate
fidelity was clear.
B. France Must Clarify How Senior French Officials Responded to the IRG’s Regular
Requests for Arms and Other Support during the Genocide.
On 7 April 1994, according to the MIP interview of Michel Roussin, the French minister
of cooperation from 1993 to 1995, the Rwandan government “made an important request . . . which
concerned seventeen different ammunition or equipment delivery sites.”20 Roussin told the MIP
that France’s Secretary-General of National Defense, to whom the request was made, “refused the
delivery,” with all French arms exports to Rwanda suspended as of 8 April 1994.21
France has not made documents available to support this claim, and there is evidence that
arms support may have continued. For instance, on 15 April 1994—one day after Operation
Amaryllis concluded—Colonel Christian Luc Vaganay, the head of the situation office in the
Directorate of Military Intelligence (Direction du Renseignement Militaire, or DRM), France’s
army intelligence bureau, met with Col. Sébastien Ntahobari, the IRG’s defense attaché in Paris,
at the latter’s request.22 Ntahobari asked Col. Vaganay to make the “French government” aware of
the IRG army’s “urgent need of ammunitions,” particularly 60mm mortar shells and ammunition
for South African-made R4 assault rifles and Belgian-made FAL battle rifles.23 The IRG was also
seeking “transport assistance” for 5,000 60mm mortar shells stuck in Tel Aviv, Israel and grenades
awaiting shipment from Warsaw, Poland.24
On 15 April, Col. Vaganay relayed the requests to General Jean Heinrich, the head of the
DRM,25 who reportedly forwarded them to Philippe Jehanne, a former DGSE officer and defense
advisor to the French minister of cooperation, who in April 1993 had traveled to Rwanda to assess
the FAR’s military assistance needs.26 Heinrich wrote to Jehanne, “This note is addressed to you
for assignment with respect to paragraphs 2 and 3 (for all purposes)”; paragraphs 2 and 3 concerned
the IRG’s requests for ammunition and transportation of ammunition.27
The available paper trail as to what actions Jehanne took, if any, ends there.28 Just over a
month later, however, on 19 May—two days after the United Nations had placed an embargo on
arms deliveries to Rwanda—Jehanne reportedly told the historian Gérard Prunier: “We are busy
delivering ammunition to the FAR through Goma, [Zaire]. But of course, I will deny it if you quote
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me in the press.”29 (Though Prunier published this recollection in 1995, he was not questioned
about it when he testified before the MIP in 1998.30 Jehanne was never called before the MIP.31)
As this report details below, some French officials have suggested that covert arms deliveries may
have continued even further into the Genocide.
C. Due to International Condemnation of the Genocide, the French Government’s Assistance
to the Génocidaires May Have Been Covert.
The French government was under tremendous international pressure, particularly from the
media, to disavow its allies in Rwanda. To cite just one example, in a 14 April opinion piece in the
New York Times titled “French Guns, Rwandan Blood,” journalist Frank Smyth excoriated
France’s history of arming the Habyarimana regime despite its participation in the murder of
“thousands of Tutsi” in the years since 1990, and concluded that “in propping up the Rwandan
regime for so long, [France] bears part of the blame for the current bloodbath.”32 This read of the
conflict outraged senior French officials like Élysée Africa Cell chief Bruno Delaye, who lamented
in a 28 April note to President Mitterrand that “international and [French] national public opinion”
generally portrayed the RPF as “liberators” and the Rwandan government as “extremists.”33 In
particular, he regretted that France “continue[d] to be accused of having supported the ‘dictator
Habyarimana.’”34
A pair of early-May notes from Gen. Quesnot to President Mitterrand illustrate the bind in
which the Élysée found itself. “[T]he Quai d’Orsay, noting public opinion and the necessity not to
fuel the conflict, believes it necessary to support the American proposal of an embargo on weapons
and ammunition destined for Rwanda,” Quesnot wrote on 3 May.35 Three days later, Quesnot
proposed a workaround: an “indirect strategy . . . that could restore a certain balance,” avoiding “a
direct strategy in the region that could seem politically difficult to establish.”36
In 2019, the French journalist Jean-Christophe Klotz asked Quesnot what exactly he had
been proposing.37 After a long pause, Quesnot said: “I was not proposing anything concrete . . . at
this stage. It’s true that I felt—well, we were a little frustrated by the RPF’s victory in this
campaign. We could not try to restore a form of balance to get back to Arusha.”38 When asked if
indirect strategy meant clandestine—or, at least, discreet—Quesnot replied, “Discreet, not
necessarily clandestine.”39
That assistance may have included French military advisors who, there is reason to believe,
remained in Rwanda after Operation Amaryllis concluded. Olivier Lanotte, a central Africa
scholar, has written that three French “political and military personalities who held significant
positions at the time of the events” confirmed to him that French military advisors stayed in
Rwanda after Amaryllis before being removed during Turquoise.40 Lanotte, who acknowledged
that several military officers had denied this, wrote that the sources confirming their presence had
been constrained by their duty of confidentiality from providing details.41 Lanotte also wrote that
during a 2006 interview General Quesnot had confirmed to Lanotte the retention of “about ten”
soldiers between mid-April and the end of June 1994 without providing any detail on their mission
or activities.42 This decision would have required political input: Quesnot told Lanotte that
retaining these forces would have required a consensus between the Élysée and the cohabitation
government.43
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General Jean-Claude Lafourcade, who would lead Operation Turquoise, told the political
scientist Gabriel Périès and the journalist David Servenay that there were French people “locked
up in Kigali” after 14 April.44 Périès and Servenay reported that intelligence operations specialists
would have referred to these people, who may have been mercenaries, as “sonnettes,” in the French
military vernacular (meaning “doorbells,” in reference to their mission to sound alarm in response
to events on the ground).45 The sonnettes were “able to stay days, even weeks, in one place to
observe a situation and report on it daily.”46 This explanation aligns with a June 1994 story in
RAIDS, a French military magazine, which reported that “a few elements of the special forces
would stay in ‘bells’ [after April 14] to report on events to the Army Staff [état-major].”47
If, indeed, French soldiers or spies did remain in Rwanda after 14 April, the French
government should clarify their mission. Since French forces had served primarily to support and
embolden the Rwandan government before the Genocide, it seems unlikely that the French
government would have left assets in Rwanda to moderate the IRG’s forces from within, a
charitable hypothesis considered by Olivier Lanotte,48 and, in substance, advanced by Quesnot
himself in his 29 April meeting with Delaye. Lanotte, however, remarked that “the defenders of
unfailing support for the FAR—those who constitute what [the journalist and Rwanda specialist]
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry calls ‘the French Africanist military lobby’—continued their cooperation
with the FAR throughout the spring of 1994. And they did so without too much fuss.”49 It stands
to reason that any continuing French presence in Rwanda would have served, at least in part, to
benefit the IRG and the FAR.
D. As Massacres Took Hundreds of Thousands of Lives in Full View of the International
Community, the French Government Helped Shape a Portrayal of the Crisis as a Sudden
Outbreak of Mindless Violence, as Opposed to a Genocide Orchestrated by Members of the
Interim Rwandan Government.
The 7 April 1994 murder of 10 Belgian UN peacekeepers by members of Rwanda’s
Presidential Guard, and the consequent decision by Belgium—the lone NATO country to volunteer
troops for UNAMIR—to withdraw its remaining contingent from Rwanda, was a moment of
reckoning for the international community.50 In effect, the United Nations had to choose among
three options: 1) “massive and immediate” reinforcement of the UNAMIR mission, including a
revised mandate that would authorize the use of force to restore law and order and end the killings;
2) the full withdrawal of UNAMIR troops; or 3) a compromise option that reduced UNAMIR’s
presence to essential personnel, from 2,500 to 270 Kigali-based peacekeepers meant to serve as
intermediaries between the IRG and the RPF.51
On 13 April, Foreign Minister Juppé let Mitterrand know that he favored the third option—
that is, to suspend UNAMIR while possibly retaining a “symbolic contingent” in its stead.52 “The
Belgians are in favor of a suspension, and that’s my opinion too,” he told Mitterrand at the
restricted council meeting that day.53 Mitterrand said he agreed.54
The French government’s position evolved in the days that followed, with French
Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Bernard Mérimée eventually expressing support for an
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increase in troops; Mérimée emphasized, however, that responses from any UN force should focus
on the RPF’s role.55 A British diplomatic cable reported that, according to Mérimée:
The key was to exert political pressure, particularly on the RPF who seemed to be
rejecting a cease-fire. They should be made to realize that any military victory
would be only provisional. This would be important both within the country and
with respect to the Governments of neighboring countries, for example Uganda.
Uganda did have influence on the RPF. The international community should
persuade them to put pressure on the RPF to agree to a cease-fire.56
These sentiments aligned with those of Jean-Damascène Bizimana, the Habyarimana-appointed
Rwandan ambassador to the United Nations, who said that “the Council should persuade the
Rwandese Patriotic Front to agree to a comprehensive cease-fire, it being understood that it is futile
to think that the crisis in Rwanda can be settled by military means.”57
In these efforts, France had the backing of a powerful ally: UN Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. In his first formal report on the situation on 20 April 1994, Boutros-Ghali seemed
to absolve the interim authorities of any responsibility for the targeted assassinations and ethnic
massacres that followed the attack on Habyarimana’s plane. Employing terms that, according to
Human Rights Watch, “seem[ed] to reflect the point of view of the interim government, as
reinforced no doubt by France,”58 Boutros-Ghali claimed that authority in Rwanda had “collapsed”
and attributed the violence to “unruly members of the Presidential Guard.”59
Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom distinguished itself by prioritizing
humanitarian considerations. UK Ambassador David Hannay insisted that even a vastly increased
UNAMIR would find it difficult to adequately protect civilians.60 And though RPF Commander
Kagame had spoken bluntly with a US diplomat, reminding her on at least one occasion, “Madame,
they’re killing my people,”61 US officials remained worried about “the lessons of past operations”
(the United States had lost 18 servicemen in a peacekeeping mission in Somalia the previous year)
and advocated a “skeletal presence.”62 “I think it had a lot to do with the indifference, total
ignorance of what was happening, or lack of sensitivity to what was happening,” Kagame would
later tell an interviewer. “I, as a Rwandan, deep in what was happening and deeply being
affected—my preoccupation was totally different.”63
Ultimately, on 21 April, the Security Council adopted Resolution 912, which framed the
Genocide much as the French and Boutros Ghali did, as a spontaneous outbreak of “mindless
violence and carnage” in the wake of the presidential plane crash.64 The resolution prioritized a
cease-fire, failed to condemn the IRG, and drastically drew down Gen. Romeo Dallaire’s
UNAMIR troops.65 General Dallaire had pleaded with his superiors for a different decision.66 By
this point in the Genocide, UNAMIR had evacuated approximately 4,000 people and was
sheltering an additional 14,000 refugees in its camps.67 Most international relief organizations had
fled Rwanda, violence continued unbated, and the UN’s troops were facing shortages of water,
food, medical supplies, and sanitation facilities.68 But on 22 April, Dallaire watched about 1,000
of his troops ordered to Nairobi before being repatriated to their home countries.69
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On 28 April, Bruno Delaye would describe the UN, in a note to President Mitterrand, as
“silent, humiliated and overwhelmed.”70 This time, he was right. Resolution 912 was an immediate
failure. While tasking UNAMIR with continuing to serve as an intermediary, the resolution had
removed the international backing that maintained its credibility and authority to do so. In its first
test, a cease-fire conference between the IRG and the FAR scheduled for 23 April,71 an RPF
representative appeared, but the IRG representatives never arrived.72
More disastrously, that same weekend, FAR troops in the government-controlled region of
Butare, in the south, stormed a hospital administered by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors
Without Borders).73 Before the Genocide, MSF had drawn the ire of extremists for addressing its
staffing shortages by hiring local Tutsi rendered unemployable by discrimination.74 As the
violence grew worse, MSF lost over a hundred Tutsi staff while militias preyed on MSF
ambulances, in some cases intercepting the wounded before they could reach hospitals.75 Finally,
on 22 April, FAR troops rounded up and murdered the entire local staff of MSF’s Butare hospital,
promising to return the next day to execute the patients.76 And they did, executing all 170.77
These massacres were an inflection point in the world’s acceptance of the magnitude and
barbarity of the crisis. (In its report, the French daily Libération added that, according to the UN
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who had just returned from Rwanda, in Kigali,
“there are decomposing bodies, devoured by dogs, rats and birds.”78) In a 25 April call with the
Security Council, MSF’s Belgian Secretary General, Alain Destexhe, said that in its 20-yearhistory, MSF had never experienced something similar, and that the IRG was executing a “clear
policy of genocide” that would leave no Tutsi alive in the government-controlled South “within
weeks.”79
Some members of the Security Council had no trouble recognizing the Genocide for the
very uncomplicated moral situation it was. In a meeting following Destexhe’s presentation,
Argentina, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Pakistan all noted that by this point the Council was
receiving information on Rwanda’s horrors in every meeting, and it was time for the United
Nations to take action.80 In his notes on the discussion, Karel Kovanda, the Czech ambassador,
was clear-eyed about both what was happening in Rwanda and why a cease-fire was not the
solution: “A clear genocide is taking place, of the government and Presidential Guard Hutu units
against the Tutsi.”81 While the United Nations continued to advocate “a cease-fire that puts both
parties on the same level,” he wrote, “Is this not as though we wanted Hitler to reach a cease-fire
with the Jews?”82
French politicians, however, continued to advocate for just that, with Alain Juppé the latest
to call for a return to Arusha in a press conference on 28 April.83 (Having undermined and
destroyed any hope Arusha had of surviving, the IRG now wanted to observe one aspect of it very
closely—the return of both combatants to their pre-6 April positions, as if the Genocide had never
begun.84) Paul Kagame, however, pointed out the obvious to US diplomats: a cease-fire would not
bring an end to the Genocide.85
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E. French Officials Welcomed IRG Representatives to Paris, Bestowing Legitimacy on a
Genocidal Government as They Discussed How the French Government Might Support the
IRG.
It was a mistake to receive [them]. That’s a mistake we made that shocks
me.86
– François Léotard, French Minister of Defense (1993 – 1988)
Representatives of the genocidal interim Rwandan government (IRG) continued to press
French officials for support. On 27 April 1994, the French government welcomed two senior IRG
officials to the Élysée, Matignon (the prime minister’s office), and the Quai d’Orsay.87 Jérôme
Bicamumpaka, whom the ICTR would later acquit of various charges of genocide and crimes
against humanity,88 was the IRG’s minister of foreign affairs. His companion, Jean-Bosco
Barayagwiza, was the Ministry’s political director. But it was Barayagwiza who wielded the real
power between the two. The most influential leader of the CDR, Rwanda’s extremist anti-Tutsi
party, Barayagwiza directed the CDR’s youth militia, the Impuzamugambi, to murder Tutsi at
roadblocks before and during the Genocide, for which the ICTR would sentence him to 32 years.89
The day the pair arrived in Paris, the RPF issued a press release urging the international
community not to recognize the “self-proclaimed” IRG, given “the active part in the massacres of
the civilian population by the Presidential Guard, the militias and some elements of the army.”90
(While in Paris, Bicamumpaka and Barayagwiza sought visas to the United States at the US
Embassy, and were denied.91 Belgium also turned them away.92)
“It was a mistake to receive [them],” French Defense Minister François Léotard would
concede 25 years later, referring to Bicamumpka and Barayagwiza’s reception in Paris. “That’s a
mistake we made that shocks me.”93 Asked by the MIP in 1998 about the visit, Hubert Védrine
attempted to put it in context, saying that “contacts between France and all the protagonists
[presumably meaning the RPF, the IRG, Uganda, and other African countries—ed.] had continued
for several weeks after the start of the fighting, as long as there was still hope of a cease-fire,”94
which does not explain why the IRG guests were honored with an audience of high-ranking French
officials. Moreover, according to historian and Élysée advisor Gérard Prunier, the RPF was having
a difficult time getting meetings with senior decision-makers in the French government.95
If Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and Prime Minister Edouard Balladur met with
Bicamumpaka and Barayagwiza, Prunier told the MIP, “it was because there was a perception
problem within the French government,” meaning that senior French officials failed to accept that
they were dealing with génocidaires.96 Bruno Delaye, however, when asked about the visit years
later, implicitly acknowledged having known just whom he had welcomed to France: “I must have
received 400 assassins and 2,000 drug traffickers in my office. With Africa, it’s impossible not to
get your hands dirty.”97 (Delaye had previously contacted CDR leader Barayagwiza in 1992, when
Delaye had warmly acknowledged a petition signed by Rwandan citizens and sent by Barayagwiza
to Mitterrand thanking France for its involvement in Rwanda.98 Delaye sent his acknowledgement
less than a month after CDR demonstrations in Kigali left several dead and just days after
extremists massacred Tutsi in Kibuye, in western Rwanda.99)
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French officials told US embassy representatives that they used the meeting with
Bicamumpaka and Barayagwiza to urge an end to the violence.100 The IRG officials, however, had
something else on their minds. According to a US cable, Barayagwiza and Bicamumpaka wanted
arms. “[N]ow that the massacres have stopped,” they reportedly said, in gross contradiction of the
truth, “there is no reason not to provide the government with arms to enable it to defend itself
against the RPF.”101 According to the cable, “[t]he request was turned down flat.”102
The question of how senior French officials responded to these requests, however, remains
open. In a 2013 report on the Genocide, Philippe Biberson, the president of Médecins sans
Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), recounted a meeting at Foreign Minister Juppé’s home a
few days before the launch of Operation Turquoise, the French intervention in Rwanda that would
begin in June 1994. Biberson pressed Juppé: “They say there are arms deliveries to the Rwandan
government . . . is it true that France is continuing to deliver arms to Goma?” Juppé responded:
“Look, it’s all very confusing, there were indeed cooperation or defense agreements with the
government, there may have been leftovers. But as far as my services are concerned, I can tell you
that since the end of May there have certainly been no more arms deliveries to the Habyarimana
regime.” “But,” he added, looking across the Seine towards the Élysée Palace, “what may be
happening there, I don’t know.”103 Juppé later claimed that “over there” meant “in Rwanda” and
not “at the Élysée.”104 Either way, according to Biberson’s account, Juppé himself acknowledged
that the provision of arms continued at least until the end of May, a month and a half into the
Genocide, and at least some time after the 17 May UN embargo was announced.
Mitterrand himself was vague on the issue of covert support. Bernard Debré, the minister
of cooperation from November 1994 to May 1995, told the MIP that he had asked Mitterrand
(Debré did not say when) if France had continued to deliver weapons to Rwanda after the Genocide
began on 6 April 1994. Mitterrand responded cryptically. “You believe,” Mitterrand said, “that the
world woke up on the morning of 7 April and said, ‘Today the genocide begins?’” Debré took this
as “a possible confirmation that ammunition aid continued after 6 April 1994.”105
These statements raise critical questions about whether the Government of France
continued to arm its allies in Rwanda as many of them committed genocide. The Government of
Rwanda has made repeated requests for documents that clarify the issue. The Government of
France has not responded to these requests.106
Whether or not the French government supplied weapons to the FAR in late April or early
May 1994, French officials continued to consider what the DGSE referred to in a 2 May 1994
memorandum as “[a]ppropriate action” against the RPF.107 The DGSE memorandum employed
the same ethnically deterministic logic adopted by French officials in the past (see discussion in
Chapter 2) to argue that if the RPF’s military took control of Rwanda, the country would be
“governed by an ethnic group (the Tutsi) that represents barely 14 percent of the population. In
this context, ignoring the 85 percent Hutu [population] would be tantamount to endorsing a regime
whose influence and credibility could not be expected to last long term.”108 Nor had the DGSE lost
sight of the geopolitical costs of failing to oppose RPF military control of Rwanda:
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After wiping out four years of Franco-Rwandan cooperation, how will it be possible
to guarantee that similar situations will not provoke identical withdrawal reactions
in other African countries in the future? Throughout the Rwandan tragedy, the
credibility of France’s specific action in Africa could be called into question.109
French officials continued to explore ways of avoiding this outcome. In a 11 May memo,
advisors to Prime Minister Balladur assessed a range of options, including the possibility of
dispatching an “interposition” force to separate the two armies.110 The advisors concluded this last
option was “inconceivable because of the total overlapping of the opposing communities.”111 The
advisors could not so easily dismiss an alternative option, which was, simply, to offer “support for
the Rwandan interim authorities.”112 This, they acknowledged, “could certainly prolong the
conflict.”113 On the other hand, they wrote, it “would be the only chance to give the Hutu majority
the means to guard against the RPF’s complete control of power.”114
Of all the officials in Paris who remained determined to prevent an RPF takeover, few,
outside of General Quesnot, were as vocally hostile to the RPF as his former deputy, General JeanPierre Huchon. Promoted in mid-1993 to head the Military Cooperation Mission (MMC),115
Huchon would go to great lengths to refute allegations that the IRG and government forces were
to blame for massacres during the Genocide.116 He would maintain, as the Genocide was nearing
its end, that France should continue to view the RPF as its adversary.117
Huchon had a penchant for secrecy, as evidenced early in the French government’s
intervention in Rwanda, when he regularly faxed private messages to the French defense attaché
in Kigali, often with instructions to destroy the message once read.118 He showed traces of the
same instinct on 9 May 1994, when he received two guests at the MMC offices: Col. Sébastien
Ntahobari, the IRG’s Defense Attaché in Paris, and Lt. Col. Ephrem Rwabalinda, an advisor to the
IRG army’s Chief of Staff.119 Rwabalinda, according to his account of the meeting, asked for
French diplomatic support, the return of the French military to Rwanda “or at the very least a
contingent of instructors to lend a hand in the framework of cooperation,” as well as ammunition
and equipment.120 Huchon responded by providing his interlocutors with a “secure telephone
allowing Gen. [Augustin] Bizimungu [the head of the IRG’s armed forces] and Gen. Huchon to
talk without being listened to (cryptophony) by a third party . . . .”121 It thus appears that Huchon—
whom Admiral Jacques Lanxade, President Mitterrand’s top military adviser until April 1991, had
designated as the primary contact for President Habyarimana during Lanxade’s tenure—was
setting up a direct communication link with the FAR’s chief of staff during the Genocide.
Years later, Gen. Huchon admitted to having provided the telephone, but said his intention
was “to try to limit the consequences of phone tapping by extremist elements in control of
telephone switchboards in Rwanda,” as if Gen. Bizimungu was not himself an extremist.122 But
Huchon insisted that he “never had protected telephone connections with any Rwandan military
authority” and further had “no idea of what became of that telephone set.”123
For other IRG requests, Huchon explained to his guests that “French soldiers have their
hands and feet tied [with regard to] carry[ing] out an intervention in [the IRG’s] favor because of
the opinion of the media that only the RPF seems to be leading.”124 He entreated the IRG to
“provide without delay all the evidence proving the legitimacy of the war waged by Rwanda so
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that international opinion can be turned in Rwanda’s favor and bilateral cooperation can be
resumed.”125 “The French government,” Huchon continued along these lines during subsequent
meetings, according to Rwabalinda’s account, “will not accept being accused of supporting people
whom international opinion condemns and who do not defend themselves. The media fight is an
emergency.”126 Huchon would, years later, suggest that he had urged Rwabalinda and Ntahobari
during the 9 May 1994 meeting to tell Kigali to stop the massacres,127 but Rwabalinda understood
Huchon’s concern to be the media not the massacres.
Huchon may have made other assurances to Rwabalinda. Rwabalinda’s 16 May report on
the meeting mentions, cryptically, that “the military cooperation mission is preparing relief actions
to be carried out in our favor.”128 The next day, 17 May—the day the United Nations passed the
arms embargo and decided to supplement UNAMIR troops (see discussion below)—an RTLM
hate media announcer crowed that he had received the “good news” that France would send troops
with the United Nations and “once again” provide “substantial assistance,” which it had “promised
to increase.”129 To “continue to receive this kind of good news,” the announcer admonished, “they
request that it should no longer be possible to see a dead body in the street or that no one else starts
killing while others observe the scene laughing, instead of handing it over to the authorities.”130 It
would seem that this is how IRG authorities interpreted Huchon’s message of support: stop the
massacres—or, at least, hide them from the media—and the French government would resume
assistance.
The French government knew that the IRG bore “obvious responsibility for the current
massacres,” as the DGSE had put it on 2 May 1994.131 Continuing to communicate with its
emissaries allowed French officials, according to Huchon and Védrine, to apply pressure to end
the Genocide. But the French government continued to offer a carrot—the return of its support—
but no stick. There is no evidence that French officials threatened any diplomatic or military
consequences for failing to stop the Genocide. Without such a threat, any anti-genocidal message
was muted by signals that the French government continued to favor its historical allies in Rwanda,
despite their involvement in the Genocide. And if, in fact, the French government continued to
provide “discreet” military aid during this period, any message of restraint was meaningless.
Veneranda132
Veneranda was 26 years old and had two children at the time of the Genocide.
During the genocide, they wanted to kill people from the Tutsi ethnic group.
My husband was a Tutsi, and so was my Dad. My mother is Hutu. There was no
way my husband could have escaped. They came and killed him, and I remained
with the children.
...
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I could have chosen to be on my mother’s side and be called a Hutu since the
Hutus were not threatened. I chose instead to remain with my children because I
couldn’t imagine life without them afterwards.
My husband’s entire family—his mother, brothers and sisters—were all
killed. Nobody survived in his family. I was one of a family of five, and today only
my older sister and I survive from my Dadʹs family. My mother is also still alive,
but we have no one else left.
About five minutes after my husband was taken away, a young man called
John came. He found me crying. He told me he had heard that they were going to
come and kill the children and me. He said they wanted to wipe out my husband’s
entire family, and he wanted to protect us. I left with him.
It was getting dark when we got to his house. He hid me in the bedroom so
that no one could see me. He left for a while, but then came back at around seven
in the evening. He told me that I was going to agree to anything he asked me to do,
since he had agreed to hide me. I asked him what I might be able to do since I was
hiding at his place.
He replied that there was something he wanted me to do, and I would just
have to agree. I was scared. As an adult, I was starting to understand what he
meant. He told me to lie down on the bed. I refused and said that I wasn’t going to,
that he could kill me just as they had killed my husband. He had a knife, and he
threw it at me here on the knee, where I have a scar. He said he was going to do
what he wanted to do—with or without my permission—since he was stronger
than me. And that’s when he made me do everything he wanted.
For three weeks, he used to come and rape me as he wished. He told me I
shouldn’t try leaving the house because there was a roadblock outside his gate. If I
tried to leave, they would kill me very painfully. He said that he’d kill me himself
if I tried to escape. He used to stand with other people at that roadblock and said I
shouldnʹt make the mistake of trying to run away. The people outside would kill
me.
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F. During the Genocide, French Mercenaries Paul Barril and Bob Denard Allegedly Provided
Training and Ammunition to the FAR, with the Knowledge of the French Government.
France’s “discreet” support to the IRG may have included not only possible clandestine
provision of ammunition and military cooperants, but tacit facilitation of, or at least deliberate
indifference to, the assistance offered to the IRG by French mercenaries Paul Barril and Bob
Denard. Eyewitness accounts and documents show each of them had significant involvement in
Rwanda during the Genocide and suggest they did so with the knowledge of, and perhaps at the
behest of, the French government.
1. Paul Barril
A third-generation gendarme, Barril co-founded two seminal French law enforcement
organizations: in 1974, the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), an elite
tactical unit in the Gendarmerie that he commanded from 1982 to 1984;133 and, in 1982, the
Élysée’s anti-terrorist cell.134 Barril would later leave both organizations and become the subject
of much controversy,135 after GIGN officers under his authority planted evidence on three
members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) to frame them for an August 1982 terrorist
attack in Paris.136 Barril escaped prosecution, but a central figure in the plot claimed that the
framing was Barril’s idea,137 an account that has been widely accepted in the French media.138
In a 2004 interview with documentarian Raphaël Glucksmann, Barril said that after leaving
the French government, his status became “ambiguous,” but he was still “paid by the defense
[ministry].”139 He went on to say that his involvement in Rwanda was “parallel diplomacy.”140
Barril also asserted that President Mitterrand was aware of his activities because he provided
memoranda for the president through his advisor, François de Grossouvre.141
Barril also worked for the Habyarimana family. The MIP, which reportedly allowed Barril
to dodge its requests for testimony with the excuse that he was out of the country,142 concluded
that Barril traveled to Rwanda during the Genocide with President Habyarimana’s son and son-inlaw at the behest of Habyarimana’s widow, Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana, to investigate the late
president’s assassination.143 While such an investigation may have been part of his undertaking,
Barril’s mission to Rwanda appears to have been broader. During the Genocide itself, Barril was
heavily engaged in supporting the genocidal IRG; he received money for a variety of services, and
the French government was aware of his actions.
On 27 April 1994, IRG Minister of Defense Augustin Bizimana wrote directly to Barril
urgently requesting 1,000 men to fight alongside the IRG’s army.144 On or about 6 May, Barril
traveled to Rwanda.145 According to internal IRG documents, the IRG paid Barril $130,000 for a
“survey team” to fly to the country.146
Eleven days after the United Nations issued its 17 May 1994 arms embargo that would
“prohibit the sale or delivery to Rwanda, by or through their nationals, … of armaments and related
materiel of any kind including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment,
paramilitary police equipment and refill pieces,”147 Barril signed an “Assistance Contract” with
IRG Prime Minister Jean Kambanda to provide small arms, ammunition, mortars, shells, grenades,
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and rifle grenades.148 The contract also committed Barril to providing 20 specialists to train and
supervise men “in the field,” which in itself does not appear to have violated the UN arms embargo,
but the stipulation that these specialists were to come outfitted with equipment likely would
have.149 The total value of the contract for the weapons, ammunition, and mercenary trainers was
$3.1 million.150 Although Barril appears to have been paid a little more than one-third of that
amount on 15 June,151 he does not appear to have delivered what he promised; a 13 September
1994 letter from IRG Defense Minister Augustin Bizimana to IRG Prime Minister Jean Kambanda
recommended seeking reimbursement from Barril for the advance paid on the 28 May 1994
contract.152
Beyond contracting to supply the IRG with weapons, Barril was involved in training FAR
soldiers. A member of the Rwandan Gendarmerie’s état-major at the time of the Genocide has said
that the goal of Barril and his associates was to train an elite group of more than 30 FAR soldiers
to penetrate behind enemy lines.153 The mission was announced sometime between mid-April and
early June 1994 and was ominously dubbed “Operation Insecticide,”154 a reference to the antiTutsi slur “inyenzi” or “cockroach.” In a 2 June 1994 “situation report,” Barril described how he
“set up four commando elements with a strength of 80 men” at Camp Bigogwe in the northwest.155
These units were “tasked with harassment and destruction in the enemy’s rear.”156
How long this training lasted and whether Barril and his men continued to support the
mission beyond the training is unclear. IRG Prime Minister Jean Kambanda told ICTR
investigators that in June 1994 he met one of Barril’s men, who was training teams in the Gishwati
region in northwest Rwanda, near Camp Bigogwe. Kambanda said the technician “stayed with us
for a week in Gisenyi before disappearing.”157
Whatever the full extent of Barril’s services to the IRG, French officials were at least aware
of some of his activities in real time. As early as 2 June 1994, a DGSE report acknowledged that
“it seems that Captain Barril . . . in liaison with the Habyarimana family taking refuge in Paris, is
engaged in a noteworthy activity with a view to supplying ammunition and the armament with the
governmental forces.”158 Mitterrand himself revealed some degree of awareness of Barril’s
exploits, when he pointedly distanced the Élysée from Barril’s actions during a 1 July 1994
meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. “Captain Barril is a rogue,” Mitterrand told
Museveni. “I do not trust him. He is retired from the French army, he is in the private sector, he is
a mercenary. He never worked here at the Élysée, I have never seen him.”159
Whether the French government eventually took steps to reign in Barril is unclear. To the
extent that a French court now investigating Barril could clarify this and other questions
surrounding Barril’s services to the IRG, it has been exceedingly slow to take action. On 24 June
2013, three French human rights organizations lodged a complaint against Barril on grounds of
complicity in genocide.160 Since then, however, the case has languished. In January 2019, one of
the human rights groups, Survie, took issue with the delay: “The investigation is progressing
slowly, while Barril is now old and ill. . . . It has been almost 7 years.”161 The court ignored the
criticism. By April 2020, nothing had changed. Survie released a public statement condemning
this miscarriage of justice:
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[L]egal cases involving French civilians or soldiers such as the complaint against
Paul Barril . . . have not seen any significant progress in the past year: at best, they
are not a priority for the investigation division against crimes against humanity and
crimes of genocide . . . ; at worst, they are instructed in a mode of self-censorship
where the justice system refrains from going into the role of certain people who
have been influential . . . . At this rate, there is no doubt that Paul Barril and the
other accused of complicity in genocide will be able to end their days without ever
being worried.”162
2. Bob Denard
Paul Barril was not the only French mercenary active in Rwanda with the knowledge of
the French government. The IRG also tried to enlist the assistance of Bob Denard, known in France
as the “chien de guerre” [war dog] or “l’affreux” [the dreadful].163 Denard had served in the French
navy in Indochina and Algeria before becoming a mercenary involved in several civil wars and
coups d’état in Africa and the Middle East.164 As a mercenary, Denard continued to work in the
interest of and with tacit approval from the French state:
[Denard] has always acted with the green or yellow light from the French political
authorities. But in doing so, he first sought to enrich himself. This is the principle
of privateers who always served the same master. Robert Denard has always served
the policy of France, “Françafrique.”165
Documentation analyzed by Survie demonstrates that the IRG paid Denard under his alias
Robert B. Martin, with Denard acting through a company called Martin & Co.166 While a contract
is not available, it was likely signed around 17 June 1994, when IRG Defense Minister Bizimana
ordered funds transferred for the benefit of a “Mr. B Martin,” pursuant to “a technical assistance
contract with” the IRG’s Ministry of Defense.167 On the same day, Minister Bizimana wrote to
Col. Ntahobari (defense attaché at the Rwandan embassy in France) authorizing the payment of
$40,000 for a reconnaissance mission previously conducted by Denard.168 On 5 July 1994, the day
after the RPF took Kigali, the IRG169 made another payment to Denard for 1,086,000 French francs
(equivalent to about $200,000).170
According to a 13 September 1994 letter from IRG Defense Minister Bizimana to IRG
Prime Minister Kambanda, Denard’s company was “to train our people on the gathering and
analyzing of intelligence within the ranks of the enemy.”171 Denard was “prepared to deploy 8
expatriate cadres for this activity.”172 That is to say, months after the Genocide had ended and the
genocidal IRG was driven into exile, Denard was prepared to aid them. However, Denard had not
followed through by 29 September, when the ex-FAR’s chief-of-staff, Gen. Augustin Bizimungu,
concluded that a “contract for training in military intelligence for an amount of US $40,000 . . .
was not executed. The amount is to be recovered.”173
Certainly, the DGSE, the French intelligence agency, was aware that Denard was working
on behalf of the IRG six weeks into the Genocide, as a 25 May 1994 DGSE note on “Attempts by
the presidential clan to retain power” confirms:
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Seeing its room to maneuver shrink as the rebel troops advance, the family of the
former Rwandan president is ready to use any means to retain power. . . .
At the same time, Mr. Bob Denard is continuing his preparations for an operation
that could be linked to the recovery of the Kigali International Airport and the
delivery of ammunition resupply. He intends to return to Rwanda (1) as early as
Thursday, May 26, 1994.
(1) A team of Mr. Bob Denard is reportedly stationed in Kenya with equipment and
plans to proceed to Rwanda shortly.174
In a February 2018 report on Denard, Survie alleged that his activities were “tolerated,” if
not “encouraged” by the French state.175 At the very least, the DGSE was aware of Denard’s
exploits in Rwanda.176 “But of course,” the report pointed out, “[Denard] has never been pursued
for these activities.”177
G. At the United Nations, French Officials Continued to Obstruct Attempts to Hold the
Génocidaires Responsible for the Slaughter in Rwanda.
Even as some members of the UN Security Council moved toward using the word
“genocide,” French officials in late April 1994 continued to push for moral equivalence between
the RPF and the IRG while obstructing attempts to lay blame where it belonged. In this effort, UN
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali continued to be an ally. While Boutros-Ghali wrote a 29
April letter to the Security Council urging the United Nations to re-examine its decision to
withdraw UNAMIR forces and consider “forceful action” in Rwanda, he once again described the
massacres as orchestrated by “uncontrolled military” and “armed groups of civilians,” not the
IRG.178 The distinction later prompted historian Alison Des Forges to observe that “[BoutrosGhali] continued to obscure the government directed nature of the genocide and lent his credibility
to the deliberately inaccurate depiction of the slaughter being disseminated by some
representatives of France and by the genocidal government itself.”179 Even at the time, Council
Members responded to Boutros-Ghali with “irritation” and saw his letter, at least in part, “as an
exercise in blame shifting,” according to a cable by Colin Keating, the New Zealand
ambassador.180
The French government’s efforts on behalf of the IRG scuttled even a symbolic Security
Council statement drafted by Czech Ambassador Karel Kovanda that used the word “genocide”
and blamed the IRG for failing to rein in the Presidential Guard and other genocidal elements of
its army, warning the IRG to do so “immediately.”181 But the French delegation and the Rwandan
delegation, which, held a rotating seat on the Security Council in 1994,182 were opposed to
assigning responsibility to the IRG.183 (Unlike his French counterparts, Kovanda also did not
prevaricate about the IRG: “The legitimacy of the current so-called interim government . . . is not
at all clear and many people here consider it a bunch of self-selected people. . . . France, by contrast,
is receiving members of the interim government in Paris.”184)
The deliberations lasted two days, including one “acrimonious debate that lasted eight
hours.”185 At one point, French Ambassador Mérimée suggested introducing a reference to NGO
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reporting that claimed the RPF was also committing civilian massacres.186 However, “when
directly asked . . . which NGOs have reported about RPF massacres,” as Amb. Kovanda cabled to
Prague, “[Ambassador Mérimée] didn’t respond (and judging from all we know about Rwanda, he
couldn’t respond.)”187 (Indeed, as French Ambassador to Rwanda Jean-Michel Marlaud cabled
home on 13 May, after meetings in the Great Lakes region, “[m]any of my interlocutors mentioned
the massacres in government zone, which some people have described as genocide. There is no
evidence of such acts on a comparable scale in the RPF zone.”188) Eventually, the deadlock was
broken when the Council’s President, Ambassador Keating of New Zealand, threatened to declare
the meeting an open session, with each country’s objections made public.189 According to the US
delegation, this likely would have shamed the French government into supporting the original
letter.190 The members managed to come to resolution: the final statement assigned blame to both
the IRG and RPF and omitted the word “genocide.”191
Hopes in the international community that the French government would at least condemn
those responsible for the Genocide foundered.192 For instance, in 9 and 10 May meetings between
US and French diplomats meant to persuade France to support a possible investigation by the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees into the Genocide, the French officials resisted or watered down
the initiative, for instance requesting assurances that no investigation would impose a “collective
guilt” on those responsible.193
No country had more influence in Rwanda, but French officials proved unwilling to use it.
French officials could, at the very least, have followed US diplomats’ lead and implored the IRG
to put a stop to the incendiary broadcasts of RTLM and other Rwandan hate media,194 which were
widely known to have incited listeners to murder Tutsi.195 Available records, though, indicate it
took until early July 1994, nearly three months after the Genocide began, before a French diplomat
finally urged the IRG to halt the broadcasts.196 The French government could, in addition, have
attempted to jam the broadcasts, as US officials considered but ultimately declined to do in early
May 1994.197 France would, eventually, explore this option,198 but even after deciding to ship the
necessary equipment to the region in July 1994, it never jammed the broadcasts.199
NGOs hoped France would intervene as only it could, the President of the International
Committee of the Red Cross arguing on 9 May that France had a “special role” to play in resolving
the crisis.200 MSF also stepped up pressure, as Dr. Jean-Hervé Bradol, the director of MSF’s
Rwanda programs, recounted in 2014:
I returned to Paris in early May 1994. . . . [W]e still had some hope that the French
government would intervene with its friends to reduce the massacres and create
sanctuaries for those who were being pursued. At this point, the French government
had not condemned the Genocide in Rwanda a single time. In order to get them
involved, we started an aggressive media campaign on the theme of the
responsibility of France, both on local TV and radio stations, and the first channel
of French TV, which has several million viewers a night.201
Mitterrand was not predisposed to accept the idea that France had a responsibility to help
the people of Rwanda. “France, being a Francophone country, was constantly called for help, and
we sent soldiers over there,” he remarked in a 10 May television interview. “But we did not send
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an army to fight. We are not destined to go to war everywhere, even when it is horror that strikes
us in the face.”202
There had long been a strain of fatalism in Mitterrand’s views on ethnic conflict and ethnic
slaughter. Jacques Attali, who had served as an advisor to Mitterrand between 1981 and 1991,
once wrote that Mitterrand had adopted a pragmatic, if cold, mindset in the face of an earlier
genocide: the mass killing of Jews during the Holocaust.203 In Attali’s telling, Mitterrand, though
“furiously anti-Hitlerian,” had viewed genocide as “only an act of war, not a human
monstrosity.”204 Mitterrand’s outlook on the ethnic violence in Rwanda appears to have been
similarly dispassionate, as though he considered the bloodletting inevitable. One journalist would
report in 1998 that Mitterrand, referring to the Genocide in Rwanda, remarked to family members
in the summer of 1994: “In such countries, genocide is not too important.”205
On 11 May 1994, Foreign Minister Alain Juppé struck a note similar in tone to Mitterrand’s
sounding in his 10 May television interview. When asked why the world was so quick to respond
to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia but not in Rwanda, Juppé responded, “I do not believe that the
international community can go and police everywhere on the planet and send intervention forces
wherever people are fighting.”206 Then he again called for “a new cease-fire, a political
agreement.”207
On 16 May, however, Juppé finally changed his position on at least one aspect of the
conflict. That day, the European Union convened to recommend the dispatch to Rwanda of 5,500
additional UN peacekeeping troops, also calling for an arms embargo on what it referred to as a
“genocide.”208 Juppé concurred with its language: “What is currently being perpetrated in Rwanda
deserves the name genocide. The massacres are appalling, mainly in the area held by government
forces.”209 Olivier Lanotte, the central Africa specialist, has speculated that Juppé wanted to
pressure France to end military support to the FAR.210 Lanotte wrote as if in Juppé’s voice, “I
recognized that this is genocide. You can no longer ignore the genocidal reality of the Interim
Government. If you don’t want France to be accused of complicity one day, cut the bridges!”211
However, as Lanotte added in a footnote, “According to a source close to the Élysée Palace, Alain
Juppé’s outburst about the ‘genocide’ was more aimed at breaking Matignon’s ‘lock’—Édouard
Balladur was extremely reticent about any idea of intervention in Rwanda—than at putting an end
to any French military presence in Rwanda.”212
The next day, on 17 May, the United Nations passed Resolution 918, with French
support.213 It reversed the disastrous 21 April resolution by expanding UNAMIR’s mandate, which
would now include securing and protecting “civilians at risk” and supporting humanitarian relief
operations; by empowering UNAMIR to use force not only in self-defense, but in protection of
others; and, not least of all, by authorizing the United Nations to boost UNAMIR’s force level to
as many as 5500 troops.214 The 17 May resolution also imposed an arms embargo, banning the
sale of weapons, ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, and police equipment to
Rwanda.215
Juppé’s acknowledgement that what was happening in Rwanda was, indeed, a “genocide”
came roughly six weeks into the killings; by that time, as the historian Gérard Prunier would later
point out in his testimony before the MIP, “at least 600,000 people were dead.”216 For many
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countries, though, even those, such as France and the United States, that had been reluctant to
apply the word “genocide” to the events in Rwanda, the inadequacy of all other terms was
becoming manifest.217 A 19 May report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, José
Ayala Lasso, following his high-profile visit to Rwanda the previous week, confirmed that
“extremely serious violations of human rights” were continuing to take place and took particular
note of massacres in IRG-controlled territory.218 Though he omitted the detail from his official
report, Lasso told diplomats that FAR Chief of Staff Bizimungu warned him that “[i]f the RPF
continues the war, . . . ‘We’ll exterminate all Tutsis.’”219
On 25 May, just a few days after Lasso released his report, the UN Commission on Human
Rights approved a resolution acknowledging “that genocidal acts may have occurred in Rwanda”
and calling for a special rapporteur to investigate all such “breaches of international humanitarian
law and crimes against humanity.”220 During the debate over the resolution, which was notably
mild,221 French Minister Delegate for Humanitarian Action Lucette Michaux-Chevry
unequivocally asserted that a genocide had occurred in Rwanda and said the world was waiting
for those responsible “to be judged and condemned.”222
Michaux-Chevry purported to be articulating the “French position.”223 Juppé, though,
would later acknowledge that some French officials thought in May 1994 that, in using the word
“genocide,” he (that is, Juppé) had gone “a little too far.”224 It was, however, around this same
time, as Juppé would note, that French officials were increasingly recognizing that a military
intervention might be required in Rwanda.225 But not only because the 5,500 UN troops (in what
would be known as “UNAMIR II”) would be very slow in arriving: By the time Juppé made his
16 May announcement, Mitterrand’s Élysée advisors were convinced that the RPF, if left
unchecked, was going to win the war.226
H. Despite Intensified Public Criticism of French Inaction in Late May and Early June, the
French Government Continued to Insist It Had No Obligations in Rwanda.
I have sometimes heard that France has failed in its duties; this is incorrect.
The first duty of a country is to only dispose of the lives of its soldiers to
defend its independence or to preserve its integrity. . . . what is this divine
decree that made France the soldier of all just causes in the world.227
– François Mitterrand, President of France (1981 – 1995)
In the weeks following Alain Juppé’s recognition of the Genocide and the United Nations’
renewed promises to intervene, French policy was animated by severe media criticism of its
inaction and the antiquated understanding of Rwanda that had informed French policy since 1990.
The French media had given “accolades to the [French] government for the evacuation of French
nationals,” when the Genocide had begun, but by mid-May the tone of the coverage shifted
dramatically.228 On 17 May, Reuters reported that the French government stood accused of
abetting the Genocide that Juppé had just acknowledged: “The French government has been
accused by diplomats and humanitarian organizations, since the beginning of the massacres five
weeks ago, of continuing to support the Rwandan government, made up of Hutus, despite the
involvement of regular army soldiers in the massacres of Tutsis and opponents.”229
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To French officials like Dominique Pin, Bruno Delaye’s deputy at the Élysée’s Africa Cell,
what these dispatches demonstrated was bias. “At the initiative of certain non-governmental
organizations like MSF . . . a polemic on France’s policy towards Rwanda is developing . . . in
which France is accused of ‘having an enormous responsibility in the current massacres in
Rwanda’,” he wrote in a 17 May situation update, quoting an open letter from MSF to President
Mitterrand.230
The next day, an article in Libération “cut very close to the bone” in the upper ranks of
French government, as a US cable reported.231 The article aired criticisms of France’s history of
supporting the FAR, its indifference to human rights violations, and its longstanding policy of
emphasizing the peace process in public while supporting the IRG and opposing the RPF behind
the scenes.232 The piece also reported that Bruno Delaye had personally intervened with Rwandan
military leaders in early May to prevent a massacre of Tutsi and opposition Hutu seeking refuge
at Kigali’s Hotel Milles Collines, which prompted a source at the Quai d’Orsay to break ranks and
observe that it was “a one-time effort, and it shows how much Paris can still influence the course
of events.”233
The article prompted the usual denials. As Dominique Pin told Françoise Carle,
Mitterrand’s assistant:
As in Bosnia, France is the only country that tries to avoid these massacres. We
tried a political settlement, and we are accused of arming and financing the
murderers. The “Liberation” article this morning is a collection of false confidences
and innuendos, which maintain the idea that French policy is responsible.234
But France’s policy was shifting in response. On the day Libération ran its exposé, in a
meeting of Mitterrand’s Restricted Council, which included the president, key cabinet members,
and military leaders, Alain Juppé floated the idea of contributing French troops to UNAMIR: “So
far the Secretary General has not asked for French participation with the exception of logistical aid
to the Senegalese contingent, mainly trucks. . . . Should we go further [than that]? The question is
asked.”235 Juppé noted that any French involvement would be met with “very strong objections”
from the RPF, and that French soldiers would be directly threatened.236
In another ministerial meeting the same day, Prime Minister Édouard Balladur and
Minister of Cooperation Michel Roussin made their own arguments, however modest, for a
stepped-up French response—Balladur worried that it was not enough to provide logistical support
for the 5,500 new UNAMIR II troops, as France had committed;237 Roussin proposed increasing
humanitarian aid.238 Perception continued to worry them no less than substance: responding to
another excoriation from MSF, Balladur requested a list of talking points about France’s history
in Rwanda,239 and Roussin advocated for a “publicized visit” to refugee camps by France’s
minister of health.240 But Balladur supported Roussin’s suggestions and made the argument that
in Rwanda’s case, “France cannot be absent.”241 Their position, however, did not resonate with
Mitterrand, who said: “I have sometimes heard that France has failed in its duties; this is incorrect.
The first duty of a country is to only dispose of the lives of its soldiers to defend its independence
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or to preserve its integrity. . . . what is this divine decree that made France the soldier of all just
causes in the world.”242
Few organizations were as critical of France, and as authoritative in that criticism, as MSF,
whose representatives had declared on French television that France bore “overwhelming
responsibility” for what was happening in Rwanda.243 Jean-Hervé Bradol, MSF’s director of
Rwanda programs, had particularly severe words for the superficiality of Roussin’s proposals:
Mr. Roussin, minister of cooperation, hopes to restore France’s image in Rwanda
through the French non-governmental organizations present in the field. Despite
his insistent requests, NGOs are more than reluctant to participate in this farce. The
political nature of the conflict is obvious, while Western observers most often limit
themselves to watching events in Rwanda through the prism of interethnic or tribal
wars. This is the latest affront to the victims.244
Two days earlier, Bradol had appeared on the French news television program TV1 and declared,
“The people who are massacring today, who are implementing this planned and systematic policy
of extermination, are financed, trained and armed by France.”245
On 19 May, Bruno Delaye and Dominique Pin summoned Bradol and Philippe Biberson
(MSF’s president) to the Élysée. The participants had very different recollections of the meeting.
As always, in his report to Mitterrand, Delaye was reassuring: “I explained to them at length the
French policy in Rwanda since 1990 . . . They recognized the positive role played by France from
1990 to 1994 and seemed to share, at least in part, our analysis of each other’s responsibilities,
including the RPF, in this drama.”246 But as Bradol recounted in 2014, the meeting broke down as
it became clear the French were focused on rhetoric, not action:
Bruno Delaye gave us the usual runaround about Arusha, explaining the diplomacy
that France was conducting. Philippe [Biberson] stressed the need to do something
to help the victims in Rwanda. Bruno Delaye told us that he was unable to reach
his Rwandan correspondents on the telephone. Since he saw that we were highly
annoyed with this type of answer, he said, “Don’t get excited, and don’t go to the
media. If Médecins Sans Frontières still has problems, you should speak directly to
the French President, François Mitterrand.” At this point, Philippe Biberson said,
“No, we do not want to meet the president just to hear more talk about the Arusha
Accords and the same French policies.”247
Catherine Choquet, project manager for the French human-rights group Fédération
internationale pour les droits humains (FIDH), recalled several meetings with Delaye and Pin
around the same time MSF met with Delaye (between April and July 1994). She and Human Rights
Watch activist Alison Des Forges tried to convince them to use France’s influence to pressure the
IRG to stop the massacres, but “[i]t felt like screaming in a void,” Choquet told journalists.248 She
continued, “I still remember what Bruno Delaye immediately told us during our first meeting,
when the genocide had just begun: ‘You see we were right to support Habyarimana, you see what
happens as soon as he’s no longer there!’ We were stunned.”249
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In another example of the twisted thinking that continued to guide French officials nearly
two months into the Genocide, President Mitterrand, in a 31 May 1994 breakfast meeting with
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, implied that France had not been partisan in supporting
Habyarimana and suggested that France was ill-positioned to solve the present crisis (a position
he would reverse in two weeks).250 “[I]t’s up to the UN to do something,” Mitterrand insisted,
absolving his own government of any duty to act.251 He grumbled, as an aside, that the commonly
held perception of what was taking place in Rwanda—a genocide against the Tutsi—was all
wrong. “We have been accused of supporting the previous regime,” he lamented. But, he said, “we
have a one-sided account of the massacre. The reality is that ‘everyone is killing everyone.’”252
This was Mitterrand’s defense for having aided the extremists who were now perpetrating a
genocide: to paint the killing in Rwanda as all but indiscriminate, and to insinuate that France’s
former allies, however evil their actions might be, were no worse than the RPF.
For Mitterrand, the RPF was the problem: three days after meeting with Kohl, he would
tell Bernard Granjon, the head of the medical-relief organization Médecins du Monde (Doctors of
the World), “[W]e have supported the legitimate government against an external aggression. We
have secured the Arusha accords, organizing a shared exercise of power. After the assassination
of President Habyarimana, the RPF will come to power: for the abuses, we will see what will
happen then!”253
On 7 June, Le Monde joined the chorus of voices reproaching the fecklessness of the French
position:
Marked by its recent “pro-Hutu” past . . . France today seems unable to exert any
influence in the region. This is undoubtedly the reason why it prides itself on doing
the maximum in humanitarian matters, by granting unprecedented funding to nongovernmental organizations . . . As if the government, for lack of political means,
was passing the baton to these organizations.254
The article made another indispensable point: all of this was foreseeable. For years, the French
media and NGOs had “preached in the desert” about the dangers of French policy in Rwanda, but
“the presence of French military forces alongside the Rwandan government army from October
1990 to December 1993 had aroused nothing but indifference” in French public opinion.255 Not
much had changed, according to one unnamed French official, who told Le Monde that “[t]here
are two schools of thought in France. . . On the one hand, there are those who still want us to rearm the Rwandan government forces. On the other hand, there are all those who think that nothing
could be settled without the RPF.”256
Neither camp, unsurprisingly, seems to have considered siding with the RPF in its efforts
against the perpetrators of the ongoing genocide. Certainly, some French officials, such as General
Huchon, the head of the Military Cooperation Mission, would have found the very notion
unthinkable. Huchon’s antipathy to the RPF ran so deep that he even advocated for cutting ties
with UNAMIR, which he perceived as having a pro-RPF bent.257 “Can we still support and
subsidize the destabilizing actions of General Dallaire in this French-speaking subregion?” he
asked, rhetorically, in an 8 June 1994 note. “We will soon officially reach the 500,000th death. At
what number will we stop?”258 Incredible as it may seem, Huchon’s qualm with UNAMIR was
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not that it had been impotent in the face of mass murder, but that it was biased against the IRG.
Huchon did not see why France should support the launch of UNAMIR II, which, he argued, would
only “serve the RPF strategy.”259 His note hinted at a growing desire, among some French officials,
to circumvent UNAMIR and mount a French-led intervention in Rwanda.
I. France’s African Allies Pressured the French Government to Act in Rwanda.
The pressure for France to take action in Rwanda was coming, as well, from France’s
African partners. As a Foreign Ministry source told Libération, “If we fail to keep our word”—
ostensibly referring to the 1975 Franco-Rwandan military technical assistance agreement—“our
credibility vis-à-vis other African states would be seriously damaged, and we might see these states
turn toward other support.”260 This was also the logic expressed by General Quesnot in a 24 June
1994 memo to Mitterrand: “Our interventions including in Rwanda were based on the principle
always respected since 1960 of non-acceptance by France of an aggression against a friendly
African country, bound by defense or cooperation agreements, coming from a neighboring
country.”261 For Quesnot, “the immediate and unreserved support of all the French-speaking heads
of state” for French intervention was “the best proof” that this geopolitical philosophy was
sound.262 “If France were to renounce this course of action today,” Quesnot continued, “the
domestic instability of states would increase even more and all of our cooperation and defense
agreements would be discredited.”263
As early as April 1994, French officials met with Zairean President Mobutu to reportedly
seek safe passage for French troops into Rwanda through Zaire in exchange for recognition of
Mobutu’s regime amid increasing international isolation.264 The following month, Zaire’s prime
minister secretly visited Paris, where Rwanda was “central to discussions” and French officials
reportedly sought his political support for a unilateral intervention mission led by the French.265
By June, Zaire would approve France’s intervention plans and offer logistical assistance on the
ground; in the words of French intelligence at the time, this was done “in the obvious hope of
regaining international credibility” that came with France’s re-embrace of Mobutu.266 Similar
support would arrive from longstanding French allies in the Republic of Congo, Senegal, and
Gabon.267
President Omar Bongo of Gabon, whose nation was an invaluable partner to France’s statesponsored conglomerate, Elf Aquitaine, met with Alain Juppé on 3 June.268 Only a few years prior,
the French government had sent hundreds of soldiers to Gabon to help Bongo fend off
demonstrators.269 Unsurprisingly, “the problem of Rwanda was at the center of the meeting” with
Juppé, and was likely central to discussions that Bongo had with other French officials he met in
Paris throughout the week.270 Finally, Bongo met President Mitterrand on 8 June.271
Although no reports of the meeting are available, on 17 June President Bongo would tell
Libération that “[w]e need an intervention force.”272 Days before that, at an Organization of
African Unity (OAU) Summit in Tunis, “the GOF delegation came in for persistent criticism by
its African partners.”273 As recounted in a diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Paris, the
French delegation was
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taken aback by the insistence of their normally docile Francophone partners that
France, despite its desire to reduce its entanglement in Africa, needed to act if it
was going to retain any credibility in the region—especially after its decision to
“cut and run” following the evacuation of foreign nationals in April, leaving
Africans to be slaughtered while Europeans [were] saved.274
Adding to the pressure from Francophone allies was Nelson Mandela’s 13 June remarks at
the summit. When Mandela warned that “[t]he Rwandese situation is a rebuke to Africa . . . . We
must change all that; we must in action assert our will to do so,”275 it became a “clarion call” in
Paris, according to historian Gérard Prunier. France had to act first.276
J. Under Considerable Pressure, and for a Range of Reasons, Mitterrand and Other HighRanking French Officials Decided to Send French Troops Back to Rwanda.
The Tutsis will establish a military dictatorship to impose themselves
permanently. . . . A dictatorship based on ten percent of the population will
govern with new massacres.277
– François Mitterrand, President of France (1981 – 1995)
Beginning on the night of 12 June 1994, the RPF army laid siege to Gitarama, the city in
central Rwanda where the IRG had established its headquarters after fleeing Kigali in April.278 By
the afternoon of 13 June, the RPF attacks had forced the IRG to flee north toward Gisenyi and
west toward Cyangugu.279 Surveying the aftermath, General Dallaire told the United Nations that
“after losing Gitarama, [the FAR] may find it difficult to hold Kigali. Their morale seem[s] to be
absolutely shattered.”280 FAR para-commando commander Aloys Ntabakuze lamented that France
had “abandoned” them, while the international community “does nothing” against the RPF’s
advances, adding, “An army cannot defeat such a guerrilla on its own.”281
Whether in response to the IRG’s crippling losses, the appeals from President Bongo and
other Francophone African allies, or the increasing severity of the criticism by French NGOs and
media—or all of the above—Mitterrand announced his intentions for France to lead an intervention
in Rwanda. As he told a meeting of his cabinet on 15 June, “We absolutely have to do something[.]
I assume full responsibility for it.”282
At the meeting, Foreign Minister Juppé emerged as a particularly aggressive advocate for
intervention in service of humanitarian concerns. Having proposed to Balladur that the government
“study the possibility of a Franco-European and African air-land intervention in order to save the
massacred children and stop the fighting,”283 he asked: “Should we go further and consider an
intervention to exfiltrate the population?” He added: “We must consider a more beefed-up
intervention if UNAMIR is slow to deploy. I am in favor of that, without denying the difficulty.”284
The next morning in Libération, he would argue that “[i]t is a real duty to intervene that we have
in Rwanda. It is no longer the time to deplore the massacres, standing idly by, but the time to take
initiatives.”285
Only one month before, Juppé had declared, “I do not believe that the international
community can act as police and send peacekeeping forces every place where people fight.”286 It
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is unclear what accounted for his reversal, other than, perhaps, the tens of thousands of Rwandans
who had died in the intervening period.287 One account suggested that Juppe’s change of heart
came in response to “public pressure” following recent reports of killings of children and religious
figures.288 Whatever the cause of his turnabout, it was conspicuously late in coming. As a “source
in Paris” told the United Kingdom’s The Independent, “We said nothing during the massacres and
we voted for the UN force in Rwanda to be reduced when the killings started, but now the killing
is mostly over, we suddenly find a burning desire to save lives.”289
Prime Minister Balladur was more cautious than Juppé, but agreed that France had to
intervene: “We cannot, whatever the risks, remain inactive. For moral reasons, not because of the
media. In such dreadful cases, you have to take risks.”290 However, he argued that the operation
must be “limited in time”291 and, as he specified in a letter to Mitterrand on 21 June, confined to
humanitarian actions such as sheltering children, the sick, or terrorized populations.292 His careful
position may have been, in part, self-serving. As a US cable put it, “[t]he Rwanda affair could
leave an impression of incompetence and callousness that would have a negative effect for the
government in the upcoming Presidential elections,”293 in which Balladur was planning to stand.
Defense Minister François Léotard, on the other hand, was “very reluctant,” warning that
such an intervention was unlikely to receive any support from the RPF, without which France
would only be able to intervene in “Hutu[-controlled] zones,” opening itself to criticism from the
media.294 It was in reply to Léotard’s concern that Mitterrand said he would take responsibility for
the decision to intervene.295
What explained Mitterrand’s turnaround? Several considerations appear to have influenced
his thinking. The most charitable explanation, which Mitterrand reportedly hinted at in a 14 June
1994 meeting with MSF leadership, was that he was genuinely repulsed by what the IRG had done
to its country. As MSF Rwanda Director Bradol would later tell the MIP, Mitterrand, when asked
about “his feelings toward the interim government,” replied “that he considered it to be a gang of
assassins.”296 According to Bradol, Mitterrand also made a surprising comment about President
Habyarimana’s widow, Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana, saying, “She is possessed by the devil, if
she could, she would continue to call out for massacres from French radios. She is very difficult
to control.”297
Perhaps Mitterrand was merely placating his audience. Some commenters and observers
have suggested that Mitterrand’s decision to launch Operation Turquoise was born of other
motivations. As one French expert on African affairs, Antoine Glaser, would observe after the
operation’s launch, the decision to send 2,500 French troops to Zaire “is showing other Presidents
that [France] still has an Africa policy.”298 Mitterrand may also have had something else in mind:
his own legacy. As one unnamed French official reportedly remarked, Mitterrand “was thinking
of history. If he wanted to come out at the top, he could not let it be said that, faced with genocide,
he stood idly by.”299
Already at the time, as the US ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, wrote to
Washington, “The GOF’s [Government of France’s] sudden decision to intervene . . . has left many
in France and abroad wondering why France has chosen to act at this late date and what it hopes
to accomplish.”300 As she elaborated on the French rationale:
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Our discussions with a broad range of GOF Africanists have not revealed a wellreasoned plan for stabilizing the country; rather the GOF policy seems to spring
largely from an emotional reaction from the continued scenes of slaughter and a
steady drum-beat of criticism by the media and normally apolitical NGOs . . . . Our
strong impression that the GOF has yet to define its political goals or develop a plan
on stabilizing Rwanda . . . remains unchanged.”301
Senior French officials represented their about-face as an expression of courage,302 but all
the sudden talk of moral duty concealed a terrible liability even apart from the dissonance in
motivations between the Élysée and other power centers: their views of the conflict remained
unreformed. For instance, Juppé continued to see an ethno-state as the RPF’s goal, declaring to the
French Senate on 16 June that “20% of Tutsis, even if they are armed by certain countries in the
region, will not be able to impose their law to 80% of Hutus, and vice versa.”303 The reaction, at
least from the Socialist Party, was not positive: “The Socialist Party is deeply concerned about the
latest French proposals announced by Alain Juppé, which, under the guise of humanitarian action,
give a blank cheque to the perpetrators of the massacres.”304
Mitterrand, who had predicated France’s entanglement in Rwanda (“[w]e cannot limit our
presence”) on the idea, expressed in January 1991, that “it’s not normal that the Tutsi minority
wants to impose its rule over the Hutu majority,” continued to maintain the same views three and
a half years later.305 More than two months into a genocide that had claimed hundreds of thousands
of lives under the watch, and at the hands, of French allies in the IRG, Mitterrand remained
convinced that the prospect of a Tutsi government posed a greater threat to the long-term stability
of Rwanda: “The Tutsis will establish a military dictatorship to impose themselves permanently,”
he warned at a 22 June Restricted Council meeting.306 “Madness [had] seized” the “Hutu”
murderers after President Habyarimana’s assassination, Mitterrand continued to insist,
contradicting evidence of an organized and pre-conceived plan. And “the Tutsis,” he warned,
recycling his prior reasoning, would “establish a military dictatorship . . . based on ten percent of
the population [that] will govern with new massacres.”307 As Chapter 10 will detail, such
assumptions would permeate French decision-making throughout the ensuing operation,
compromising execution by the French troops tasked with carrying it out, not to mention
Rwandans’ hope for survival.
K. As French Officials Devised Turquoise, Planning Was Rushed, Specifics Were Scarce, and
Several Officials Advocated Operations to Prevent an RPF Takeover of Kigali and to Allow
the Establishment of a “Hutu Country” in Western Rwanda.
The French government would take pains to deny that it intended Turquoise troops to serve
as a buffer force meant to arrest the RPF’s advance. “This is not a political intervention operation
to separate the two camps,” Juppé told an interviewer on 16 June. “[I]t is a humanitarian operation
to protect the population.”308 Prime Minister Balladur similarly told the National Assembly the
following week, “This is an operation where force can be used but used with a solely humanitarian
aim. This force—I repeat clearly—is not a buffer force, but a force to protect civilians.”309
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Turquoise, though, was “obviously political,” as an anonymous French official
acknowledged in the 20 June 1994 issue of Libération.310 Through this operation, French forces
would be returning to a theater they knew well, where their longtime allies in the FAR were once
again locked in an intense battle with their mutual foe, the RPF. While it was generally agreed in
Paris that Turquoise should have what Admiral Lanxade described as a “humanitarian aspect,”311
it was equally clear that the operation would offer France yet another opportunity to influence the
outcome of the FAR’s war against the RPF. France’s ambassador to the UN, Jean-Bernard
Mérimée, conceded as much to New Zealand Ambassador Colin Keating, acknowledging that
aiding the FAR was “an inevitable outcome” of French intervention.312 While Mérimée
emphasized that contact with the RPF would be limited, and that any intervention “would prioritize
operations in [FAR] territory where massacres were the worst,” the New Zealand delegation noted
that this “would in practice serve as a deterrent against RPF advances.”313
French officials were not, initially, all of one mind about how Operation Turquoise ought
to proceed. Prime Minister Balladur, for one, fretted about “getting bogged down” in Rwanda.314
While Balladur has maintained, in the years since Turquoise, that he personally advocated for “a
strictly humanitarian operation, intended to save the lives of men regardless of their community
affiliation,”315 he has noted that other senior French officials had different ambitions. In a memoir,
Balladur wrote that “high-ranking military personnel” (likely a reference to General Quesnot and
Admiral Lanxade) considered dropping French paratroopers into Kigali with “the happy effect of
making the rebels retreat.”316 “I could not believe it,” he wrote. “[T]he planned intervention would
quickly take on the meaning of a colonial operation that we did not have the means to carry out,
and I absolutely refused to do so.”317
Records confirm that Quesnot and Lanxade were, in fact, in favor of sending French troops
to Kigali. Lanxade—to whom Mitterrand had entrusted the logistics of Turquoise, telling him, on
15 June, “You are master of the methods, Admiral”318—recognized quickly that it would not be
possible to send French forces straight to the capital,319 where fighting between the FAR and RPF
was under way.320 “Too dangerous, too risky,” Lanxade remarked at a 16 June meeting with
various representatives of the Élysée, Defense Ministry, and Foreign Ministry.321 He and Quesnot
agreed, though, that wherever the French forces landed, they would, in time, have to make their
way to Kigali.322
Hubert Védrine, the president’s top advisor, would later assert that France had
humanitarian reasons for wanting Turquoise troops to fan out widely (and even, perhaps, as far as
Kigali), telling documentarian Raphaël Glucksmann in 2004’s “Tuez-les tous!” (“Kill Them All”):
“We told ourselves that if we were going, we might as well secure as much as possible. So we
might as well intervene in an area as large as possible to try to stop the massacres. . . . We could
maybe even have gone to Kigali, if that had been necessary, useful.”323
Balladur, for his part, needed convincing. In a 17 June strategy meeting, his diplomatic
advisor, Bernard de Montferrand, said he was particularly concerned that sending troops to Kigali
would all but guaranteed a direct confrontation with RPF forces. “What frightens me,”
Montferrand said, “is that once we arrive in Kigali, we are on a front line and we can’t get out of
it.”324 Quesnot’s response, according to a transcript of notes from the meeting, was simply to say
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that France must “be practical.”325 He proposed that French forces launch their operations in
Cyangugu, in western Rwanda. After that, he said, “we’ll see.”326
Quesnot proceeded, on 18 June, to lay out two options for Mitterrand: The first was
“specific actions”—evacuations, the organization of humanitarian convoys, targeted protection of
populations—“coming from two bases in Zaire . . . without permanent presence on the ground.”327
The second was more ambitious: “A progressive action of securement and cessation of the
massacres,” starting “in Cyangugu to immediately save 8,000 threatened Tutsis (Operation to be
highly publicized).”328 Notably, Quesnot wrote, this approach “could make it possible to reach the
Kigali region and possibly extend to the RPF zone.”329
In his analysis of the options, Quesnot emphasized that the second plan “would make it
possible to extend control of threatened sites toward the east, including up to Kigali.”330 In
advocating for the second approach, the Quai d’Orsay (under Juppé), the defense staff (under
Admiral Jacques Lanxade), and Quesnot’s office felt that only a more permanent, progressive
presence on the ground would help stop massacres and assure a minimum of security for French
forces.331
Balladur reportedly “favor[ed] the first option,” not wanting France to maintain a
permanent presence in Rwanda.332 Quesnot and Delaye were aware of Balladur’s concerns, noting
for President Mitterrand that Balladur “made the operation conditional on the participation of at
least one European country, so as not to be accused by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which
would once again see its military victory slip away, of coming to the aid of the government and
those responsible for the massacres.”333 Their language is instructive. Quesnot and Delaye
understood that French soldiers would hardly have to engage with the RPF to achieve a deterrent
effect. The RPF would not dare threaten its reputation in the international community by
confronting an ostensibly humanitarian mission. Operation Turquoise could be Operation Noroît
by other means. The main thing was to get troops in Rwanda.
Two days later, Admiral Lanxade’s deputy, General Raymond Germanos, asked the
military commander in charge of operational planning for the joint staff of the armed forces to
develop a plan that in its initial stages would launch from Zaire and possibly Burundi and achieve
“gradually control the expanse of Hutu country toward Kigali.”334 Western Rwanda was not “Hutu
country.” It was Rwandan country. But French officials continued to view the conflict through an
ethnically determinist lens.335
This was not the only misconception to compromise the planning process. French officials
continued to maintain, reiterating the IRG’s line since the start of the Genocide, that the massacres
were the work of “gangs made up of uncontrolled Hutu civilians or soldiers,” as Admiral Jacques
Lanxade put it in a 15 June letter to Defense Minister Léotard.336 The DRM also held “militias and
uncontrolled soldiers”337 responsible. “Often they do not obey their superiors,” the DRM cable,
also dated 15 June, concluded. “They respond only to the call of blood.”338
The following day, a DRM memo absolved members of the FAR altogether. Asking “Who
Are The Murderers?”, the memo insisted: “It is not the part of the Rwandan army busy fighting
against [the RPF]. It is: the disbanded and uncontrolled units (presidential guard); [and] the antiPage | 383
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Tutsi militias (Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi), acting on their own accord or following calls
for ‘civil defense.’”339 In late April, US diplomats had “confronted [Col. Theoneste Bagosora] with
eyewitness accounts of Rwandan army complicity in the killings, and said the world did not believe
their (the IRG’s) party line.”340 Undoubtedly, French officials had access to the same evidence, as,
in June, President Mitterrand had privately denounced the IRG as a “gang of assassins.”341 But an
entirely different understanding guided the planning of Turquoise. In this context, it is not difficult
to see why French troops would arrive in Rwanda with the misconception that the violence was
perpetrated by rogue units.
Other than this, French officials appeared to have few concrete plans for what could not
help but be a complex operation. Questioned by US representatives on 20 June regarding “what
instructions the French troops would have for dealing with those identified as leading or being
responsible for massacres, Alain Girma, the Africa specialist at the French embassy in
Washington, “acknowledged that a policy ha[d] not yet been worked out,” and that it would be
good to have one.342
But French officials wanted to move quickly. (Quesnot wrote Mitterrand on 20 June, while
the mission did not yet have a UN mandate and the plans were still developing, that the Defense
Ministry was about to position 2,500 French troops in Goma and Bukavu, at the northern and
southern ends of Lake Kivu, respectively, on Zaire’s border with Rwanda.343) The urgency had
less to do with saving Genocide victims than another matter: getting to Rwanda before the RPF
took Kigali. On 20 June, as Quesnot wrote Mitterrand, “on the ground, the RPF has launched a
general offensive supported by considerable resources in Kigali and towards the [West] (Kibuye)
and the South (Butare),”344 which the DRM, the army’s intelligence agency, evaluated as an
attempt “to precede, in order to prevent, the arrival of the forces of a possible intervention
dominated by France.”345
This concern had humanitarian camouflage—“the risk of Hutu retaliation on Tutsi
minorities in the government zone,”346 if the RPF were “to take Kigali before the deployment of
French forces.”347 (Lanxade made this argument to Mitterrand as well.348) But, of course, Tutsi
had been murdered en masse in the government zone since 6 April. Conquest of the capital held
great value, symbolic and otherwise, which may have led the génocidaires to “amplify the
massacres,”349 as Lanxade wrote, but considering the aspirations Quesnot and Lanxade’s office
had shared about taking control of “Hutu country” up to the capital, another interpretation seems
at least as persuasive.
Quesnot wrote Mitterrand a second time on 21 June. He urged the President to intervene
before “General Kagame, RPF military leader, intelligent and determined . . . declar[ed] a ceasefire and announc[ed] that the French presence or even that of UNAMIR was henceforth useless. .
. . Time and delaying tactics at all levels increasingly play against the success of our initiative.”350
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
L. As Plans for Turquoise Took Shape, French Officials Encountered Enthusiastic Support
from the IRG, Staunch Opposition from the RPF, and Unusually Direct Skepticism from
the International Community.
France took sides [in the Rwandan conflict] . . . and that’s why the initiative
of France should be looked at with the necessary caution.351
– Leo Delcroix, Belgian Minister of Defense (1992 – 1994)
Given France’s history in the region, French officials understood that the international
community would be skeptical of Turquoise. The participation of European allies was initially, at
least for Prime Minister Balladur and Defense Minister Léotard, a precondition of French
intervention,352 and in the third week of June 1994 French officials worked to procure diplomatic
and military “cover”353 that would insulate France against accusations of pro-IRG bias.
At the United Nations, Sec. Gen. Boutros Boutros-Ghali continued to offer the “active
support” that had helped push through the disastrous Resolution 912 in April,354 but almost
everyone else was in opposition. On 16 June, New Zealand’s UN Ambassador Colin Keating urged
the New Zealand embassy in Paris to express “grave reservations” to the French government about
this “extremely dangerous development.”355 As the ambassador explained:
Unilateral intervention could only complicate enormously the UN mission. It has
all the potential to follow exactly the disastrous pattern of the US intervention in
Somalia leaving an impossible aftermath for the UN to manage. In this case it would
be even worse.
In practice it is impossible to see how a French intervention force could avoid being
drawn into the conflict between [the FAR] and [the] RPF. At best they would be
drawn into the kind of ‘buffer’ which the UN definitely does not want to happen.
At worst they would become part of the problem by being identified as protecting
the [FAR].
The most useful thing the French could do if they want to make ‘a grand gesture’
would be to send a significant fleet of transport aircraft to Africa in order to uplift
the UNAMIR contingents…356
Speaking more directly to the matter, Keating has said more recently that he did not believe
the French government’s stated motivations for undertaking Operation Turquoise because it was
“manifestly not going to succeed.”357 The French thinking, he said, was: “Let’s protect as much of
the rump regime as we can.”358 For Keating, France’s intervention proposal made for a remarkable
turnaround from its preceding passivity regarding the Genocide, when France’s permanent
representative to the United Nations Security Council, Jean-Bernard Merimée, had been “quiet”
and Hervé Ladsous, Mèrimèe’s deputy, “chastened” through the initial weeks of the Genocide.359
But when it came to Turquoise, the French delegation was suddenly “guns blazing.”360
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
French officials, hoping to “find[] another European country to go in with them,” sought
to mitigate such concerns, with Ambassador Mérimée assuring other countries’ delegations at a 17
June Security Council meeting that France was “ready to fight [H]utu militias in order to protect
Tutsis.”361 But General Raymond Germanos, Admiral Lanxade’s deputy, told the MIP that France
was actually hoping to delegate the entire humanitarian portion of the mission to Italy, maintaining
for France “operational” duties (meaning, military).362 French officials apparently viewed the
maintenance of French soldiers in Rwanda as critical and French humanitarian assistance as
fungible, despite repeated claims by French officials that humanitarian activities were France’s
only motivation for the entire operation.
In private, France was ready to go it alone. In a 16 June note, French diplomats at the
United Nations told their counterparts in the French Foreign Ministry that Sec. Gen. BoutrosGhali’s “less formal cover” would be sufficient in the absence of official UN authorization.363
Under “Entry of the force on the Rwandan territory,” the note’s authors indicated that “Operation
units would enter Rwanda by the road from neighboring countries with the objective to reach
Kigali.”364 Then someone crossed out the words “with the objective to reach Kigali.”365
Initially, France’s advocacy at the United Nations made no inroads. According to New
Zealand Ambassador Keating’s contemporaneous notes, the US delegation initially described the
French strategy as a “disastrous policy.”366 The UK ambassador to the United Nations, David
Hannay, told Keating that “his view and that of their experts in London is that the proposal is
crazy,” and that Belgium, Spain, and Germany had also been critical at a meeting of EU
countries.367 The Nigerian delegate, Ibrahim Gambari, told Keating that Nigeria was opposed, and
the Brazilian, Argentine, and Spanish delegations expressed “strong reservations.”368 The
Canadians told the French privately that they were “absolutely opposed” to Turquoise, and that
France’s efforts would be better directed toward deploying an expanded UNAMIR mission as soon
as possible.369 Indeed, though he was forbidden from saying so publicly, General Dallaire, the
UNAMIR force commander, would report to Canadian officials that plans for French intervention
would have negative repercussions on the ground in Kigali.370 In an interview with Reuters,
Belgian Defense Minister Leo Delcroix spoke bluntly: “France took sides [in the Rwandan
conflict] . . . and that’s why the initiative of France should be looked at with the necessary
caution.”371
The RPF saw things similarly. “The RPF condemns the proposed French intervention
unreservedly,” RPF Vice Chairman Patrick Mazimhaka wrote on 20 June to the President of the
Security Council, pointing to the French government’s “direct responsibility” for Rwanda’s
descent into violence. As Mazimhaka wrote:
In view of this very detrimental role of France in Rwanda in the recent past, her
apparent good faith should not be taken for granted when the issue of the proposed
French intervention is up for discussion. The intervention is, in our view, intended
to assist the authors of the genocide in Rwanda to prosecute the war, to protect them
from being brought to justice for their war crimes, and to preserve a role for them
in the future politics of the country.372
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
As Kagame told Libération on 20 June, “The French are the least well placed to intervene, given
their scandalous support for the old regime.”373 He added: “It is up to us to save our people.”374
On the same day that Mazimhaka wrote the Security Council—20 June—Gérard Prunier,
the historian and Turquoise advisor, phoned Jacques Bihozagara, the RPF’s representative in
Brussels. Prunier was surprised to learn from Bihozagara that “the Foreign Affairs Ministry… had
had no contact whatsoever with the party most likely to shoot at [France’s troops], namely the
RPF.” Prunier’s attempts to intercede would illustrate just how dismissively senior French officials
dealt with the RPF compared to the reception the Élysée, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Quai
d’Orsay offered IRG officials Jérôme Bicamumpaka and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza in late April.
“When I called Bihozagara again to learn the result of my efforts,” Prunier writes, “I
thought he would choke on the phone.” Bihozagara had received a fax asking him to go see
Catherine Boivineau, the deputy director for East Africa at the Foreign Ministry, “a nice lady of
genuine goodwill [whose] capacity for political decision-making was equal to zero,” in Prunier’s
words.375 Bihozagara was furious: He had seen Boivineau a half-dozen times in three years, to no
value: “This is ridiculous. It is an insult. I won’t go.” Prunier tried again and was pleased to learn
through the next day’s press that the foreign minister appeared to be in regular contact with the
RPF, but on reaching out to Bihozagara, Prunier learned that his efforts had advanced the issue by
only one rung: A new fax had arrived requesting Bihozagara to meet with Boivineau’s superior
Jean-Marc de La Sablière as well as the Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs.376 “‘We are
not asking for any bloody humanitarian aid, this is a political problem for God’s sake!’”
Bihozagara fumed. “‘And as for M. de La Sablière, he can’t decide anything! Either I see the
Minister or else I won’t waste my time.’” 377
According to Prunier, news of this led to not a little “irritation” at the French Defense
Ministry, the lives of whose soldiers all this was placing at greater risk. Prunier did not know what
kind of message passed between Defense and the Quai d’Orsay, but on 22 June, Alain Juppé
received Bihozagara and Théogène Rudasingwa, the RPF’s Secretary General,378 who tried to
make the same points the RPF’s representatives had to the Security Council:
You speak about change of policy of France in Africa, but obviously, in the case of
Rwanda, nothing has changed. . . . You want to establish a permanent link with us,
but you put the cart before the horse. . . . France’s objectives are not humanitarian.
If they were, she would have intervened earlier because the massacres are not a new
phenomenon in Rwanda. They began several years ago, the international
community and France in particular knew it. Nobody reacted when weapons were
distributed to the militia who then organized themselves into a parallel army.379
According to Bruno Delaye’s report on the meeting to President Mitterrand, a
representative from Matignon (the Prime Minister’s Office), also present, attempted to convince
the RPF representatives that over the past year, since Balladur had assumed the head of the
government, France had changed its policy, and that its present intervention in Rwanda was
humanitarian in nature.380 Mitterrand was apparently irked by the suggestion that Balladur’s
elevation could be credited with a supposed improvement in Mitterrand’s Rwanda policy:
“unacceptable! tell Matignon,” the president scrawled across Delaye’s report.381
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
On 16 June, what remained of Rwanda’s opposition political parties wrote an open letter
to Mitterrand echoing the RPF’s sentiments: “[T]he French military intervention in 1990 has not
prevented the arbitrary imprisonment of over 10,000 people and the beginning of the genocide
against Tutsi in Ruhengeri, Gisenyi, Kibuye and Bugeresa. . . . France is the only country in the
world that recognized the self-proclaimed bloodthirsty government in Kigali on April 9th and
continues to support it in international fora, claiming there was no genocide in Rwanda.”382
In the end, French allies in Africa were among the only nations to offer Turquoise
unqualified approval. “France’s initiative is to be welcomed,” declared Gabonese President Omar
Bongo.383 Shortly thereafter, an open letter signed by Bongo and leaders from Chad, Equatorial
Guinea, Cameroon, and Congo welcomed the “courageous and humanitarian” French mission.384
If the IRG had any opposition to France’s plan, it was that it did not go far enough to help
the génocidaires. In a 16 June meeting with General Jean Heinrich, the head of the DRM (the
army’s intelligence arm), Col. Sebastian Ntahobari, the IRG defense attaché in Paris, delivered a
plea from General Augustin Bizimana, the minister of defense, for France to “intervene militarily
‘to save the populations threatened to be massacred.’” (Bizimana meant massacred by the RPF.)
The following week, continuing to promote the falsehood that a “double-genocide” was taking
place in Rwanda, the IRG asked France to “conduct the operation on the entire Rwandan territory
because, according to [the IRG], killings are perpetrated with the same intensity on both sides.”385
For all the skepticism at the United Nations, it was one thing for the Security Council
members to object in principle and another to formalize that principle through a vote against or an
abstention, especially when the United Nations was so moribund in standing up UNAMIR II. The
French proposal is a “political trap for other countries as there was pressure from the public to see
something done,” as New Zealand’s embassy in Canada put it on 20 June.386 Ultimately, none of
France’s European partners would agree to supply troops, with Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy,
and the United States agreeing to provide logistical support,387 the lattermost on the condition “that
the French forces must not intervene in the fighting or support the government or its forces.”388
But as Delaye and Quesnot relayed in a joint note to President Mitterrand, “The French text [for
resolution on intervention] could be adopted on 21 or 22 June. No major reservations from the
main members of the Council.”389
Recently, Colin Keating, the New Zealand UN ambassador, said that among the nonaligned nations [the Non-Aligned Movement is a 120-member organization of developing states
unaligned with any major power bloc390], there was a “misplaced internal loyalty” toward the
Rwandan regime, with the feeling among those nations that they “couldn’t desert their brother.”391
With New Zealand, France virtually resorted to pleading, as the New Zealand embassy in Paris
noted on 20 June: “New Zealand is asked not to express its reservations publicly. . . . It is more
than ever a matter of national pride. France’s African policy would be in complete disarray if it
does not intervene.”392
The “UK Mission [to the United Nations] lost the battle and was instructed for bilateral
reasons to support the French proposal,” Keating reported to Wellington.393 Spain, Keating said,
often based its UN decisions on its European relations rather than the needs of the situation.394 And
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
though the United States was under no illusions about whom it was about to support—a 20 June
US intelligence cable noted that the French government had trained and armed the people
perpetrating the Genocide; that it was allegedly continuing to supply arms to the génocidaires; and
that its claims of neutrality were risible considering it had evacuated members of Habyarimana’s
family in April395—the Americans eventually offered their support as well.
Despite the concerns of his staff in Kigali,396 Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali was
instrumental in supporting the intervention. “[The UN SecGen] indicated that in his view the
French initiative offered the [positive] opportunity . . . to get a great power actively involved,”
Keating reported to Wellington on 20 June. “We still think it is a bad initiative,” Keating wrote.
But he seemed resigned to the inevitability that France would win the “support of the Council.”397
The previous day, Boutros-Ghali had written a letter to the Security Council explaining that
UNAMIR II could take three months more to deploy.398 The New Zealand delegation called that
timeline illogical,399 while The Guardian reported shortly afterward that African countries,
including Ghana and Zimbabwe, had pledged 4,000 troops and required only logistical support
from Western countries before UNAMIR II could proceed.400 Nevertheless, Boutros-Ghali
emphasized the potential for delay and concluded: “In these circumstances, the Security Council
may wish to consider the offer of the Government of France. . . .”401
In the end, France, Rwanda, Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, Argentina, the
Czech Republic, Djibouti, Oman, and Russia voted in favor of Resolution 929.402 Argentina nearly
abstained, and in fact called Buenos Aires to encourage abstention.403 If the Argentinian delegation
had followed through on its hesitations (in addition to Nigeria, Brazil, China, Pakistan, and New
Zealand), “the French would have been in the most uncomfortable situation of having the bare
minimum of 9 positive votes (and reliant on that of Rwanda) to get the resolution through.”404
In Rwanda, as on many previous occasions, General Dallaire was as clear on what was
about to happen as he was powerless to subvert the will of his UN superiors. “By now French flags
draped every street corner in the capital,” he would write. “Vive la France was heard more often
in Kigali than it was in Paris. RTLM was continuing to tell the population that the French were on
the way to join them to fight the RPF.”405 Even the DGSE was clear-eyed about the problem with
Turquoise, as a 22 June cable soberly acknowledged: “The danger is great for France to be accused,
at best of not having been able to fulfill the mission that had been entrusted to it, at worst of being
considered an accomplice of the current Rwandan government.”406
Tellingly, in Paris, Mitterrand announced the deployment of Turquoise to his ministers by
citing the same crude, ethnically reductive motivations that had guided his understanding of the
conflict since the beginning:
The President of the Republic noted that Rwanda, like Burundi, is mainly populated
by Hutu. The majority of the inhabitants therefore naturally supported President
Habyarimana’s government. If this country were to come under Tutsi domination,
a small ethnic minority based in Uganda where some favor the creation of a
‘Tutsiland’ encompassing not only that country but also Rwanda and Burundi, it is
certain that the democratization process would be interrupted.407
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
Other remarks by Mitterrand would prove prescient: “The Prime Minister and I, and all the
ministers, share the same analysis: an intervention, yes, but a brief one . . . . Our intervention does
not appeal to anyone, even those we want to save.”408 Operation Turquoise commenced on 22 June
1994, and, in the 60 days that followed, the events and consequences of the mission fully
vindicated the skepticism levelled by the international community.
Page | 390
Notes to Chapter IX
1
Transcript of meeting between Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (29 Apr. 1994).
2
US HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM & THE HAGUE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE, INTERNATIONAL DECISIONMAKING IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE: RWANDA: 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 90 (1-3 June 2014).
3
Cable from US Embassy in Kampala to US Secretary of State (14 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “TFRWOL: RPF Launches
Diplomatic Offensive”). In a 13 April 1994 meeting, RPF representatives told the US ambassador in Kampala that, in
due course, RPF leaders “intend[ed] to start with the accord” and to work with other Rwandan political parties to form
a new government.
4
Press Release, Rwandese Patriotic Front (10 Apr. 1994).
5
M. Léotard confirme le départ des derniers militaires français [Mr. Léotard Confirms the Departure of the Last
French Soldiers], AFP, 14 Apr. 1994. As discussed below, the public focus on negotiations would continue.
6
M. Léotard confirme le départ des derniers militaires français [Mr. Léotard Confirms the Departure of the Last
French Soldiers], AFP, 14 Apr. 1994.
7
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (21 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “French Pessimism on Rwanda”).
8
Report from Military Cabinet of the Ministry of Defense, Point de situation hebdomadaire 2 (19 Apr. 1994).
9
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (25 Apr. 1994) (“It is the RPF that
refuses a cease-fire, as did UNITA in Angola. The argument that it will stop the fighting only when the exactions and
the massacres are interrupted reverses the chain of causalities. If it is true that at the time the President’s death was
announced, the exactions immediately began and provided a foundation for the armed intervention of the RPF, today
the situation is quite the opposite: The Hutu, as long as they have the feeling that the RPF is trying to seize power,
will react by ethnic massacres. Only a stop to the fighting could allow a progressive recovery of the situation in
hand.”).
10
Transcript of meeting between Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (29 Apr. 1994).
11
Transcript of meeting between Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (29 Apr. 1994).
12
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. I, 343.
13
Transcript of meeting between Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (29 Apr. 1994).
14
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 Apr. 1994).
15
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to President Mitterrand (7 Apr.1994) (Subject: “RWANDA-BURUNDI Situation après la mort des deux présidents”).
16
Transcript of meeting between Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (29 Apr. 1994).
17
Transcript of meeting between Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (29 Apr. 1994).
18
Memorandum from Dominique Pin (5 May 1994) (Subject: “La situation au Rwanda”). Dominique Pin would echo
Quesnot’s words on 5 May 1994, in a conversation with Françoise Carle, who seems to have served as a sounding
board for frustrations with the Second Cohabitation government’s Rwanda policy by many in Mitterrand’s circle of
Élysée hardliners: “If the French and the Belgians had stayed one more month on the ground, the massacres would
not have happened. . . . We were in a situation of cohabitation, we had to take into account the government’s position.
I am personally convinced that if there had not been a cohabitation, we would have acted otherwise and avoided the
massacres.” Pin was under no illusions about the perpetrators of the massacres, telling Carle: “The northern Hutus,
supporters of the assassinated President, killed the moderate Hutu and then turned against the Tutsi.” Despite that,
French deterrence to the RPF was the answer.
19
Notes on Fiche No. 18591/N, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 May 1994).
20
MIP Audition of Michel Roussin, Tome III, Vol. 1, 106.
21
MIP Audition of Michel Roussin, Tome III, Vol. 1, 106.
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
22
Memorandum from Christian Luc Vaganay to Jean Heinrich (15 Apr. 1994) in COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITOYENNE,
L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE AU RWANDA [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES
US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 490 (2005); see also Transcript of Interview
with Jean Kambanda, 77 JK – Side B 14 (22 May 1998) (stating that arms deals around Europe went through Ntahobari
as the IRG did not have specialists in each country).
23
Memorandum from Christian Luc Vaganay to Jean Heinrich (15 Apr. 1994) in COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITOYENNE,
L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE AU RWANDA [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES
US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 490 (2005).
24
Memorandum from Christian Luc Vaganay to Jean Heinrich (15 Apr. 1994) in COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITOYENNE,
L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE AU RWANDA [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES
US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 490 (2005); see also Transcript of Interview
with Jean Kambanda, 77 JK – Side B 14-15 (22 May 1998). Jean Kambanda would describe Col. Ntahobari to ICTR
investigators as “the person officially in contact with the arms suppliers [to the IRG]. He was “[a] buyer of arms. In
fact it was his profession. That was his main job since he was the military attaché at the embassy.” Kambanda
elaborated, “To order arms or ammunition, the chief of staff, General Bizimungu, had to send a request to Defense
Minister Bizimana. The latter sent the request to Ntahobari who contacted the suppliers for a contract which he signed
or had signed.” Prime Minister Kambanda explained the importance of having someone based in Europe to procure
arms: “You couldn’t be in Kigali and know the arms business milieu. So it was necessary to have someone
permanently based in Europe.”
25
Memorandum from Christian Luc Vaganay to Jean Heinrich (15 Apr. 1994) in COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITOYENNE,
L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE AU RWANDA [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES
US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 490 (2005).
26
Meeting Notes (15 Apr. 1993) (signed J.C. Ntirugiribambe and Augustin Ndindiliyimana).
27
Memorandum from Christian Luc Vaganay to Jean Heinrich (15 Apr. 1994) in COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITOYENNE,
L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE AU RWANDA [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES
US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 491 (2005).
28
The Duclert Commission noted that while the DRM forwarded the requests, if and how the requests were responded
to is “not known.” Duclert Commission Report 802. The Commission also observed that the 8 April 1994 embargo
that the French government placed on arms deliveries to Rwanda “does not seem to have been communicated to
DRM’s officers, or at least it was not conveyed to the DRM officer who met, ‘at his request [. . .] Colonel Ntahobari,
Rwanda’s military and air attaché in Paris’ on 15 April.” Id. at 906 (quoting SHD/SITU, Fiche de la DRM n°1243, 15
April 1994).
29
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 278 n.136 (1995). The same footnote in Prunier’s
book also included a citation to a May 1995 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report: “Rwanda/Zaire: Rearming With
Impunity.” However, when reviewed against the available records, including the documents of the United Kingdombased arms supplier, Mil-Tec, the HRW report does not hold up. The Mil-Tec documents have been in the public
domain since November 1996. The weapons deliveries recounted by HRW align with deliveries from Mil-Tec. That
these were Mil-Tec deliveries is also supported by IRG banking records from the embassy in Cairo related to those
specific transactions.
30
See MIP Audition of Gérard Prunier, Tome III, Vol. 2, 181-210.
31
See MIP, Tome II, General Annexes 15-23 (list of people heard by MIP (both in public and in camera), does not
include Jehanne).
32
Frank Smyth, Opinion, French Guns, Rwandan Blood, N.Y. TIMES, 14 Apr. 1994.
33
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
34
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (emphasis omitted).
35
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (3 May 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec le
Premier ministre le mercredi 4 Mai 1994”).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
36
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (6 May 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Chef de
l’État intérimaire du Rwanda”).
37
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE [BACK IN KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] at 49:21 (2019) (Directed by
Jean-Christophe Klotz).
38
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE [BACK IN KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] at 49:45 (2019) (Directed by
Jean-Christophe Klotz).
39
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE [BACK IN KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] at 50:42 (2019) (Directed by
Jean-Christophe Klotz).
40
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 369 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
41
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 368-69 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
42
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 369 n.107 (2007) (citing
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
an interview with Christian Quesnot).
43
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
an interview with Christian Quesnot).
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 369 n.107 (2007) (citing
44
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [A
DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 324 (2007).
45
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [A
DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 324 (2007).
46
GABRIEL PÉRIÈS & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GÉNOCIDE RWANDAIS [A
DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 324 (2007).
47
Thierry Charlier, Le sauvetage des ressortissants occidentaux au Rwanda [The Rescue of Western Expats in
Rwanda], in RAIDS MAGAZINE No. 97, 1 June 1994. Lanxade, in an interview with the journalist Benoît Collombat,
denied the use of French soldiers as “sonnettes.” But he would not speak to the activities of DGSE (the French
intelligence service) agents, who, he admitted, were authorized to serve in this role. Benoît Collombat, Génocide au
Rwanda: la “faute” de la France, RADIO FRANCE, 14 Mar. 2019 (interview with Jacques Lanxade).
48
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 370-71 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
49
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 369-70 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
50
Cable from David Hannay (14 Apr. 1994) (“[I]n the current circumstances UNAMIR was not capable of performing
the tasks under its mandate.”).
51
Special Report of the Secretary General on the United Nations assistance mission for Rwanda, S/1994/470, 4-7 (20
Apr. 1994).
52
Duclert Commission Report 393 (quoting AN/PR-BD, AG5(4)/BD/60 ; dossier 2, Conseil restreint, mercredi 13
avril, « situation au Rwanda »).
53
Duclert Commission Report 393 (quoting AN/PR-BD, AG5(4)/BD/60 ; dossier 2, Conseil restreint, mercredi 13
avril, « situation au Rwanda »).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
54
Duclert Commission Report 393 (citing AN/PR-BD, AG5(4)/BD/60 ; dossier 2, Conseil restreint, mercredi 13
avril, « situation au Rwanda »).
55
Cable from David Hannay (14 Apr. 1994).
56
Cable from David Hannay (14 Apr. 1994).
57
Meeting Report, UN Security Council, 3368th Meeting 6 (21 Apr. 1994).
58
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 479 (1999).
59
Special Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, S/1994/470, 20
Apr. 1994; see HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 479 (1999).
60
Cable from David Hannay (14 Apr. 1994).
61
SAMANTHA POWER, A PROBLEM FROM HELL 370 (4th ed. 2013).
62
Cable from David Hannay (14 Apr. 1994). Note that, regarding “past operations,” six months before these
deliberations, the United States led a peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu, Somalia that ended with 19 American
casualties and 73 soldiers wounded. DAVID HANNAY, NEW WORLD DISORDER 138 (2009) (“As for the Mogadishu
line, no one contested the fact that serious mistakes were made in Somalia and that it had been unwise to be drawn
into a direct military confrontation with one of the factions, even when that faction had precipitated the confrontation;
but to derive from that experience a general and extremely restrictive doctrine governing the use of force in
peacekeeping operations was, yet again, an invitation to the spoilers to push their luck and also ignored the fact that
the circumstances under which a peacekeeping operation needed to be judged as impossible to carry on were likely to
differ quite a lot from operation to operation. The ghost of the Mogadishu line was to come to haunt the UN operation
in Bosnia.”).
63
Interview by PBS Frontline with Paul Kagame (30 Jan. 2004).
64
S.C. Res. 912, ¶ 8, S/RES/912 (21 Apr. 1994).
65
S.C. Res. 912, ¶ 8, S/RES/912 (21 Apr. 1994).
66
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 330-31 (2003).
67
Cable from Roméo Dallaire (18 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “SITREP on Rescue Missions”).
68
Cable from Roméo Dallaire (18 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “SITREP on Rescue Missions”).
69
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 322-23 (2003).
70
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
71
Memorandum from Iliya [last name unknown] (23 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Daily SITREP for the Period 220600B to
230600B Apr 1994”).
72
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 330 (2003).
73
Cable from Colin Keating (25 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
74
MIP Audition of Jean-Hervé Bradol, Tome III Vol. 1, 391.
75
MIP Audition of Jean-Hervé Bradol, Tome III Vol. 1, 392.
76
Cable from Colin Keating (25 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
77
Cable from Colin Keating (25 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
78
Les Hutus poursuivent leurs massacres au sud du Rwanda [Hutus Continue Massacring in the South of Rwanda],
LIBÉRATION & AFP, 26 Apr. 1994.
79
Cable from Colin Keating (25 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
80
Cable from Colin Keating (25 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
81
Notes from Karel Kovanda (25 Apr. 1994).
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Chapter IX
82
Notes from Karel Kovanda (25 Apr. 1994).
83
Alain Juppé, Press Conference (28 Apr. 1994).
84
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 338 (2003)
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
85
Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy in Addis Ababa (3 May 1994) (Subject: “RPF General Kagame
Sees UNHCR Team Visit as Fastest Way to End Massacres”).
86
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE [BACK IN KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] at 45:08 (2019) (Directed by
Jean-Christophe Klotz).
87
See Le ministre rwandais des affaires étrangères à Paris pour plaider la cause de son gouvernement [Rwandan
Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris to Plead His Government's Case], AFP, 27 Apr. 1994 (stating that the IRG
representatives were received at the Quai d’Orsay, Matignon, and the Élysée); Cable from Pamela Harriman to US
Secretary of State (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Discussions in Paris at the Quai, the Élysée, MSF/France and
with Rwandan Ambassador”); but see MIP, Tome I 316 (referring to meetings at the Élysée and Matignon but not the
Quai d’Orsay).
88
Prosecutor v. Bizimungu et al., Case No. ICTR-99-50-T, Judgement ¶ 539 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 30 Sept.
2011).
89
Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., Case No. ICTR-99-52-T, Judgement ¶¶ 1025, 1097 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 3
Dec. 2003).
90
Press Release, RPF (27 Apr. 1994) (signed Denis Polisi).
91
Memorandum from George Moose to Strobe Talbott (25 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Update on U.S. Response to the
Crisis”).
92
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (26 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Proposed Visit to the U.S. By
Rwanda Interim Government Foreign Minister Jérôme Bicamumpaka”); Cable from the French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Le porte-parole a poursuivi comme suit”).
93
RETOUR À KIGALI: UNE AFFAIRE FRANÇAISE [BACK IN KIGALI: A FRENCH AFFAIR] at 45:08 (2019) (Directed by
Jean-Christophe Klotz).
94
MIP Audition of Hubert Védrine, Tome III, Vol. 1, 207.
95
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 288-89 (1995).
96
MIP Audition of Gérard Prunier, Tome III, Vol. 2, 191-92.
97
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: un génocide sans importance [France-Rwanda: A Senseless Genocide],
LE FIGARO, 12 Jan. 1998.
98
Letter from Bruno Delaye to Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza (1 Sept. 1992).
99
Cable from Joyce Leader to US Secretary of State (4 Aug. 1992) (Subject: “Party youth riot; 4 reported killed”).
See additional discussion in Chapter 5.
100
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Discussions in Paris at
the Quai, the Elysee, MSF/France and with Rwandan Ambassador”). Because France has not made public the
document related to its contact with the IRG, we must rely on US Government documents that have been made public.
101
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Discussions in Paris at
the Quai, the Élysée, MSF/France and with Rwandan Ambassador”).
102
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (28 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Discussions in Paris at
the Quai, the Élysée, MSF/France and with Rwandan Ambassador”). Because France has not released documents, we
must rely on the documents made public by the US Government.
103
MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES, GÉNOCIDE DES RWANDAIS TUTSIS 1994 47 (2013).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
104
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA (1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
COMMITMENT] 375 n.129 (2007) (citing interview by Olivier Lanotte with Alain Juppé (May 2005)).
105
MIP Audition of Bernard Debré, Tome III, Vol. 1, 414.
106
The Duclert Commission has similarly commented, “Given the absence of significant records in the collections
consulted in France, it is impossible to account with certainty for the existence of arms flows from France to Rwanda
after the start of the genocide of the Tutsi.” Duclert Commission Report 810. The Duclert Commission has raised
additional questions by citing to handwritten notes prepared by Colonel Armel Le Port during the course of the
investigation he conducted for the purpose of responding to inquiries from the MIP on behalf of the “Rwanda cell” in
the Ministry of Defense. The note, which appears in a collection with the subject heading “Rwanda meeting: update
on investigations,” reads, “At least 1 FAR GOMA arms delivery on 6 or 7/7 (B707 cargo from KIN. It is on the other
hand inaccurate for 18/7.” Id. at 896-97 (quoting SHD, GR 203 17 1, Fiche, 20 March 1998). The note does not say
if the delivery on “6 or 7/7” (presumably 1994) refers to arms deliveries by France or some other provider. The Duclert
Commission found Col. Le Port’s notes in the archives of the French Army’s état-major. Id. at 896. Perhaps further
clarification could be found in the archives kept by the MIP, but the Bureau of the National Assembly “refused to
allow [the Commission] to consult the archives of the 1998 Parliamentary Information Mission (MIP).” Id. at 33.
107
Notes on Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 May 1994) (Subject: “Éléments de situation”).
108
Notes on Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 May 1994) (Subject: “Éléments de situation”).
109
Notes on Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 May 1994) (Subject: “Éléments de situation”).
110
Notes on Memorandum from Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale (11 May 1994) (Subject: “Région des
grands lacs africains risque d’extension régionale du conflit rwandais”).
111
Notes on Memorandum from Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale (11 May 1994) (Subject: “Région des
grands lacs africains risque d’extension régionale du conflit rwandais”). The advisors further assessed that partitioning
the country “into homogeneous community zones” would be impossible for the same reason. “For this reason, the idea
of creating a ‘Tutsiland’ is utopian,” they wrote.
112
Notes on Memorandum from Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale (11 May 1994) (Subject: “Région des
grands lacs africains risque d’extension régionale du conflit rwandais”).
113
Notes on Memorandum from Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale (11 May 1994) (Subject: “Région des
grands lacs africains risque d’extension régionale du conflit rwandais”).
114
Notes on Memorandum from Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale (11 May 1994) (Subject: “Région des
grands lacs africains risque d’extension régionale du conflit rwandais”).
115
Huchon was a recipient of the Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honor), the highest French order of merit, See Décret
du 5 juillet 1993 portant promotion et nomination, Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise n°154 9546 (July 6,
1993). A graduate of the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy, he served from 1979 to 1981 in Zaire, on the heels
of a period of heavy French military involvement in the country which served to keep President Mobutu in power. See
Jean-Pierre Huchon, ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES D’OUTRE-MER, http://www.academieoutremer.fr/academiciens/
?aId=20§ion=2 (last visited 5 Mar. 2021). From 1984 to 1986, Huchon commanded the 1st Paratrooper Regiment
of Marine Infantry (RPIMa), a special-forces unit later commanded by Jacques Rosier (1990-1992) and then Didier
Tauzin (1992-1994), who oversaw its participation in Operation Chimère and Operation Turquoise. During the period
of Huchon’s command, the 1st RPIMa also served in Chad, as part of an operation to defend the sitting dictator from
Libya-backed rebels. See JEAN-PIERRE HUSSON, ENCYCLOPÉDIE DES FORCES SPÉCIALES DU MONDE [ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF THE SPECIAL FORCES OF THE WORLD] (2016). Huchon’s predecessor at the MMC, General Jean Varret, would later
describe him as highly intelligent, recalling that Huchon had been “the brightest” colonel in a class of 12 colonels at
the Center for Advanced Military Studies, where Varret, in the late 1980s, was the director. LAURENT LARCHER,
RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 558-59 (2019). It was Varret who recommend Huchon, then a
colonel, to serve as deputy to President Mitterrand’s main military advisor, in 1989. See id.; Huchon Jean-Pierre,
ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES D’OUTRE-MER, http://www.academieoutremer.fr/academiciens/?aId=20§ion=2 (last
visited 5 Mar. 2021).
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Chapter IX
116
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
Duclert Commission Report 883.
117
Duclert Commission Report 881 (citing ADIPLO, 415COOP/1194, Note « sous couvert de Monsieur le Directeur
de Cabinet ». « Réévaluation de notre stratégie »).
118
Duclert Commission Report 74-75, 752.
119
Letter from Jean-Pierre Huchon to Jacques Mourgeon (10 Dec. 1998); Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to
Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
120
Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
Rwabalinda and Ntahobari asked Huchon to fulfill the FAR’s “[u]rgent needs” for “Ammunition for the Bie 105 mm
(at least 2,000 rounds) [referring to artillery rounds for the howitzers France supplied in 1992—ed.]; Supplement the
ammunition for individual weapons as necessary by passing indirectly through the neighboring countries that are
friends of Rwanda; Clothing; Transmission equipment” (punctuation added for clarity).
121
Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
In 1998, Col. Ntahobari supported Rwabalinda’s account of Huchon providing the encrypted telephone account in a
letter to the chairman of the French Parliamentary Commission. Letter from Sébastien Ntahobari to Paul Quiles (20
Nov. 1998).
122
Letter from Jean-Pierre Huchon to Jacques Mourgeon (10 Dec. 1998).
123
Letter from Jean-Pierre Huchon to Jacques Mourgeon (10 Dec. 1998). Huchon said it was “regrettable that we did
not have such a connection, as it would have certainly permitted [us] . . . to reinforce the message of moderation that
French authorities put forward.” Although Huchon also wrote that he had discussed the protected telephone during
his 27 May 1998 hearing before the MIP, no summary or transcript of that hearing is publicly available.
124
Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
Rwabalinda suggests that he met more than once with Gen. Huchon, and that he made this statement during one or
more of the meetings subsequent to 9 May 1994.
125
Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
Rwabalinda suggests that he met more than once with Gen. Huchon, and that he made this statement during one or
more of the meetings subsequent to 9 May 1994.
126
Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
127
Letter from Jean-Pierre Huchon to Jacques Mourgeon (10 Dec. 1998). Huchon’s testimony on his entreaties to stop
the massacres were cryptic. He noted that Ntahobari’s letter to the MIP “mentions statements I allegedly made, with
another French officer, requesting to ‘tell Kigali to stop the massacres.’ That is in effect a very simplified, but basically
exact summary of the messages that the French government authorities tried at the time to send to all the Rwandan
parties to the conflict, by using any opportunity to contact them. The visit that the Rwandan attaché made to see me
in PARIS was one of these opportunities.” This suggests Huchon asked Rwabalinda and Ntahobari to urge Kigali to
stop the massacres, but it does not say that outright.
128
Memorandum from Ephrem Rwabalinda to Augustin Bizimana (16 May 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de mission”).
Rwabalinda suggests that he met more than once with Gen. Huchon, and that he made this statement during one or
more of the meetings subsequent to 9 May 1994.
129
Transcript of RTLM broadcast (17 May 1994).
130
Transcript of RTLM broadcast (17 May 1994).
131
Notes on Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 May 1994) (Subject: “Éléments de situation”).
132
This account is taken from WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 22 – 23 (2006).
133
See Edouard de Mareschal, Le cofondateur du GIGN, Paul Barril, se retranche brièvement à son domicile [The
Co-Founder of the GIGN, Paul Barril, Hides out Briefly in His Home], LE FIGARO, 30 June 2014; L’Arrestation de
Paul Barril, comment un malentendu a abouti à un “tsunami policier” [Paul Barril’s Arrest: How a Misunderstanding
Led to a “Police Tsunami”], LE MONDE, 30 June 2014; Christian Chatillon, Capitaine Barril [Captain Barril], in
PLAYBOY 12 (1995); Melanie Godey, Qui est Paul Barril, ex-du GIGN? [Who is Paul Barril, Formerly of the GIGN?],
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
BFMTV, 30 June 2014; L’Ex-patron du GIGN Paul Barril s’est rendu après s’être retranché chez lui [The Ex-Head
of the GIGN Paul Barril Surrendered after Hiding in his House], LE PARISIEN, 30 June 2014.
134
See L’Arrestation de Paul Barril, comment un malentendu a abouti à un “tsunami policier” [Paul Barril’s Arrest:
How a Misunderstanding Led to a “Police Tsunami”], LE MONDE, 30 June 2014; Edouard de Mareschal, Le
cofondateur du GIGN, Paul Barril, se retranche brièvement à son domicile [The Co-Founder of the GIGN, Paul
Barril, Hides Out Briefly in His Home], LE FIGARO, 30 June 2014.
135
When Barril brought a defamation suit against Le Monde for reporting that “the operation was from beginning to
end a frame-up carried out by Capt. Barril, who tricked the political and judiciary authorities and public opinion, and
who provoked . . . the imprisonment of three innocent people,” the French Supreme Court ruled that Le Monde’s
reporting was correct. See Irish Citizens Became Victims of a French Frame-up, THE IRISH TIMES, 6 Feb. 2002.
136
BENOIT COLLOMBAT AND DAVID SEVERNAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE
NAME OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 182 (2014) (describing Barril’s departure from the Élysée antiterrorist
cell); L’Arrestation de Paul Barril, comment un malentendu a abouti à un “tsunami policier” [Paul Barril’s Arrest:
How a Misunderstanding Led to a “Police Tsunami”], LE MONDE, 30 June 2014 (Barril’s departure from the GIGN);
BENOIT COLLOMBAT AND DAVID SEVERNAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 56 (2014).
137
See Michel Henry, Affaire des irlandais de Vincennes: l’informateur du capitaine Barril est mort [The “Irish of
Vincennes” Affair: Captain Barril’s Informant is Dead], LIBERATION, 14 Feb. 1995; Stéphane Albouy, Dix-neuf ans
après, les révélations d’un “Irlandais” [Nineteen years later, the revelations of an “Irishman”], LE PARISIEN, 5 July
2001; HENRY MCDONALD AND JACK HOLLAND, INLA: DEADLY DIVISIONS (2010).
138
Jean-Marie Pontaut and Jérôme Dupuis, Paul Barril et les “irlandais de Vincennes” [Paul Barril and the “Irish of
Vincennes”], L’EXPRESS, 29 Mar. 2001; Michel Henry, Affaire des Irlandais de Vincennes: l’informateur du capitaine
Barril est mort [The “Irish of Vincennes” Affair: Captain Barril’s Informant is Dead], LIBERATION, 14 Feb. 1995.
139
Interview by Raphaël Glucksman with Paul Barril (2004).
140
Interview by Raphaël Glucksman with Paul Barril (2004). He said further: “In all governments, there are several
pathways. There is the official pathway, everything we know in the newspapers. There is diplomacy, which is
particular in its uses. And what I told you, there is parallel diplomacy, or ‘secret action’ diplomacy, which is
unconventional.”
141
Interview by Raphaël Glucksman with Paul Barril (2004) (“I never spoke to President Mitterrand about these
matters. However, I did speak with Mr. de Grossouvre, I gave him memos, which he [then] delivered to President
Mitterrand the next morning during breakfast, or in the evening. You can believe me, less than 24 hours passed
between [issuing] the report [to de Grossouvre] and its delivery to the head of state.”).
142
BENOIT COLLOMBAT AND DAVID SEVERNAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE
NAME OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 181 (2014).
143
MIP Tome II, Annex 10.B.5 (“Éléments d’information relatifs au rôle qu’aurait joué Paul Barril dans les affaires
rwandaises entre 1990 et 1994”).
144
Jean Damascène Bizimana, L’implication de Paul Barril dans le génocide et le négationnisme [Paul Barril’s
Involvement in Genocide and Denialism], CNLG, 3 Dec. 2014.
145
Christophe Boltanski, Rwanda. Paul Barril, une barbouze française au cœur du génocide, [Rwanda. Paul Barril,
A French Barbouze at the Heart of the Genocide], LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 9 Feb. 2014.
146
Memorandum from Augustin Bizimungu to Théodore Sindikubwabo (29 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu de
reunion”) (“[A] reconnaissance team from [Barril’s] mission received $130,000 in Kigali[.]”); Letter from Augustin
Bizimana to Jean Kambanda (13 Sept. 1994) (stating that Barril spent $130,000 of the money that the IRG later paid
him “for hiring the plane used by his team in May 1994”).
147
S.C. Res. 918, ¶ 13, S/RES/918 (17 May 1994).
148
Contrat d’Assistance (28 May 1994).
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Chapter IX
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149
Contrat d’Assistance (28 May 1994); see also Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (15 June 1994);
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 June 1994) (“Finally, Captain Barril, leader of the company
‘Secret’, in liaison with the Habyarimana family taking refuge in Paris, is engaged in a noteworthy activity with a
view to supplying ammunition and armament to government forces.”).
150
Contrat d’Assistance (28 May 1994).
151
Receipt sent by Sébastien Ntahobari (20 June 1994) (signed Nicolas Leboeuf) (BNP Check for GPB, from the
Rwandan Embassy in Paris for 6,732,000 French francs, or roughly $1.2 million, Check n° 3 009 800). BNP stands
for Banque Nationale de Paris and GPB likely stands for Groupe Privé Barril. Barril signed for the payment on 16
June. See Receipt sent by Sébastien Ntahobari (16 June 1994) (signed by Captain Paul Barril) (certifying the delivery
of 6,372,000 French francs on 15 June 1994); Memorandum from Augustin Bizimana (17 June 1994) (Subject: “Fonds
de fonctionnement”). On 17 June 1994, IRG Defense Minister Bizimana wrote a letter to Col. Ntahobari specifying
where to distribute certain funds, including the payment to Barril.
152
Letter from Augustin Bizimana to Jean Kambanda 4 (13 September 1994) (“A former captain of the French
Gendarmerie named Barril signed a service contract with the Rwandan government in June 1994 that paid him an
advance of 1,200,000 dollars through our military and air Attaché in Paris. Of that amount, the captain returned US $
200,000 to the military Attaché, which was used for the equipment loan. It is therefore necessary to recover the balance
after settling Captain Barril’s bills, which include US $ 130,000 for the rental of a plane used by his team in May
1994[.]”); Memorandum from Augustin Bizimungu to Théodore Sindikubwabo (29 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Compte
rendu de reunion”) (“A down payment of $ 1.2 million was made by the military and air Attaché in Paris. Since
Operation Turquoise did not want to overlap with any other French cooperation with Rwanda, [Barril’s] mission
failed. However, a reconnaissance team from [Barril’s] mission received $130,000 in Kigali. Therefore, the remaining
amount to be recovered is US $1.07 million. The meeting recommends that the supplier be contacted to make the
outstanding amount available. The same approach was recommended for the other cases.”).
153
Interview by LFM with former member of Rwandan Gendarmerie état-major.
154
Interview by LFM with former member of Rwandan Gendarmerie état-major. This was announced by Augustin
Ndindiliyimana at an état-major meeting.
155
Christophe Boltanski, Rwanda. Paul Barril, une barbouze française au cœur du génocide [Rwanda. Paul Barril,
A French Barbouze at the Heart of the Genocide], LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 9 Feb. 2014.
156
Christophe Boltanski, Rwanda. Paul Barril, une barbouze française au cœur du génocide [Rwanda. Paul Barril,
A French Barbouze at the Heart of the Genocide], LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 9 Feb. 2014.
157
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR 97-23-A, Portion of Jean Kambanda Interview transcript, ICTR
Cassette 45 JK, 3 (6 October 1997).
158
Fiche 18722/N, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (15 June 1994); Fiche 18681/N, Direction Générale
de la Sécurité Extérieure (2 June 1994); see also Transcript of Interview by Raphaël Glucksman with Paul Barril 7
(2004). Barril implied in the interview that Colonel Bernard Cussac, the head of the Military Assistance Mission in
Rwanda and Defense Attaché to the French embassy in Kigali from 1991 to 1994, was aware of his activities on behalf
of the IRG.
159
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye 10 (1 July 1994). Delaye’s handwritten notes do not detail who brought up
Barril in the conversation or why.
160
Christophe Boltanski, Rwanda. Paul Barril, une barbouze française au cœur du génocide [Rwanda. Paul Barril,
A French Barbouze at the Heart of the Genocide], LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, 9 Feb. 2014.
161
Nos actions judiciaires concernant le génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda, SURVIE, 3 July 2017.
162
Génocide des Tutsis: la justice française au ralenti, SURVIE, 7 April 2020.
163
Nicolas Bourcier, Disparition: Bob Denard, mercenaire [Obituary: Bob Denard, Mercenary], LE MONDE, 15 Oct.
2007.
164
Nicolas Bourcier, Bob Denard, mercenaire, [Obituary: Bob Denard, Mercenary], LE MONDE, 17 Oct. 2007.
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
165
Xavier Renou, Bob Denard a toujours agi pour le compte de l’etat français, [Bob Denard Always Acted on Behalf
of the French State], LE MONDE, 15 Oct. 2007; Bob Denard échappe à la prison ferme [Bob Denard Escapes a Long
Prison Sentence], LE FIGARO, 20 June 2006; see also, Robert Denard, Judgment, 6 (June 2006). In 1988, Denard was
sentenced to five years in prison in absentia for his role in a failed coup d’état in Benin. However, in 1993, the sentence
was suspended after a retrial following his voluntary return from exile. In 2006, he was sentenced to another five years
in prison for his role in the 1995 coup d’état in the Comoros, an island nation between northeastern Mozambique and
northwestern Madagascar. The trial judgment stressed the relationship between Denard and the French state, naming
the French minister of cooperation during the Genocide, Michel Roussin: “The testimonies, notably of the former
Ministers Maurice Robert [head of African section at the SCECE [French intelligence, now DGSE] and Michel
Roussin [French minister of cooperation from 1993-1994], show that Robert Denard had in the past been continuously
“manipulated” by the secret services to which, moreover, without being a real agent, since he was determined to
maintain his autonomy, he had always shown himself loyal and disinterested, acting mainly for reasons connected
with the defense of the interests of the West.”
166
Le crapuleux destin de Robert-Bernard Martin: Bob Denard et le Rwanda [The Villainous Destiny of RobertBernard Martin: Bob Denard and Rwanda], SURVIE, 18 Feb. 2018. In February 2018, Survie, the French human rights
group, published evidence that the “Robert B. Martin” paid by the IRG was, in fact, Denard, citing, amongst other
sources, false passports Denard kept under that name with a signature matching the one on a receipt of payment from
the IRG.
167
Letter from Augustin Bizimana to Jean Baptiste Zikama (17 June 1994).
168
Letter from Augustin Bizimana to Rwandan Embassy in Paris (17 June 1994); Letter from Augustin Bizimana to
Jean Kambanda 1 (13 Sept. 1994). Since both Barril and Denard appear to have conducted reconnaissance missions
around the same time, it is possible that Jean-Marie Dessalles was working for Denard, and not Barril (as posited
above), on his missions to Rwanda. This seems unlikely, however, since Dessalles said he first went to Rwanda on 6
May 1994, the same date that Barril’s group left for Rwanda. Also, Dessalles’ description of his second trip mentioned
training in explosives and not intelligence gathering, the purpose of the Denard contract. Further, it appears that
Denard’s group never returned to Rwanda after its initial reconnaissance, but Dessalles did return.
169
The “interim Rwandan government,” or “IRG,” was formally superseded as the governing authority in Rwanda on
19 July 1994, upon the swearing-in of the new Rwandan government. Though, at that point, it would have been
accurate to characterize the ousted government as the “former IRG” (or, perhaps, “government in exile”), this report
persists, for the sake of simplicity, in using the term “IRG” even when referring to events after 19 July 1994.
170
Receipt from Sébastien Ntahobari, signed by Robert Bernard Martin (5 Jul. 2017). This receipt is for 1,086,000
French francs written on a BNP check, signed for by Martin Robert Bernard. Denard appears to have provided the
receipt to Ntahobari, whose name is type-written on the receipt).
171
Letter from Augustin Bizimana to Jean Kambanda 1 (13 Sept. 1994).
172
Letter from Augustin Bizimana to Jean Kambanda 1 (13 Sept. 1994).
173
Memorandum from Augustin Bizimungu to Théodore Sindikubwabo 44 (29 Sept. 1994) in Prosecutor v. Bagosora
et al. (Military I), Case No. ICTR-98-41 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 12 Dec. 2006). Bizimungu may not have been
aware of the additional $200,000 payment. Bizimungu’s report lists Bizimana’s name next to the heading “Training
in military intelligence,” suggesting that Bizimana was in charge of the contract with Martin & Cie (as is reflected in
prior correspondence).
174
Notes on Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (25 May 1994).
175
Le crapuleux destin de Robert-Bernard Martin: Bob Denard et le Rwanda, [The Villainous Destiny of RobertBernard Martin: Bob Denard and Rwanda], SURVIE, 18 Feb. 2018.
176
Notes on Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (25 May 1994).
177
Le crapuleux destin de Robert-Bernard Martin: Bob Denard et le Rwanda, [The Villainous Destiny of RobertBernard Martin: Bob Denard and Rwanda], SURVIE, 18 Feb. 2018.
178
Letter from Boutros Boutros-Ghali (29 Apr. 1994).
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15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
179
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 493 (1999).
180
Cable from Colin Keating (2 May 1994).
181
Cable from Kofi Annan to Jacques Booh-Booh 3 (28 Apr. 1994).
182
UN Report of the Security Council to the General Assembly, 49th Sess. at 26, A/49/2, (18 Oct. 1994).
183
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 494 (1999) (“[Karel Kovanda] had prepared a draft
statement for the council that called the slaughter in Rwanda by its rightful name, genocide, and that warned the
interim government of its responsibility for halting it. This attempt to lead the council to confront the genocide
produced an acrimonious debate that lasted for eight hours. Rwanda profited from its seat on the council to delay
proceedings and to attempt to weaken the statement. It was supported by its ally Djibouti, whose ambassador explained
afterwards that some members of the council had not wanted to ‘sensationalize’ the situation in Rwanda. China,
generally opposed to dealing with human rights issues in the Security Council, reportedly opposed the use of the term
‘genocide,’ as did Nigeria, a leader among the nonaligned members of the council. France continued its campaign to
minimize the responsibility of the interim government for the slaughter. The delegate from United Kingdom, who
initially derided the draft statement as ‘laughable’ or words to that effect, opposed strong action by the council. As
had been clear in the discussion of protection for displaced persons, his government wanted to keep commitments of
the UN limited, apparently fearing the organization might collapse under the strain of trying anything more ambitious
than its usual role of diplomacy.” (internal footnote omitted)). Hannay also argued against an explicit condemnation
of the IRG on the grounds that it would jeopardize the safety of the UNAMIR personnel in Rwanda. See Cable from
David Hannay to United Kingdom concerning Security Council Consultations (29 Apr. 1994) (“I do not think we
should point the finger specifically at the RGF, despite evidence . . . [d]oing so might have serious consequences for
the safety of UNAMIR personnel on the ground.”). The US delegation supported a fairly strong statement but one
without the word “genocide” in it.
184
Cable from Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations in N.Y. 3 (29 Apr. 1994).
185
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 494 (1999).
186
Cable from Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations in N.Y. 1 (29 Apr. 1994).
187
Cable from Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations in N.Y. 1 (29 Apr. 1994).
188
Notes on Memorandum from the French Embassy in Kinshasa (13 May 1994).
189
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, LEAVE NONE TO TELL THE STORY 494 (1999).
190
Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State ¶ 5 (30 Apr. 1994).
191
Declaration of the UN Security Council President (30 Apr. 1994) (“Attacks on defenseless civilians were launched
throughout the country, especially in areas under the control of members or supporters of the armed forces of the
Interim Government of Rwanda. The Security Council demands that the Interim Government of Rwanda and the
Rwandan Patriotic Front take effective measures to prevent any new attacks on civilians in areas under their
control. . . . In this context, the Security Council recalls that the killing of members of an ethnic group with the
intention of destroying that group in whole or in part constitutes a crime punishable under international law.”).
192
Memorandum from Joyce Leader (22 Apr. 1994) (“Shattuck was favorable to the idea of asking [Bernard
Kouchner] to ask Bruno Delaye to “put pressure on France to rein in ‘bad guys’ in Rwandan military.”); see also
Letter from US Committee for Refugees to US Secretary of Defense 4 (3 May 1994) (The head of US Committee for
Refugees warns the US Secretary of Defense: “France is heavily enmeshed in Rwanda’s internal politics. France has
tended to support the political and economic status quo in Rwanda . . . France cannot be relied upon as a neutral
mediator.”).
193
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State ¶ 5 (10 May 1994). The meetings included US Ambassador
to Rwanda David Rawson, Dominique Pin (Delaye’s deputy at the Africa Cell), Catherine Boivineau (head of East
and Central African Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay) and Yannick Gérard (the former ambassador to Uganda and now the
Quai d’Orsay’s director for African affairs).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
194
See, e.g., Cable from Prudence Bushell to US Embassy in Addis Ababa (1 May 1994) (Subject: “GOR Chief of
State Bizimungu to Respect Cease-Fire and Stop Massacres if RPF Does Same”) (reporting that a US Department of
State official called Bizimungu to urge him to accept a cease-fire and to take other measures to stop the massacres,
including putting a halt to “hate messages over the radio”); Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy
Bujumbura et al. (17 May 1994) (Subject: “Department Reminds Rwandan Ambassador of [Respon]sibility for
Civilians; Calls for Immediate End to Massacres”) (memorializing a meeting between US Department of State officials
and the Rwandan ambassador in Washington, DC, during which a US official “deplored the GOR’s use of the radio
to incite further killing”).
195
See Le FPR prive les forces armées d’une radio de propagande [RPF Deprives Armed Forces of Propaganda
Radio], AFP, 17 Apr. 1994 (“A UN officer had recently indicated that the radio broadcast over the airwaves the
addresses of the houses where refugees were hiding. The objective, according to him, was to allow militiamen hunt
them out and kill them.”); see also Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (17 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “The Military
Assessment of the Situation as of 17 April 1994”) (“RTLM radio broadcasts inflammatory speeches and songs
exhorting the population to destroy all Tutsis.”); Cable from Madeleine Albright to US Secretary of State (22 Apr.
1994) (reporting that, during a 21 April 1994 meeting with US Ambassador Albright and another US official, an
activist from Human Rights Watch “went on to charge that the systematic campaign by the Rwandan Armed Forces
to eliminate the Tutsi constitutes genocide, citing radio broadcasts urging Hutus to take up arms so that ‘your children
will not even know what a Tutsi is’”).
196
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec MM. Jérôme Bicamumpaka et Ferdinand
Nahimana (Fondateur de la Radio des Mille Collines)”); Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Zone
Humanitaire Sure”). For further details about these communications between France and the IRG, see Chapter 10.
197
Memorandum from Frank Wisner to the National Security Council (5 May 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Jamming
Civilian Radio Broadcasts”) (“We have looked at options to stop the broadcasts within the Pentagon, discussed them
interagency and concluded jamming is an ineffective and expensive mechanism that will not accomplish the objective
the NSC Advisor seeks.”).
198
Notes on TD Diplomatie (Subject: “Rwanda—Emission de la radio ‘mille collines’”) (30 June 1994); Memorandum
from the French Ministry of Defense (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Brouillage RTLM”) (exploring the possibility of
jamming RTLM’s broadcasts).
199
See Cable from US Embassy in Paris to US Secretary State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid Administrator
Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”); François Graner, Jacques Lanxade: “Le Président suivait généralement
mon avis, je dirais même quesiment toujours” [Jacques Lanxade: “The President Generally Followed My Advice, I
Would Even Say Almost Always”], AGONE, 17 Feb. 2020. For further details about the French government’s
exploration of this issue, see Chapter 10.
200
Rwanda: le président du CICR dénonce les responsabilités majeures de la communauté internationale [Rwanda:
ICRC President Decries the International Community’s “Major Responsibilities”], LE MONDE, 9 May 1994.
201
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 71-72 (2 June 2014).
202
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
Transcript, Interview of François Mitterrand, TF1 et France 2 (10 May 1994).
203
JACQUES ATTALI, VERBATIM I: CHRONIQUE DES ANNÉES 1981 – 1986 [VERBATIM I: CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS
1981-1986] 10 (1993).
204
JACQUES ATTALI, VERBATIM I: CHRONIQUE DES ANNÉES 1981 – 1986 [VERBATIM I: CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS
1981-1986] 10 (1993).
205
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: un genocide sans importance [France-Rwanda: A Meaningless
Genocide], LE FIGARO, 12 Jan. 1998.
206
Transcript of Alain Juppé’s speech at Johns Hopkins (11 May 1994).
207
Transcript of Alain Juppé’s speech at Johns Hopkins (11 May 1994).
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Chapter IX
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208
Rwanda: l’UE dit oui à une force d’interposition [Rwanda: The EU Says Yes to an Intervention Force], REUTERS,
16 May 1994.
209
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 383 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
210
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 383 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
211
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 383 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
212
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 384 (2007).
213
S.C. Res. 918, UN S/RES/918 (17 May 1994); UN SCOR, 49th Sess., 3377 mtg. at 10-11, S/PV.3377 (16 May
1994).
214
S.C. Res. 918, UN S/RES/918 (17 May 1994).
215
S.C. Res. 918, UN S/RES/918, ¶13 (17 May 1994).
216
MIP Audition of Gérard Prunier, Tome III, Vol. 2 191 (30 June 1998). The UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, José Ayala Lasso, wrote in a mid-May 1994 report that, according to some estimates, “more than 200,000
people” had been killed, but that “well-informed sources” indicated “the numbers may be considerably higher and
may exceed 500,000.” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights José Ayala Lasso, Report on Mission to Rwanda
11-12 (19 May 1994). Privately, Lasso told diplomats “he feared that more than 600,000 were probably dead in
Rwanda.” Cable from Strobe Talbott to US Embassy Bujumbura et al. (19 May 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”).
217
See Cable from US Secretary of State to US mission in Geneva (24 May 1994) (Subject: “UN Human Rights
Commission: Genocide’ at Special Session on Rwanda”) (authorizing the US delegation to the UN Human Rights
Commission special session on Rwanda to push for language in a forthcoming resolution “which acknowledges that
genocide or acts of genocide may have taken place in Rwanda,” explaining: “Our intent in doing so is to make the
resolution a credible one: talkin[g] about Rwanda without use of the word genocide could be criticized as artificial”).
218
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights José Ayala Lasso, Report on Mission to Rwanda 11-12 (19 May 1994).
219
Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy Bujumbura et al. (19 May 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”).
220
UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution of 25 May 1994: The Situation of Human Rights in Rwanda.
221
Cable from US Mission in Geneva to US Secretary of State (24 May 1994) (Subject: “Human Rights Commission
Rwanda Special Session Day One Ends with No Surprises, Resolution Drafting Surprisingly Smooth”).
222
United Nations, Press Release, Human Rights Commission Begins Special Session to Consider Rwanda (24 May
1994) (stating that Michaux-Chevry “said the word genocide was not too strong to classify events in Rwanda”; see
Note from John Crook addressed to “People Concerned About Genocide” (24 May 1994) (“France made a strong
statement that genocide had occurred.”).
223
Notes on TD Diplomatie (Subject: “Télégramme d’actualité : Rwanda 2/2”) (26 May 1994).
224
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 382 (2007).
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
225
RWANDA (1990-1994): ENTRE ABSTENTION IMPOSSIBLE ET ENGAGEMENT
(1990-1994): BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTENTION AND AMBIVALENT
OLIVIER LANOTTE, LA FRANCE AU
AMBIVALENT [FRANCE IN RWANDA
COMMITMENT] 382 (2007).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
226
Meeting Notes from Dominique Pin (11 May 1994).(“The RPF is well placed to win. It refuses to negotiate a ceasefire with the interim government, and it refuses to establish an international force.”); see also Memorandum from
Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (2 May 1994) (“Fighting continues throughout the territory, and RPF rebels,
presumably benefiting from Ugandan army support, are making progress in the east and south of the country. . . . The
only technically viable solution is a military intervention of the countries concerned (France and Belgium?) limited to
space and time to allow for the distribution of humanitarian aid (. . .) and force parties to a balanced agreement.”);
Situation report from Bruno Delaye (10 May 1994) (“With the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) refusing to negotiate a
cease-fire with the interim government, the fighting and massacres continue. The RPF, which is now concentrating its
efforts today on the capture of Kigali, already controls half of the country.”).
227
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (18 May 1994).
228
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (18 May 1994) (Subject: Building a case against French
policy in Rwanda: “Liberation on the offensive”).
229
Paris promet davantage d’aide au Rwanda [Paris Promises More Aid to Rwanda], REUTERS, 17 May 1994.
230
Situation report from Bruno Delaye (signed by Dominique Pin) (17 May 1994).
231
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (18 May 1994) (Subject: “Building a case against French
policy in Rwanda: ‘Liberation on the offensive’”).
232
Alain Frilet, La France prise au piège de ses accords [France, Ensnared in Its Own Agreements], LIBÉRATION, 18
May 1994.
233
Alain Frilet, La France prise au piège de ses accords [France, Ensnared in Its Own Agreements], LIBÉRATION, 18
May 1994.
234
Meeting Notes from Françoise Carle (18 May 1994).
235
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (18 May 1994).
236
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (18 May 1994).
237
EDOUARD BALLADUR, LE POUVOIR NE SE PARTAGE PAS: CONVERSATIONS AVEC FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND [Power
Cannot Be Shared: Conversations with François Mitterrand] 234 (2009).
238
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 May 1994).
239
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 May 1994).
240
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 May 1994)
241
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (18 May 1994); see also Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François
Mitterrand (18 May 1994) (Quoting Balladur: “[W]e cannot remain absent from Rwanda”).
242
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (18 May 1994).
243
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (19 May 1994).
244
Alain Frilet and Sylvie Coma, Paris, terre d’asile de luxe pour dignitaires hutus [Paris, Land of Luxurious Asylum
for Hutu Dignitaries], LIBÉRATION, 18 May 1994.
245
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE [IN THE NAME OF FRANCE] 175 (2014).
246
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (19 May 1994).
247
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, ET AL., INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKING
RWANDA 1990-1994, Annotated Transcript 71-72 (2 June 2014).
IN THE
AGE
OF
GENOCIDE:
248
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE [IN THE NAME OF FRANCE] 174 (2014).
249
BENOÎT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE [IN THE NAME OF FRANCE]174 (2014).
250
Petit Dejeuner entre H. Kohl, F. Mitterrand, Sommet Franco-Allemand a Mulhouse [Breakfast Meeting between
H. Kohl, German Chancellor and President F. Mitterrand, Franco-German Summit at Mulhouse] (31 May 1994).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
251
Petit Dejeuner entre H. Kohl, F. Mitterrand, Sommet Franco-Allemand a Mulhouse [Breakfast Meeting between
H. Kohl, German Chancellor and President F. Mitterrand, Franco-German Summit at Mulhouse] (31 May 1994).
252
Petit Dejeuner entre H. Kohl, F. Mitterrand, Sommet Franco-Allemand a Mulhouse [Breakfast Meeting between
H. Kohl, German Chancellor and President F. Mitterrand, Franco-German Summit at Mulhouse] (31 May 1994).
253
Meeting Notes from Françoise Carle (8 June 1994).
254
Marie-Pierre Subtil, La France s’efface au Rwanda [France, Ensnared in Its Own Agreements], LE MONDE, 7 June
1994.
255
Marie-Pierre Subtil, La France s’efface au Rwanda [France, Ensnared in Its Own Agreements], LE MONDE, 7 June
1994.
256
Marie-Pierre Subtil, La France s’efface au Rwanda [France, Ensnared in Its Own Agreements], LE MONDE, 7 June
1994.
257
Duclert Commission Report 883 (citing SHD, GR 2004 Z 169 9, « RWANDA - Concept d’emploi de la MINUAR
2 »).
258
Duclert Commission Report 883 (quoting SHD, GR 2004 Z 169 9, « RWANDA - Concept d’emploi de la MINUAR
2 »).
259
Duclert Commission Report 883 (quoting SHD, GR 2004 Z 169 9, « RWANDA - Concept d’emploi de la MINUAR
2 »).
260
Alain Frilet, La France prise au piège de ses accords [France, Ensnared in Its Own Agreements], LIBÉRATION (18
May 1994). The 1975 France-Rwanda technical agreement did not require France to do anything beyond provide
training. It was used, however, by French officials to justify its sending of troops.
261
Letter from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda-Assistance militaire
Française”) (emphasis in original omitted).
262
Letter from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda-Assistance militaire
Française”).
263
Letter from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda-Assistance militaire
Française”).
264
Mark Huband, Secret Deal with Mobutu Let French Troops into Rwanda, THE GUARDIAN, 26 June 1994.
265
Mark Huband, Secret Deal with Mobutu Let French Troops into Rwanda, THE GUARDIAN, 26 June 1994.
266
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (23 June 1994). (Subject: “L’operation Turquoise vue du
Zaire”).
267
Cable from US Ambassador to Senegal to US Secretary of State (24 June 1994) (“Alain Juppé arrived Saturday,
June 18 for discussions with President Diouf . . . on Senegal’s contribution of troops to French PKO initiative in
Rwanda. French and Senegalese officials lauded and applauded the deep character of Franco-Senegalese cooperation
and friendship.”); Cable from US Ambassador to the Republic of Congo to US Secretary of State (24 June 1994) (“At
one point we were led to believe that the Congo would support UNAMIR II, but not the French initiative. Now that
the [UN Security Council] has given a green light to the French. . . the Congolose have apparently dropped their
reticence.”).
268
Le Rwanda au centre des entretiens d’Alain Juppé avec le président Omar Bongo [Rwanda at the Center of the
Discussions between Alain Juppé and President Omar Bongo], AFP, 3 June 1994; Jon Henley, France Pursues Bigger
Picture in Elf Scandal, THE GUARDIAN, 2 June 2001. In Gabon, Elf was a veritable state within the state, mixing
business, politics, and diplomacy. France accounts for three-quarters of the foreign investment in Gabon, and Gabon
sometimes provided three-quarters of Elf’s profits.
269
Bernard Edinger, France Has Long Record of Military Intervention in Africa, REUTERS, 5 Oct. 1990.
270
Le Rwanda au centre des entretiens d’Alain Juppé avec le président Omar Bongo [Rwanda at the Center of the
Discussions between Alain Juppé and President Omar Bongo], AFP Général (3 June 1994). Bongo met with Roussin,
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua, Minister of the Budget (and France’s future President) Nicolas Sarkozy, and
the presidents of the Senate René Monory and the National Assembly Philippe Seguin.
271
Le Président Bongo pour la mise sous contrôle de l'ONU du Rwanda [President Omar Bongo for Rwanda to Be
under UN Control], AFP, 8 June 1994.
272
“Il faut une force d’interposition” [“An Intervention Force Is Needed”], LIBÉRATION, 17 June 1994.
273
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda and France: Why now?
The OAU, Media, NGOs and Presidential Elections”).
274
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda and France: Why now?
The OAU, Media, NGOs and Presidential Elections”).
275
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 281 (1995) (citing International Herald Tribune
(14 June 1994)).
276
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 281 (1995) (citing International Herald Tribune
(14 June 1994)).
277
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 22 juin – Situation au Rwanda”).
278
Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy in Bujumbura (13 June 1994) (“RPF forces launched a major
attack on Gitarama Sunday night, June 12, and routed GOR forces”).
279
Report from Bruno Delaye (Subject: Point hebdomadaire de situation sur l’Afrique) (14 June 1994) (noting that
the IRG had fled its headquarters in Gitarama); Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy in Bujumbura (13
June 1994) (“UN Officials report that self-declared interim President Sindikubwabo and several of his ministers fled
Gitarama three to four days earlier for Gisenyi”); Cable from US Secretary of State to All US African posts, (13 June
1994) (Subject: “Press Guidance—Monday June 13, 1994”) (“RPF forces took control of Gitarama, forcing interim
government political leaders and their military protectors to flee westward toward Zaire”).
280
Cable from US Secretary of State to All US African posts (13 June 1994) (Subject: “Press Guidance—Monday
June 13, 1994”).
281
Serge Arnold, Le Rwanda du camp gouvernemental livré aux milices [Rwanda’s Governmental Side Taken Over
by Militia], AFP, 13 June 1994.
282
François Soudan, Rwanda pourquoil la France s’en mêle? JEUNE AFRIQUE, 30 June 1994; see also Restricted
Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”) (Pres. Mitterrand: “This
is a decision I take responsibility for.”).
283
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec le
Premier Ministre et Conseil restreint du Mercredi 15 Juin 1994”).
284
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”).
285
Alain Juppé, Intervenir au Rwanda [Intervening in Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 16 June 1994.
286
Jacques Amalric, Les Raisons d’un revirement français [Reasons for a French About-Face], LIBÉRATION (22 June
1994).
287
MIP Audition of M. Gerard Prunier, Tome III, Vol. 2, 191 (30 June 1998) (Prunier: “[D]uring this five-week period,
between the beginning of the Genocide and 11 May, at least 600,000 people had died.”); Memorandum from French
Delegation for Strategic Affairs (16 June 1994) (“It should be made aware that the operation in question will provoke
the following criticism: Too late: the massacres have already caused the death of several hundred thousand people and
the exodus of a greater number.”).
288
Cable from New Zealand Embassy in Paris to New Zealand Mission to the United Nations (20 June 1994) (“Juppé
had decided to act last week in response to public pressure in the wake of the massacres of children and bishops the
week before.”).
289
Richard Dowden, French Press on With Rwanda Mission, Doubts about Sending Troops, Such as the Risk to Aid
Workers, Have Been Dismissed in a Headlong Rush to Do Something, THE INDEPENDENT, 21 June 1994.
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
290
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”).
291
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (22 June 1994).
292
Letter from Edouard Balladur to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994).
293
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”).
294
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”).
295
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”). According
to reporting from the New Zealand Embassy in Paris, “the real push for the initiative [came from] Juppé’s office and
the Élysée.” Cable from New Zealand Embassy in Paris to New Zealand Mission to the United Nations (30 June
1994).
296
MIP Audition of Jean-Herve Bradol, Tome III, Vol. 1, 395 (June 2, 1998).
297
MIP Audition of Jean-Herve Bradol, Tome III, Vol. 1, 395 (June 2, 1998).
298
Mark Huband, Secret Deal with Mobutu Let French Troops into Rwanda, THE GUARDIAN, 26 June 1994.
299
Charles Lambroschini, Mitterrand-Juppe: Les Alliés objectifs [Mitterrand-Juppé: Objective Allies], LE FIGARO, 24
June 1994.
300
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda and France: Why now?
The OAU, Media, NGOs and Presidential Elections”).
301
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda and France: Why now?
The OAU, Media, NGOs and Presidential Elections”).
302
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”) (Mitterrand:
“If the others fail, we must go alone with the Africans. We take the risk of less effectiveness but our action is urgent
and limited. France’s honor is at stake.”).
303
Alain Juppé, Reponse du Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, M. Alain Juppé a une question orale au Senat [Response
from Alain Juppé, French Foreign Affairs Minister to French Senate] (16 June 1994). Several days later, on a trip to
the Ivory Coast to secure Ivorian participation in France’s intervention, he repeated the argument to the Associated
Press. David Crary, Mitterrand Readies French troops for Rwanda, ASSOCIATED PRESS, 18 June 1994 (“Even if the
rebels won the war, Juppe said, they could not govern Rwanda on their own.”).
304
Weekly News Report from Département International du Parti Socialiste, Communiqué de Pervenche Berès,
NOUVELLES INTERNATIONALES 8 (June 16, 1994).
305
Élysée Meeting Notes (23 Jan. 1991).
306
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (22 June 1994).
307
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (22 June 1994).
308
Interview du ministre des affaires étrangères, M. Alain Juppé [Interview of the Foreign Minister, Mr. Alain Juppé],
FRANCE 2 (16 June 1994).
309
Transcripts of French press shows, Balladur Briefs Assembly, PARIS FRANCE-INTER RADIO NETWORK 10 (22 June
1994).
310
Stephen Smith, L’Armée française malvenue au Rwanda [French Army is Unwelcome in Rwanda], LIBÉRATION
(20 June 1994) (“By securing, through our intervention in the west of Rwanda, the government area where a good part
of the population has taken refuge, we will create a kind of Hutuland that would otherwise be condemned by the
military. It is obviously political and, in the aftermath of the Tutsi genocide, completely unacceptable to the RPF.”).
311
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (16 June 1994) (Subject: “Intervention au Rwanda”).
312
Cable from Colin Keating 3 (17 June 1994).
313
Cable from Colin Keating 3 (17 June 1994).
314
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
315
EDOUARD BALLADUR, LE POUVOIR NE SE PARTAGE PAS: CONVERSATIONS AVEC FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND [POWER
CANNOT BE SHARED: CONVERSATIONS WITH FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND] 244-245 (2009); see also HUBERT VÉDRINE,
LES MONDES DE FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND: A L’ÉLYSÉE 1981-1995 701-702 (1996) (noting that Lanxade and Leotard
had considered a solitary intervention by France “very risky” with Mitterrand’s chief of staff, Dominique de Villepin,
and General Quesnot “already preparing the practical arrangements” but that Mitterrand thought that “a military
deployment in Kigali and in the very center of the country was extremely dangerous”).
316
EDOUARD BALLADUR, LE POUVOIR NE SE PARTAGE PAS: CONVERSATIONS AVEC FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND [Power
Cannot Be Shared: Conversations with François Mitterrand] 244- 245 (2009).
317
EDOUARD BALLADUR, LE POUVOIR NE SE PARTAGE PAS: CONVERSATIONS AVEC FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND [Power
Cannot Be Shared: Conversations with François Mitterrand] 244 (2009).
318
Restricted Council Meeting Notes 5 (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 15 juin—Situation au Rwanda”).
319
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (16 June 1994) (Subject: “Intervention au Rwanda”).
320
Fiche 18722/N, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (15 June 1994). (“[T]he RPF has not released its
pressure on Kigali and the Nyamirambo neighborhood, one of the few that is not yet under its control, which is subject
to daily bombing.” (emphasis omitted)); Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (19 June 1994)
(“Despite a semblance of a truce applied yesterday in Kigali to allow humanitarian operations, the belligerents
continue fighting. . . . In the morning, the clashes were violent, especially in the city center, south-west and north of
the capital.”).
321
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (16 June 1994) (Subject: intervention au Rwanda”).
322
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (16 June 1994) (Subject: intervention au Rwanda”).
323
Raphael Glucksmann, David Hazan, Pierre Mezerette, Tuez-les tous! (Rwanda: histoire d’un genocide “sans
importance”) [Kill them all! Rwanda: History of a Genocide “Without Importance”], YOUTUBE, 1:20:52-1:21:15
(27 Nov. 2004), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPuakHztdDM.
324
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (17 June 1994).
325
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (17 June 1994).
326
Notes on Crisis cell meeting transcript (17 June 1994).
327
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994).
328
Note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994) (emphasis omitted).
329
Note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994).
330
Report regarding options for intervention in Rwanda appended to note from Christian Quesnot to François
Mitterrand (18 June 1994) (emphasis added).
331
Note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994).
332
Note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994).
333
Note from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot (16 June 1994).
334
Cable from Raymond Germanos to François Léotard (17 June 1994).
335
Turquoise operational orders would use the same ethnically essentialist terminology used by Jacques Lanxade. See,
e.g., MIP Tome I, 323 (“First, it was a question of ‘being ready later on to gradually control the extent of Hutu country
towards Kigali.’”) (emphasis added).
336
Note from Jacques Lanxade to François Léotard (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Présentation générale de l’opération
française au Rwanda”).
337
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Qui sont les massacreurs”).
338
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Qui sont les massacreurs”).
339
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (16 June 1994) (emphasis omitted).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
340
Cable from Strobe Talbott to US Embassy in Bujumbura (28 Apr. 1994) While the IRG continued to maintain that
ethnic massacres were a spontaneous response to the RPF’s continued offensive, the US State Department’s Prudence
Bushnell confronted the IRG’s Théoneste Bagosora “with eyewitness accounts of Rwandan army complicity in the
killings” stating that “the world did not believe their party line.”
341
MIP Audition of Jean-Herve Bradol, Tome III, Vol. 1, 395 (June 2, 1998); Cable from Madeleine Albright to US
Secretary of State (20 June 1994) (containing contemporaneous notes from the US Embassy relaying Dr. Bradol’s
account that Mitterrand called the Rwandan government a “gang of murderers” in a private meeting).
342
Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy in Addis Ababa (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Update on French
initiative on Rwanda”).
343
Note from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1994).
344
Note from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (20 June 1994).
345
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (20 June 1994).
346
Note from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994).
347
Note from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994).
348
Cable from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994).
349
Cable from Jacques Lanxade to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994).
350
Note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994) (emphasis omitted).
351
Minister: Belgium Not Interested in New Rwanda Mission, REUTERS, 16 June 1994. Notably, Belgium had not cut
off military training assistance to the FAR, even after it withdrew its ground troops in November 1990. In early 1994,
the Belgian military still had more FAR soldiers enrolled in their military schools than did France.
352
Note from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (16 June 1994) (reporting that Prime
Minister Balladur “has made it a condition of this operation that at least one European country participate alongside
us”); Partial Transcript, François Léotard, TF-1 (18 June 1994) (Subject: “Leotard Comments on Intervention
Prerequisites”) (“Two things are ruled out: First and foremost, for us to go there on our own, and second, for us to be
there for a long time.”); see also Note from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 June 1994) (“It seems
indispensable to obtain troops, if only symbolically, from at least one European country.”).
353
Cable from Jacques Lapouge to various French Embassies in Africa, Europe, and Asia (16 June 1994). The word
“cover,” though not used in the document, is explained: “6 / == PARTICIPATION IN THE OPERATION === . . .
France does not plan to intervene alone. In the local context, it would be immediately accused of wanting to prevent
the RPF military victory; The association of European countries is necessary. To record our action in the framework
of WEU provides a useful label for the acceptance of our action, as the image of Europe. Participation of African
countries, if possible not exclusively francophones, would also be very desirable.; 7 / == LEGITIMATION OF OUR
ACTION BY THE UN = Naturally, it should obtain a coverage of our action by the United Nations.”
354
MIP Audition of Alain Juppé, Tome III, Vol. 2 (21 Apr. 1998). In his MIP hearing, Juppé confirmed that France
had enjoyed the Secretary-General’s “active support” in pushing for the adoption of resolution 929, which authorized
Operation Turquoise.
355
Cable from Colin Keating (16 June 1994).
356
Cable from Colin Keating (16 June 1994). While Keating’s intent is understood, France does not appear to have
had a “significant fleet of transport aircraft,” and itself had to turn to Ukrainian “arms brokers” to lease former Soviet
aircraft for Operation Turquoise.
357
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
358
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
359
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
360
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
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Chapter IX
361
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
Cable from Madeleine Albright to American Embassy in Paris (17 June 1994).
362
MIP Tome I 312 (“This lack of [international] support was also emphasized by General Raymond Germanos, who
recalled that France had in particular proposed to Italy that the operational part of Turquoise be led by the French,
who would engage their troops, and that humanitarian support be taken over by the WEU [Western European Union]
under Italian command; but at the last minute, Italy refused to take part.”).
363
Cable from Jacques Lapouge to various French Embassies in Africa, Europe, and Asia (16 June 1994).
364
Cable from Jacques Lapouge to various French Embassies in Africa, Europe, and Asia (16 June 1994).
365
Cable from Jacques Lapouge to various French Embassies in Africa, Europe, and Asia (16 June 1994).
366
Cable from Colin Keating (17 June 1994).
367
Cable from Ambassador Colin Keating (17 June 1994).
368
Cable from Ambassador Colin Keating (17 June 1994).
369
Cable from Ambassador Colin Keating (17 June 1994).
370
Cable from New Zealand Embassy in Ottawa to New Zealand Mission at the United Nations (20 June 1994)
(“Dallaire believed [the French proposal] would make the situation unmanageable, but was unable to comment
publicly as the Secretariat had received instructions from the SecGen to be both supportive of the French proposal and
the reinforcement of UNAMIR.”).
371
Minister: Belgium Not Interested in New Rwanda Mission, REUTERS, 16 June 1994..
372
Letter from Patrick Mazimhaka to H.E Salim Bin Mohammed Al-Khussaidby 8 (20 June 1994) (Subject: “French
military intervention in Rwanda”).
373
Stephen Smith, L’Armée française malvenue au Rwanda [The French Army Unwelcome in Rwanda], LIBÉRATION,
20 June 1994.
374
Stephen Smith, L’Armée française malvenue au Rwanda [The French Army Unwelcome in Rwanda], LIBÉRATION,
20 June 1994.
375
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 288-289 (1995).
376
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 288-289 (1995); see also Cable from Pamela
Harriman to US Secretary of State (21 June 1994).
377
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 288-289 (1995).
378
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 288-289 (1995).
379
Note from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Entretien à Paris avec des representants
du FPR”).
380
Note from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Entretien à Paris avec des representants
du FPR”).
381
Handwritten note by Francois Mitterrand on Note from Bruno Delaye to President François Mitterrand (22 June
1994) (Subject: “Entretien à Paris avec des representants du FPR”).
382
Letter from Democratic Forces of Change (MDR, PSD, PDC, PL) to François Mitterrand (16 June 1994) (Subject
“Refus d’une nouvelle intervention militaire Francaise au Rwanda”).
383
Le Président gabonais salue l’initiative de la France [Gabonese President Welcomes France’s Initiative], AFP, 18
June 1994.
384
Declaration of Central African heads of state on Rwanda (27 June 1994).
385
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (22 June 1994).
386
Cable from New Zealand Embassy in Ottawa to UN Security Council Representative office in Wellington, New
Zealand (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
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Chapter IX
15 April 1994 – 21 June 1994
387
Note from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994) (Subject: “Conseil restraint
du 22 juin. RWANDA”) (noting that Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Belgium have announced they will provide logistical
support but will not send troops).
388
Cable from Colin Keating (20 June 1994).
389
Note from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994) (Subject: “Conseil restraint
du 22 juin. RWANDA”).
390
Non-Aligned Movement, NTI BUILDING A SAFER WORLD, https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-andregimes/non-aligned-movement-nam/ (last visited 3 Feb. 2021).
391
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating.
392
Cable from New Zealand Embassy in Paris to UN Security Council Representative office in Wellington, New
Zealand (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
393
Cable from New Zealand Embassy in Paris to UN Security Council Representative office in Wellington, New
Zealand (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
394
Note from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (21 June 1994) (Subject: “Conseil restraint
du 22 juin. RWANDA”).
395
US Intelligence Cable, sender redacted (20 June 1994) (Subject: “France-Rwanda: Possibility of Intervention”).
396
Andrew Gumbel, France Presses Ahead with Unilateral Rwanda Mission, THE GUARDIAN, 20 June 1994. As a UN
official in Kigali said of France: “What could they do? No one wants them [in Rwanda].”
397
Cable from Colin Keating (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
398
Letter from Boutros Boutros-Ghali to Salim Bin Mohammed Al-Khussaiby (19 June 1994).
399
Cable from Colin Keating (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
400
Victoria Brittain, France’s Fatal Impact, THE GUARDIAN, 24 June 1994.
401
Letter from Boutros Boutros-Ghali to Salim Bin Mohammed Al-Khussaiby (19 June 1994).
402
S.C. Res. 929, S/RES/929 (22 June 1994).
403
Cable from Colin Keating (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
404
Cable from Colin Keating (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
405
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 437 (2003).
406
Fiche Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 June 1994).
407
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes 4 (22 June 1994).
408
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Mercredi 22 juin—Situation au Rwanda”).
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CHAPTER X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
A. While Operation Turquoise Carried a Humanitarian Mandate, French Forces Deployed
with a Massive Display of Firepower and Some Officers Who Had Previously Supported the
FAR in its War against the RPF.
I was surprised by . . . how deeply [the Turquoise troops, when they first
arrived,] believed that they were there to try to protect the innocent Hutu
population.1
– Charles Petrie, Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for the UN
First, France needed planes. Pressed, suddenly, with an urgent need to ferry large numbers
of soldiers, trucks, weapons, and helicopters to the Rwandan-Zairean border, and knowing that
France’s own fleet was inadequate to the task,2 French officials set their sights on American
military planes—in particular, the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, a wide-bodied, high-winged military
transport aircraft the US Department of Defense had been using to shuttle soldiers and equipment
all over the world since the Vietnam war.3 The C-5 had already made an appearance in the region:
in April 1994, the United States dispatched C-5s to airlift Belgian soldiers, vehicles, and supplies
to help Belgium evacuate its nationals from Rwanda.4 This time, though, when France sought a
loan of C-5s from the United States for the launch of Operation Turquoise, the Americans
demurred.5 With nowhere else to turn, the French government struck a deal with Ukrainian arms
dealers,6 known for charging steep prices for surplus military equipment from former Eastern Bloc
nations.7 It was for this reason that General Jean-Claude Lafourcade, the newly designated
commander of the Turquoise forces, found himself on the morning of 24 June 1994 aboard an
Antonov An-124, a massive, four-engine military transport plane first produced behind the Iron
Curtain during the Cold War.8 The questionable reliability of the plane and the chartered pilots
and crew that came with it made Lafourcade nervous.9
Lafourcade had never been to Rwanda.10 Yet on 17 June, after being summoned to Paris
from the southwest of France, he found himself sitting in Admiral Jacques Lanxade’s office,
receiving less than an hour’s worth of instructions on his new mission.11 That mission was to
oversee a two-month military operation that, in the words of the UN resolution that authorized it,
would strive to “contribut[e], in an impartial way, to the security and protection of displaced
persons, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda.”12 The admiral was characteristically direct. As
Lafourcade would later write, Admiral Lanxade did not hesitate to state that a genocide was being
perpetrated against the Tutsi, but he cautioned Lafourcade that “the boundaries are blurred.”13 The
killers, in many cases, were ordinary Rwandans—neighbors murdering neighbors.14 There were
militias, but they wore no uniforms and would be difficult to distinguish from ordinary street
gangs.15 French troops would, of course, recognize FAR soldiers—“[t]hey have been our allies,”
Lafourcade wrote—but, according to Lanxade, only some of the Rwandan troops “were guilty of
participating in this business of death.”16 Others, he posited, were “fighting loyally” against the
RPF.17
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
Turning to the RPF, Lanxade warned: “They see us as enemies and explicitly threaten us
with fighting if we intervene.”18 Lanxade characterized the RPF as both highly disciplined and
capable of “merciless violence”—at bottom, “a rebel force with unconventional methods whose
objective is the conquest of power.”19 “We will not go and fight against them. But we will do what
we have to do if necessary,” General Lafourcade would write.20
The Antonov An-124 that Lafourcade boarded on 24 June was headed to Goma, Zaire, on
the northern bank of Lake Kivu.21 France had selected Goma as the main operating base for
Turquoise, a decision it made “[f]or lack of a choice but not without hesitation.”22 Goma had a
serviceable, modern airport and was conveniently located beside Rwanda’s northwestern border
town of Gisenyi, the new seat of the IRG.23 General Dallaire, the UNAMIR force commander,
deeply suspicious of France’s intentions, had feared that French forces might concentrate their
efforts in that part of Rwanda.24 “[T]hat would confirm that they were really coming in to support
the [FAR]. If so, I could expect them to enter combat operations against the RPF, which by default
would drive a direct reprisal against UNAMIR and force our withdrawal,” he later wrote.25
In fact, according to French historian and Socialist party stalwart Gérard Prunier, who had
been asked by the Defense Ministry to help plan Turquoise, French officials had initially planned
to enter Rwanda through Gisenyi.26 Prunier found the early plan objectionable on several grounds,
not the least of which was that it was at odds with French claims that Turquoise’s aims were solely
humanitarian, as there were few surviving Tutsi in need of saving in that part of Rwanda. “The
French forces would find absolutely no one left alive to be paraded in front of TV cameras as a
justification for the intervention,” Prunier would later remark.27 Prunier persuaded French
authorities to scrap that plan.28 The French government ultimately settled on a two-pronged
approach: while Turquoise’s primary base would be situated in Goma (near the IRG stronghold of
Gisenyi), the French military would set up a second base farther south in Bukavu, Zaire, on the
Lake Kivu’s southern shore, from which Turquoise troops could cross the border into Cyangugu.29
“[M]y impression,” Prunier would write, “was that the part of my argument which finally won the
day was that at the Nyarushishi [refugee] camp near Cyangugu we could find the large stock of
surviving Tutsi whom we needed for displaying to the TV cameras.”30
En route to Goma, the Antonov An-124 cruised southward over northern Africa for several
hours without incident.31 Lafourcade and his compatriots, though, remained uneasy about the
aircraft to the point that one of the officers got up to check in with the pilots.32 What he learned
horrified the French military passengers: the plane needed to make a brief stopover, and because
the landing conditions were favorable there, the pilots were proposing to land in the Ugandan city
of Entebbe.33 “Uganda, the country that most actively supports Kagame’s RPF!” Lafourcade
would later exclaim.34
In fact, since the start of the Genocide, Entebbe had been a way station for much of the
international community’s efforts to evacuate foreign nationals and bring humanitarian relief to
Rwanda.35 Its airport, considered to be among the best in the region, was linked to Rwanda by 325
miles of road that could be traversed in any weather.36 Dallaire had traveled to Entebbe just a few
weeks earlier and had, in fact, chosen the city as his main staging base for UNAMIR’s planned
relaunch.37 Lafourcade, though, who may well have known none of this, continued to believe years
afterward that a brief pitstop in Entebbe would have constituted “an unprecedented diplomatic
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
blunder.”38 The French officers ordered the pilots to land instead 1,500 miles to the west of Entebbe
in Libreville, Gabon (home of President Omar Bongo, a steadfast French ally who supported the
operation).39 Looking back, Lafourcade considered it fortunate that he and the other French
officers had indulged their concerns about the chartered aircraft and its pilots. “Our mistrust,” he
wrote, “would save us.”40
The French government had presented Operation Turquoise as a new beginning of sorts by
insisting that, after years of support for the Habyarimana government and its Army, French troops
would return to Rwanda as a neutral provider of humanitarian aid.41 What was abundantly clear,
though, as Lafourcade’s plane veered away from Ugandan airspace on 24 June 1994, was that
French officials were still laboring under the same preconceptions that infused the French
government’s interventions on behalf of the Habyarimana regime before the Genocide. They still
viewed the RPF as Ugandan-backed usurpers, still saw the RPF’s leaders as would-be tyrants, and
still believed in the power of the French military to forestall the RPF’s victory. The “mistrust” that
Lafourcade and his fellow officers brought to their mission did not evaporate when their plane, at
last, reached its final destination in Goma, Zaire.42 They carried it with them every day, from the
start of the operation until the last French soldiers left Rwanda two months later, and even years
after the mission’s completion.
Turquoise was not neutral, and never could be, because the French government was not
neutral. Its leaders remained hostile to the RPF, appearing to see no virtue in its campaign to defeat
the génocidaires. The RPF, having driven the IRG and its Army from several of its most vital
strongholds over the preceding two and a half months, was unquestionably winning that fight, and,
before Operation Turquoise, its path to victory and putting an end to the Genocide had seemed
clear.43 Turquoise obstructed that path. It gave comfort to the IRG and the FAR at a moment when
their fortunes looked grim, while warning RPF forces to think twice before venturing too deep into
interim government-controlled territory.
This was by design. As the MIP would later recognize, the French government’s insistence
that Operation Turquoise had solely humanitarian aims was never true, strictly speaking.44 There
was, in fact, a second, generally unspoken goal behind the operation: “preserving the conditions
for political negotiation based on power-sharing.”45 According to the MIP: “France, even as it
launched Operation Turquoise, had not given up the idea that only a political solution accepted by
the parties and based on power sharing would put an end to the violence and ethnic clashes.”46 To
this way of thinking, it was not acceptable to stand by and wait for RPF forces to defeat the interim
government’s Army, as this, in the French government’s view, could not produce a durable peace.
The old assumptions had not lost their purchase in the French imagination: officials in Paris
remained convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that an RPF military victory would usher
in a new era of ethnic violence and instability.
What French officials hoped was that if the Turquoise forces could stabilize what remained
of the interim government-controlled territory in western Rwanda and end the massacres there,
there might still be a chance of coaxing the two sides to return to the negotiating table and, as
General Lafourcade would later write, achieve a “reimplementation of the Arusha Accords.”47 One
can only speculate as to what a negotiated truce might have looked like, had France succeeded in
wrangling the two sides to accept one. There is, however, reason to suspect that some members of
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the French government had a radical vision in mind: the partitioning of Rwanda.48 President
Mitterrand and Foreign Minister Alain Juppé had always viewed the Rwandan conflict in ethnic
terms, insisting that the RPF was a Tutsi organization, and so could never wield power legitimately
in a country with an overwhelming Hutu majority.49 One former French diplomat, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said Juppé was genuinely convinced that a territorial division of Rwanda
into separate Hutu and Tutsi states was the best solution to the conflict.50
General Dallaire, the UNAMIR force commander, sensed that this was the French
government’s vision when he sat down to speak with General Lafourcade at his office in Goma in
late June 1994.51 On the wall, he would later note, was a map of Rwanda with a line down the
middle—a line that appeared to denote the position that RPF units had held in May 1994, reflecting
none of the territorial gains that RPF forces had made over the previous month.52 He inferred that
the French government was angling to push back the RPF forces and reestablish that line, giving
the IRG and its Army additional leverage in prospective negotiations with their adversary.53
The MIP’s quarrel with the French government’s renewed push for Arusha-style
negotiations in June 1994 was not that it threatened to tear the country in half, but that it assumed,
too optimistically, that a peaceful resolution to the conflict was still possible.54 Without an
intervention to “hold up [the] situation,” the MIP summarized, French officials viewed the RPF as
unlikely to resume peace talks while its forces were routing the FAR from its last remaining
strongholds.55 The truth, though, is that there were many reasons why a cease-fire had failed to
materialize that summer, and why neither side was likely to agree to one anytime soon.56 One of
those reasons, as French officials well knew, had nothing to do with the balance of power in the
war. It was, rather, that the RPF leadership had decided it would not recognize the legitimacy of a
government that was slaughtering its own people.57
Having resolved to stop the RPF’s advance, the French government had no difficulty
summoning the brute strength it apparently believed its mission required.58 Its troops, as one
French soldier would put it, came “‘armed like aircraft carriers,’”59 arriving with an arsenal that
included “more than 100 armored vehicles, a battery of heavy 120mm marine mortars, two light
Gazelle and eight heavy Super Puma helicopters and air cover provided by four Jaguar fighterbombers, four Mirage F1CT ground-attack planes, and four Mirage F1CRs for reconnaissance.”60
“This reassures the men!” Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Hogard, who led the southern Turquoise
detachment, would later write.61 Reflecting on his tour in a 2005 memoir, Hogard would note that,
before departing for Rwanda, he made a point of requesting mortars, machine guns, sniper rifles,
and night-vision goggles expressly because of his concerns that the RPF forces would take up arms
against the Turquoise troops.62
The extent of French firepower would be on full display in the early days of the operation.
As a magazine devoted to the French military would later report, special forces teams performing
reconnaissance patrols in late June 1994 traveled in packs of four jeeps and one VLRA lighttactical vehicle equipped with 12.7 and 7.62 mm machine guns, Belgian-made 5.56mm light
machine guns, LRAC anti-tank rocket launchers, M79 and M203 grenade launchers, and FR F2
and Barrett sniper rifles—“a truly dissuasive amount of firepower!” the magazine exclaimed.63 All
this weaponry, in a country where many militias were brutalizing their victims with clubs and
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machetes, struck some observers as surprising and contributed to a perception that Turquoise was
more of a military operation than a humanitarian endeavor.64
According to General Lafourcade, the thinking among Turquoise’s planners was that an
“impressive” display of French weaponry would deter any potential challenges to the French
forces.65 “[S]oldiers know that the best way to avoid the use of force is to rely on dissuasion
before,” he would later write.66 This, to be sure, was not an unreasonable view. While RPF officials
have long maintained that they never had any intention of confronting French troops,67 it is
understandable that the French government would not want to take any chances. The mere fact,
though, that French authorities could not feel confident that the RPF would believe them when
they averred that Turquoise would be neutral only serves to prove that the French government—
due to its history of support for the FAR—was uniquely ill suited to launch a humanitarian
operation in Rwanda.
Settling into his role as commander of the new operation, Lafourcade had little time to
cultivate a perspective on the complexities of Rwandan society and the rapidly unfolding crisis
into which his troops were inserting themselves. It was not until 15 June 1994—more than two
months into the Genocide—that President Mitterrand had even made the decision to send troops
to Rwanda, and from there it was up to the Rapid Action Force to make the necessary preparations,
and to do it quickly.68 On 17 June, the French Ministry of Defense ordered a select group of special
forces units to “gather their equipment and prepare to leave for an African destination.”69 Three
days later, a French special forces reconnaissance team led by Colonel Jacques Rosier landed in
Goma to make contact with the Zairean Armed Forces and scout out the city’s airport.70
The rapid-fire turnaround had critical implications for the ensuing operation. First, it left
the French government with only a small window to assemble an international coalition in support
of the mission. French officials were eager to counter suspicions71—held by some in the UN
Security Council and popular in the international media72—that the French government, with its
long history of supporting the Hutu regime, was going to support the interim government forces.73
Hoping to present Turquoise as a multinational operation, the administration enlisted Foreign
Minister Juppé and Cooperation Minister Roussin to persuade friendly francophone governments
in Africa to contribute troops, or at least logistical support.74 Their effort, though, had limited
success.75 Operation Turquoise ended up being an overwhelmingly French affair, with no more
than a few dozen foreign troops (chiefly from Senegal) during the first few critical weeks of its
existence,76 and ultimately just 510 foreign troops (still primarily from Senegal, but also from other
francophone African countries, including Niger, Chad, and Mauritania) serving alongside France’s
contingent of 2,924 soldiers.77
Even more critically, perhaps, the rush to launch the operation meant French defense
officials had little time to iron out the particulars of the French troops’ mission.78 The first order
General Lafourcade would issue as commander of Operation Turquoise, on 25 June 1994,
identified two goals for the operation: first, “to put an end to the massacres wherever possible,
potentially by using force,” and, second, “to be able to hand over” authority to UNAMIR II “when
the time comes.”79 But rather than specify exactly how the Turquoise forces would achieve these
goals, French authorities chose to keep their plans vague, giving the commanders on the ground
wide latitude to respond to events as they saw fit.80 The ambiguity left senior French officers
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unsure about the scope of their authority. For example, in his end-of-mission report, Colonel
Patrice Sartre, the commander of the operation’s northern group, based in Goma, wrote that it was
clear to him that his troops could use deadly force against “any individual threatening the life of
another.”81 What was less clear, he wrote, was what to do if the French troops were able to
apprehend the person without shooting him. “Did we have the right to detain [him]? For how long?
And how to keep [him]?”82
A related question was how French troops ought to deal with known génocidaires. When
US officials posed this question to a French diplomat in Washington on 20 June, two days before
the UN Security Council vote authorizing the operation, the diplomat “acknowledged that a policy
has not been worked out.”83
The discretion left to Turquoise troops was particularly problematic because some were
veterans of previous French military operations in support of the FAR. These men, whose presence
could not help but undermine French claims that Turquoise was an unequivocally “neutral” force,84
had worked alongside Rwandan Army commanders who, in numerous cases, were personally
responsible for the murder of Tutsi civilians. The returning French troops had relationships with
FAR leaders, understood their ways of thinking, and often appeared sympathetic to their cause.85
To the French government, these were not reasons to disqualify an officer or soldier from
participating in Turquoise; rather, as one French gendarme, Thierry Prungnaud, discovered, the
French troops’ familiarity with the terrain and the dynamics of the conflict were among the reasons
they were chosen for the mission.86
Prungnaud had served in Rwanda for four months in 1992, training the Rwandan
Presidential Guard (members of which would go on to participate in massacres).87 Two years later,
in mid-June 1994, a French Gendarmerie commander summoned Prungnaud to his office outside
of Versailles.88 “There is a planned departure for Burundi, following the events taking place in
Rwanda,” the commander told him.89 The commander, as Prungnaud would later recall, had a
skewed understanding of just what was happening in Rwanda. “You know that Ugandan rebels
are invading the country and killing people,” he told Prungnaud, having apparently taken no notice
of the Genocide the IRG had orchestrated against the Tutsi.90 “As you have already been there,
two years ago, I thought of you.”91
Other officers marking their return to Rwanda in the summer of 1994 could be found
among the special forces who arrived at the very outset of Turquoise to perform some of the initial
reconnaissance missions and security patrols.92 The most prominent of these officers was Colonel
Rosier, who, as chief of the Special Operations Command detachment, supervised more than 200
special forces troops.93 Rwandan defense officials had hailed Rosier as a hero two years earlier for
his role in deterring the RPF military,94 during his five-month stint, from June to November 1992,
as head of the Operation Noroît forces.95 Arriving at a low point for the FAR, following the RPF
army’s June 1992 blitz in Byumba, Rosier oversaw efforts to introduce a new weapon, the 105
mm mortar, to the Rwandan arsenal.96 The large and powerful cannons reinvigorated the FAR
troops.
Two years later, the RPF forces were on the verge of encircling Kigali. On 19 June 1994,
the day before Rosier’s arrival in Goma, the RPF military captured Mount Kigali, a strategically
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vital hill overlooking the western part of city.97 The FAR were overmatched, and their defeat had
begun to look inevitable.98
The operations base that Rosier had come to help set up in Goma was 100 miles away by
road from the fighting in Kigali. The French military took note, though, of the growing number of
Tutsi refugees pouring into Goma to escape the ongoing massacres in Rwanda, and, correctly or
not, believed that some of them had taken up arms to “protect [themselves] from acts of violence
from the local population.”99 Rosier, thinking it would be best to keep the French presence
“discreet,” stayed at a hotel outside the city, with guards posted outside his room.100 Rosier wrote
in a 20 June note to his supervising officer that one Zairean security official advised him and his
staff “not to touch the dishes and drinks that would be offered to us due to poisoning risks
(Tutsi).”101
Rosier was joined in Goma on 22 June by Colonel Didier Tauzin,102 a veteran of prior
French exploits in Rwanda. Tauzin’s last visit to the country in early 1993 had been brief but
exceptionally eventful. As the head of Operation Chimère, the French government’s secret effort
to help the FAR drive back the RPF army following the breakdown of the July 1992 cease-fire, he
was the de facto commander of Rwanda’s Armed Forces.103 He worked closely with some of the
Rwandan military’s most virulent hardliners, including Chief of Staff Déogratias Nsabimana,
General Gratien Kabiligi, and Lieutenant Colonel Augustin Bizimungu, and for years afterward
would continue to speak of them in tones of profound respect.104
Tauzin’s assignment in June 1994, as head of the 1st Marine Infantry Paratroopers
Regiment, or 1st RPIMa, was to lead the first wave of French special forces in southwestern
Rwanda. Other French soldiers with prior experience in Rwanda would serve by his side. Among
them: Lieutenant Colonel Etienne Joubert, who commanded DAMI Panda (French military
trainers) in 1992 and 1993;105 and Chief Warrant Officer Marc Bourdarias, who served in DAMI
Panda in 1993.106
Other French officers with ties to the Habyarimana regime and its Army would follow.
One of the decisions made during the planning phase of Operation Turquoise was to establish a
network of “liaison detachments”—officers who would serve as General Lafourcade’s links to
each of the various stakeholders in the region, including the FAR, the RPF, UNAMIR, NGOs, and
neighboring countries.107 To head this group, the French government chose Colonel Gilbert
Canovas, who, from 1990 to 1991, had secretly worked in the FAR’s état-major as advisor to the
Rwandan Army’s then chief of staff, Laurent Serubuga.108 Now, as head of the liaison
detachments, Canovas was leading a staff of 31 people, five of whom had previously worked with
the FAR under the auspices of the French Military Assistance Mission, in some cases right up until
the moment the Genocide began.109 In his end-of-mission report, Colonel Canovas singled out
these officers for their “very strong knowledge of Rwanda” and their “invaluable contribution” to
the operation.110
“Liaisons” with the FAR and IRG began “as soon as the Turquoise contingent arrived” in
Rwanda, according to Canovas.111 These initial communications were much anticipated among the
Rwandan military and political authorities. As French officials were well aware, some members
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of the FAR and IRG believed the true purpose of Turquoise was not to deliver humanitarian aid,
but to “prop up the remnants of the Hutu leadership and perhaps even give covert aid.”112
Canovas’ report said the liaison detachment responsible for these contacts enabled General
Lafourcade “to be permanently informed of the government’s intentions and the attitude of the
FAR toward the advance of the RPF.”113 The report noted that the contacts continued even after
the RPF routed the IRG from Gisenyi in mid-July 1994, stating that, at that point, the detachment’s
“main purpose was to temper the Rwandans’ zeal and encourage them to adopt a low profile on
Zairean territory.”114
Early attempts to reach out to the RPF did not fare nearly as well. According to Canovas’
report, the French government positioned a liaison detachment at UNAMIR headquarters “in order
to potentially establish contact with the RPF. This could not be achieved in the desired form.”115
To many observers, it seemed clear that the Genocide had done little to change the French
government’s perception of the Rwandan conflict. Many of its troops, according to these accounts,
had returned to Rwanda in June 1994 with the same preconceptions and biases French troops had
exhibited in their prior missions, and without a clear understanding of what was now transpiring:
a genocide, orchestrated by Hutu authorities against the country’s Tutsi minority.116 Charles Petrie,
then the United Nations deputy humanitarian coordinator, recalled that French soldiers he met in
Goma in late June were “very angry,” when he used the word “genocide”; they insisted that a
double genocide was taking place, and that he was “completely wrong” to say the Tutsi were the
victims.117 “[I was] surprised by how uniform their discourse was and how deeply they believed
[when they first arrived] that they were there to try to protect the innocent Hutu population,” he
said.118
It would take some time for the truth of the matter to sink in—longer for some French
soldiers than for others.119 One senior French officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said
there was a noticeable difference between the Turquoise troops who had previously served in
Rwanda and those who had not.120 The officer, who belonged to the latter camp, said those who,
like him, had never been to Rwanda before and had no ties to the FAR had an easier time
recognizing the grim reality of what they were witnessing on the ground in the summer of 1994.
Those, by contrast, who had trained the FAR to fight the RPF forces were comparatively slow to
adjust their “mental scheme.” Some of those men, he said, did not truly understand what they had
seen even as they left Rwanda two months later, in August 1994.
B. The Turquoise Forces’ First Foray into Rwandan Territory Was Calculated to Allay
Suspicions That the French Government Was Still Backing the FAR.
From the beginning, few, if any, of the stakeholders in Rwanda were prepared to credit the
French government’s claims that its mission was simply to save lives.121 The RPF, certainly, had
made no secret of its skepticism. “We have no doubt whatsoever that their intentions are far from
being humanitarian,” the RPF secretary general told journalists in Paris on 23 June.122 “I couldn’t
imagine it being purely humanitarian, given their past relationship with the Habyarimana
government and the FAR,” Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, then head of operations for the RPA, has
said.123 The timing of the operation only added to the RPF’s suspicions. “When the Genocide
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began, France came back to evacuate their nationals. If they were interested in a humanitarian
intervention, that was the time—not in late June when the FAR was being defeated,” said Charles
Karamba, who commanded the RPF at the CND (Centre Nationale de Développement) during the
Genocide.124
FAR leaders were similarly convinced that French forces had come to support their fight
against the RPF military.125 Noting this, a French intelligence agency memorandum questioned
whether, under the circumstances, the operation would indeed facilitate a peaceful resolution to
the fighting between the RPF army and the FAR or whether, perhaps, it would just make the two
sides dig in further.126
NGOs, including those based in France, also needed some convincing. “In general, the
humanitarian organizations are still hesitant to integrate with Operation Turquoise, in the aims of
avoiding what the majority of them consider ‘a compromise’ [of their principles],” France’s
military intelligence agency, the DRM, wrote on 25 June.127 One French charity, Médecins du
Monde (MDM, or Doctors of the World), made clear that it “vehemently reject[ed] the legitimacy
of the initiative in Rwanda and categorically refuse[d] to be associated with it.”128 MDM’s
chairman, Bernard Granjon, held a press conference on 21 June to announce the formation of a
committee of more than 20 French charities and development assistance groups opposed to the
operation.129 “The French government cannot intervene directly in Rwanda, its past in that country
is already too weighty and its activities have been too pronounced,” Granjon said.130
The Turquoise forces’ first operation in Rwandan territory was designed to erase doubts
about the French government’s intentions.131 French officials recognized that their troops’ first
foray over the Zairean-Rwandan border would shape perceptions about the operation, perhaps
permanently.132 They also knew, as a DGSE memo put it on 22 June, that an operation in the
northwest, near the IRG headquarters in Gisenyi, “could only be interpreted as an obvious sign of
support for a regime considered by the RPF as illegitimate. Under such conditions, a radicalization
of the RPF attitude toward the French forces would be likely.”133 “In the north, because the seat of
the Rwandan government is in Gisenyi, there are too many problems for us,” one French soldier
explained to Stephen Smith, a reporter for the French newspaper Libération.134 “They are trying
to get us back at any cost, but we will not compromise ourselves. We will push forward here [in
the south] first to prove our good faith.”135
UN Security Council Resolution 929 (authorizing Operation Turquoise) was 24 hours old
when, in the mid-afternoon on 23 June 1994, Colonel Tauzin and his team of roughly 42 French
special forces troops from the 1st RPIMa crossed the wooden bridge from Bukavu to Cyangugu.136
A cheering crowd awaited them. “Of course, we knew we wouldn’t be greeted by gunfire! But
neither did we expect the triumphant welcome we received,” Tauzin wrote in his memoir. “We
were greeted like saviors!”137 (Scenes such as these did not, in all likelihood, come together
organically. As the author and human rights advocate Alison Des Forges noted, Radio Rwanda
and hate media station RTLM had each aired broadcasts hailing the French troops’ arrival and
“giv[ing] instructions on how to welcome the troops warmly.”138)
Stephen Smith, the Libération reporter, took note of a sign posted about 500 yards inland
from the border: “Long live France, long live Mitterrand, long live France in Rwanda. We thank
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France for its intervention.”139 “Then,” he added, “so as not to be mistaken about the authors of
these pleasantries, the last line specifies: ‘RPF = killers, assassins, minority dictators.’”140
The special forces’ destination was Nyarushishi, a tea plantation outside of Cyangugu that,
since late April 1994, had been functioning as a refugee camp.141 As many as 8,000 Tutsi were
known to be taking refuge at the camp, where they were tended to by the International Committee
of the Red Cross.142 The refugees—impoverished, ragged, and foul-smelling, in Tauzin’s
recollection143—were very nearly all that was left of the Cyangugu prefecture’s once-thriving Tutsi
population.144
In contrast with the jubilant crowd that welcomed the French paratroopers near the bridge
from Bukavu, the refugees at Nyarushishi did not greet Tauzin and his men as saviors. Many
believed the French soldiers had come to kill them.145 “I gathered their leaders, we sat down in the
grass,” Tauzin later told a reporter. “I explained that our only job was to protect them.”146 In his
memoir, Tauzin inveighed against the supposedly unknowable source of these “infamous”
accusations that the French forces had come “to help the FAR finish slaughtering” the Tutsi,
asking, “What bastard could have told them that? Of course, I will never know.”147 In fact, a New
York Times reporter, Raymond Bonner, uncovered the answer simply by speaking with the
refugees at the camp. They told him that RTLM, the hate radio station, had reported, upon the
announcement of the French forces’ imminent arrival in June 1994, “that the [French] troops were
coming to help the Hutu kill the Tutsi.”148
The refugees, speaking to Bonner within the first few days of the French paratroopers’
arrival, talked about their fears of the FAR soldiers and militia members roving the hills outside
the camp. On several occasions, they said, Hutu militia men had stolen into the camp, kidnapped
refugees, and killed them.149 Bonner reported that a French lieutenant colonel said his troops were
prepared to respond to such threats with lethal force: “Now, if any militia tried to enter the refugee
camp, we will kill them; it is very clear.”150
This threat to kill intruders did not apply to the Rwandan interim government forces. As
Bonner reported, armed FAR soldiers continued to mill freely through the refugee camp, a fact the
French troops had resigned themselves to accept.151 “It’s their country,” the same French lieutenant
colonel told Bonner.152 (A group of FAR soldiers had, in fact, gathered to greet Tauzin and his
team as they parked their jeeps outside the camp on 23 June.153 In his memoir, Tauzin recalled that
the FAR soldiers were “smiling and clearly pleased to see us arrive!”154)
The French troops had not been in Rwandan territory for even 24 hours when they
encountered their first mass graves.155 One near the Nyarushishi camp’s guard post held about 80
bodies, all appearing to be in a state of “advanced decomposition.”156 More mass graves—one 65feet long and nearly 100-feet wide with bones on the surface—were found in the area of
Kamarampake stadium, just outside the southwestern city of Cyangugu.157 French troops observed
a large number of militia members, armed with sticks, training nearby.158
Col. Tauzin would later write that, in the course of his team’s patrols over the days that
followed, when he would encounter FAR units and local authorities, he would “make it clear to
them that all Tutsi civilians were now under our protection, and that we would not tolerate any
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slippage.”159 His team, though, was small—just 45 men—and the territory they were responsible
for covering was vast. (Tauzin described it as “the size of half a French department,”160 which is
roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island.) “Despite everything,” he wrote, “we were so few in
number that it is not impossible that some Interahamwe managed to murder a few refugees.”161
C. Turquoise Officers Met with FAR Leaders, Despite Their Knowledge of the FAR’s
Complicity in the Genocide.
Against all my feelings for these people who were my brothers in arms,
against my intimate convictions that the RPF was the main culprit of this
entire tragedy, . . . I would [become] . . . one of those who would deal the
final blow to this heroic resistance, because the mission I received obliged
me to do so. Sometimes it is crucifying to be a soldier.162
– Didier Tauzin, Commander of France’s 1st RPIMa (1992 – 1994)
Among the messages Colonel Rosier received within the first few days of his arrival in
Zaire on 20 June 1994 was a note from Brigadier General François Regnault, chief of the Joint
Operations Center.163 The note said: “As soon as possible, you will contact the FAR in the most
discreet manner possible and without any publicity in order to search for information.”164
It is not clear just what sort of information Brig. Gen. Regnault was hoping to glean from
the FAR. What is clear is that Rosier obeyed the order.165 On 23 June, he reached out to someone
he very likely would have met two years earlier, when Rosier commanded Noroît: Colonel Anatole
Nsengiyumva, formerly the FAR’s head of intelligence, now its commander in Gisenyi.166 (As
with so many of the FAR officers who collaborated with the French during the war, Nsengiyumva
would later be convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other crimes, serving 15 years
in prison.167)
If useful intelligence was what the French government was after, Nsengiyumva was not an
ideal conduit. As much as anyone in the Rwandan military, Nsenginyumva understood the value
of spin; in October 1990, at the very outset of the war, he lobbied President Habyarimana to use
the media to paint the conflict as an act of Ugandan aggression against Rwanda and to counter the
narrative that Rwanda’s Hutu majority was waging a war to “eliminate the Tutsi.”168 Nsengiyumva
knew the French military, and almost certainly knew what its officers would want to hear. This, it
seems, is exactly what he delivered. According to a handwritten note Rosier scrawled following
the 23 June 1994 call, the Rwandan colonel had assured Rosier “that the FAR and the people were
waiting for [French soldiers] with great hope, and that everything would be done to facilitate [the
French] mission.”169 The note continued: “His version of the massacres is not the one we read in
our newspapers—especially in the eastern part of the country where, under the pretext of liberation,
the RPF has not been idle-handed.”170
This was part of the calculation the French government made in staffing Turquoise with
officers like Colonel Rosier, Colonel Tauzin, and others who had preexisting relationships with
FAR commanders. These returning officers were uniquely positioned to leverage their contacts in
the country.171 Those contacts, however, were almost exclusively on one side of the conflict—a
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side that, as the French government well knew, bore significant responsibility for the mass killings
that had ostensibly spurred the redeployment of French troops to Rwanda that summer.172
If French officials ever grappled with the moral implications of liaising with génocidaires,
there is no evidence of it in the documents reviewed during this investigation. For his part, General
Lafourcade, the Operation Turquoise force commander, drew a theoretical distinction between
those units that sought only to defend their country from the RPF and those with more nefarious
aims (while lamenting that French soldiers on the ground would have difficulty telling one from
the other).173 His 25 June 1994 order acknowledged that there had been, in Rwanda, a “genocide,”
but assigned blame for it only to the militias and to “some units of the Rwandan military.”174
There was, by contrast, no ambiguity in French assessments of the militias’ role in the
killings. Lafourcade’s 25 June order asserted, “The militias continue the killings of Tutsi and have
attacked moderate Hutu (in Butare).”175 A DRM report earlier that week had similarly observed
that the militias were expanding their targets, writing: “the massacres are continuing, the Hutu
militias are starting to kill the moderate Hutus as well as the Hutu who were originally Tutsi (1 or
2 generations).”176
In truth, though, the line between the FAR and the militias was not nearly as stark as such
reports would seem to suggest—and French officials knew it. The DRM, in a 25 June situation
report, observed that the FAR had “launched its militias” to commit atrocities in various localities
in northern Rwanda, along the edge of RPF-held territory.177 A DRM situation report two days
later characterized the well-armed militias in the north as “doubtless auxiliary to the FAR.”178 In
reporting, for example, that 100 armed militiamen had staged an attack on Tutsi civilians in the
Gisovu region, about 25 kilometers south of Kibuye, the DRM noted that the militiamen were
“flanked by soldiers.”179 On 7 July 1994, Lafourcade himself would acknowledge that FAR Chief
of Staff Augustin Bizimungu “retains some authority over the militias.”180
French defense officials, in any event, appear to have had no compunction about reaching
out to the FAR as Operation Turquoise was getting under way. Nor did they hesitate to take
meetings with Rwandan interim government and military leaders when they came calling. Cols.
Rosier and Tauzin were among those who took part in such communications—conversations their
Rwandan interlocutors used to plead for the French government to resume its military support for
their side in the conflict against the RPF.181
Not long after reaching out to Nsengiyumva, Col. Rosier accepted Rwandan Defense
Minister Augustin Bizimana’s invitation to meet at a “discreet” location north of Cyangugu.182
(Bizimana was later indicted in the ICTR on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He
died before he could be taken into custody.183) In a handwritten memorandum following the 24
June meeting, Rosier noted that Bizimana and Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Jérôme
Bicamumpaka, also in attendance, “did not deny” there had been massacres since 6 April 1994,
but they spoke of it in a way that insinuated, falsely, the killings had not been planned.184
Bizimana and Bicamumpaka had an agenda, and they were building up to something: a
request. The Rwandan Army, they said, was “determined to fight to the end,” but the current
military situation was “grave.”185 They explained that the RPF—“still supplied by Uganda,” they
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insisted—had more men and a more powerful and well stocked artillery.186 “That’s when,” Rosier
wrote, “all while praising the indispensable aspect of [France’s] intervention, they asked me for
help of another nature (‘discreet’ of course!).”187 While Rosier was the highest ranking French
officer in the area, there may have been another reason why Bizimana and Bicamumpaka had
addressed their request to Rosier, specifically. “Your 105 [mm] cannons are still there,” they said,
alluding to the heavy artillery France had delivered to the FAR while he commanded Noroît in
mid-1992, “but they are silent for lack of shells.”188
“I replied that it seemed unrealistic to me to hope for such help in the current context. They
seemed disappointed by my answer,” Rosier wrote.189 His memo, though, betrayed some sympathy
for Bizimana and Bicamumpaka. “The general impression that I drew from this short interview,”
he wrote, “is that I was dealing with two officials in positions of real responsibility . . . , [who
were] aware of their country’s precarious military, but extremely determined due to the complete
support of the population.”190 (That Rosier could have believed these two IRG officials enjoyed
“the complete support of the population” is remarkable. One can only assume that, in speaking of
“the population,” he was not including the people the IRG’s leadership had targeted for death.)
The FAR did not give up, and the French continued to display an inexplicable sympathy
toward military leaders who had been committing a genocide for the past two and a half months.
In late June, General Augustin Bizimungu, the chief of staff of the Rwandan Army during the
Genocide, made a similar request for help in a secret meeting with General Lafourcade.191
Bizimungu was more forthright than Bizimana had been. “Very quickly, General Bizimungu
conceded to me that certain units of the FAR had participated in the massacres! I was flabbergasted
by his frankness,” Lafourcade later wrote. “At that moment, I still saw him as a soldier, not as a
war criminal.”192 (Bizimungu is serving a 30-year sentence after receiving multiple convictions in
the ICTR for his role in the Genocide.193)
In Lafourcade’s account of the conversation, Bizimungu readily conceded that the FAR
was on the cusp of defeat.194 “Without ammunition, [the FAR’s] end is inevitable,” Lafourcade
wrote of Bizimungu.195 Lafourcade said there was nothing he could do to help. Upon hearing this,
he wrote, “[t]he man in front of me was despondent, humiliated. The memory of this scene still
makes me uncomfortable today.”196
Contacts between the FAR and French officers persisted with a bizarre tone of reverence
for the Rwandan military officers who were fighting on behalf of an interim government that was
overseeing the slaughter of innocent Rwandans. On 29 June 1994, Brig. General Gratien Kabiligi,
the head of the FAR’s operations bureau, flew in from Kigali via helicopter for a private meeting
with Col. Tauzin near the Nyarushishi refugee camp.197 It was a reunion for the two officers, who
had known each other when Tauzin commanded the Chimère forces in March 1993.198 (Tauzin
wrote admiringly of Kabiligi, calling him “one of the four or five Rwandan officers of that time
who would have found a very honorable place in the 1st RPIMa.”199) As Tauzin recalled in his
memoir:
I welcomed him with a Primus, one of the two local brands of beer. He was very
serious, very tired, obviously undernourished, his face was extremely tense, but his
eyes still showed a fierce will, an exceptional strength of character. Against the
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evidence of the impending defeat, he ‘still believed in it,’ he would go all the way
. . . I recognized the magnificent man and soldier that I had met the previous year
in the trenches of Byumba.200
Tauzin’s memoir did not specify exactly what sort of help Kabiligi was hoping the French
government would provide the FAR at that moment, with the interim government forces on the
verge of losing their last toehold in Kigali—just that it pained Tauzin to have to deny the help the
FAR was requesting.201 “Against all my feelings for these people who were my brothers in arms,”
Tauzin wrote, “against my intimate convictions that the RPF was the main culprit of this entire
tragedy, . . . I would [become] . . . one of those who would deal the final blow to this heroic
resistance, because the mission I received obliged me to do so. Sometimes it is crucifying to be a
soldier.”202
D. Following Their First Operation in Cyangugu, French Troops Proceeded to the IRG
Stronghold of Gisenyi and Continued to Fan Out Eastward in the Direction of Kigali.
Everywhere, Their Patrols Revealed “an Empty Countryside,” with Few Tutsi Left to Save.
In the following days, several reconnaissance measures were carried out, to
the north by the RICM towards Gisenyi, and to the south by the COS.
According to the reports, they were very limited within Rwanda—a 15kilometer strip—but, according to witnesses, [the measures] proved to be
much more substantial in the direction of Kigali, the capital . . . . Colonel
Rozier is pushing his teams to “radiate” ever further toward the Rwandan
capital.203
– RAIDS (a magazine covering the French military)
This all comes too late. Where were you in April? This is a Hutu region
now. Every house has been burnt, everyone killed, every septic tank full of
bodies.204
– Tutsi priest
The conception of Operation Turquoise that President Mitterrand first articulated on 15
June, about a week before its launch, was that it would “be limited to the protection of certain Tutsi
assembly sites, such as hospitals, stadiums or schools.”205 That, however, would not come to
represent the operation’s sole mission. Almost as soon as the effort to rescue Tutsi refugees at the
Nyarushishi camp in Cyangugu was under way, French officials returned to the question—rejected
earlier in June206—of whether to set their sights further north, to Gisenyi, the IRG’s de facto
capital, where most Tutsi had already been killed.207
The stated reason for sending troops to Gisenyi, as articulated by Mitterrand’s Africa
advisor, Bruno Delaye, in a 24 June 1994 note to the French president, was to enable French troops
to render aid to the many displaced Hutus known to be taking refuge there.208 This, Delaye argued,
would “keep the balance between the two Rwandan communities” and “avoid a hostile reaction
toward us by the Hutu community.”209 Delaye noted that the Quai d’Orsay was “very hesitant”
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about the proposal.210 Mitterrand, though, did not share the Foreign Ministry’s reservations: below
the question that closed Delaye’s note—“Do you agree to an action in the Gisenyi region?”—the
Élysée’s secretary-general, Hubert Védrine, wrote on Mitterrand’s behalf: “yes.”211
Turquoise troops made their first venture into Gisenyi at noon the next day, 25 June.212 A
French Ministry of Defense cable reported that the team of about 30 French soldiers sought to
clear roadblocks the militias had set up in the area.213 “This was done without incident,” the cable
reported.214 The following day, French soldiers from the Marine Infantry Tank Regiment (known
by its French acronym, the RICM), joined by newly arrived troops from Senegal, left Goma to
launch their first reconnaissance operations in the Gisenyi area.215
The reception in Gisenyi was every bit as effusive as it had been in Cyangugu. As Western
journalists dutifully reported, throngs of Hutus—some civilians, some soldiers—lined the streets
to cheer the French troops and garland their jeeps with flowers, in what one American reporter
described as “an embarrassing reminder of France’s long, supportive relationship with the Hutudominated government.”216 At one point, some Hutu soldiers drove by waving the French tricolor
flag. The driver said they planned to present the flag to the French troops as a gift from the IRG.217
There was, at this same time, a broader effort under way for French troops to fan out over
a larger swath of Rwanda.218 This both expanded Turquoise’s foothold in the country and enabled
French troops to gather more intelligence on the state of play on the war front.219 The DRM
reported that, since the announcement of the French government’s plans to launch Operation
Turquoise, the RPF military had stepped up its efforts to push the FAR back to the west.220 A
French military intelligence analysis assessed that the RPF appeared to have two goals: to cut off
the FAR troops in Kigali from their “rear bases” in the west, and to conquer the road between
Gitarama and Kibuye, effectively splitting the IRG-controlled zone in two.221 To achieve this last
objective, the RPF troops would have to penetrate deep into IRG-controlled territory.
RPA Head of Operations Emmanuel Karenzi Karake has explained that the RPA was
focused on stopping the Genocide, not taking territory. He did not know of any “specific plan for
controlling” the road between Gitarama and Kibuye;” nor did he know of any RPA plan to split
the country into two.222 Instead, he explained:
We knew the FAR was without morale. In terms of capturing territory, it was a
matter of when, not if. Because we pursued them where they were killing Tutsi, it
necessarily had the bi-product of capturing territory, but, frankly speaking, where
the situation was at the time, there was nothing that was important in terms of
territory anymore because the FAR was on the run. We didn’t want them to have
the time to stay in a place for long because they would have time to kill.223
Lafourcade had suspected, at the outset of the operation, that RPF units were hiding
somewhere in the interim government-controlled zone,224 and he had even contemplated the
possibility that RPF troops might stage a raid on the French operational base in Goma “by taking
advantage of the complicity of the Tutsi community . . . in North Kivu.”225 (This suspicion was
also incorrect, according to Karenzi Karake.226 As a general matter, he said, the RPF had no desire
to “drag the French further into the conflict.” “There was discussion of what would happen if we
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were to get into a fight with the French, but there was also discussion about avoiding a fight with
the French altogether,” he said.227) But France’s poor relations with the RPF leadership, combined
with a lack of solid intelligence, left the Turquoise commanders guessing wrong about the RPF’s
plans and fostered suspicions that the RPF might, as one French cable put it, take action “to
neutralize us.”228 (This paranoia also proved unfounded, as the RPF never waged war on French
forces.) What was needed, the Turquoise commanders felt, was more reconnaissance and better
intelligence. “[I]t is normal for [the RPF] to carry out in-depth reconnaissance,” Col. Rosier told
an interviewer on 25 June. “[P]erhaps it’s now up to us to make sure that this genuine fear is a
reality.”229
A magazine covering France’s military would later indicate that French special forces
troops making reconnaissance patrols in western Rwanda in late June 1994 did not, as was widely
reported, confine themselves to a narrow strip along the country’s western border.230 It reported
that troops “proved to be much more substantial in the direction of Kigali, the capital. . . . Colonel
Rozier is pushing his teams to ‘radiate’ ever further toward the Rwandan capital.”231
As French troops traversed the countryside, they began to see that many, if not most, Tutsi
were already dead or gone.232 In every direction they traveled—southward to Bugarama, or
northward to Kirambo—the troops found only what the DRM described, on 25 June, as “an empty
countryside whose population has taken refuge in the camps or has simply disappeared.”233 “This
all comes too late. Where were you in April?,” a Tutsi priest in the prefecture of Cyangugu was
quoted as saying in a 26 June news report. “This is a Hutu region now. Every house has been burnt,
everyone killed, every septic tank full of bodies.”234
A news program airing on French television on 25 June captured this dissonance. The
segment first showed Commander Marin Gillier, head of the marine commandos, as he waved to
a cheering crowd at the entrance to the refugee camp in Kirambo.235 “France decided to launch a
humanitarian operation in Rwanda. I believe that the first objective has been achieved with, once
again, all those smiles beaming on your faces,” Gillier declared.236 The reporter, though, noted that
the refugees at the camp—while enduring unsanitary conditions, and lacking much-needed
medicines—were not under immediate threat from the FAR or anti-Tutsi militia.237 “Only Hutu
driven out by the war live there. No Tutsi. There are no Tutsi anymore in Kirambo,” the reporter
observed.238
To be clear, the countryside was not completely barren. There were still Rwandans in need
of protection from génocidaires. It seemed, though, that some of them thought it best to hide—
even from the French troops who had supposedly come to save them.239 In southwestern Rwanda,
a New York Times reporter noted that even after several days of French patrols through the area,
roadblocks—operated by armed militia members—remained ubiquitous, presenting a potentially
fatal threat to any Tutsi who dared to travel without a military escort.240 Neither the French special
forces guarding the Nyarushishi refugee camp nor anyone else, really, knew how many Tutsi were
in hiding.241 The French forces did not go looking for them, and when the reporter asked Col.
Tauzin about these unseen Tutsi, he responded, blithely, that “they should come to the camp.”242
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E. Alarmed by Recent RPF Military Successes and Suspicious of RPF Infiltration in the
Interim Government-Controlled Zone, French Officials Debated Ways of Stopping the RPF
Advance.
We cannot publicly take the initiative to achieve a cease-fire, because we
would be suspected of attempting to halt the situation under the guise of
humanitarian action.243
– Jean-Michel Marlaud, French Ambassador to Rwanda
(1993 –1994)
The sound of gunfire just outside of Kibuye on 27 June 1994 seemed to validate French
suspicions that RPF troops had stealthily penetrated some of the westernmost reaches of the
interim government-controlled zone.244 The French troops could not see what was happening; they
could only hear it.245 By the sound of things, though, it appeared to them that RPF troops were
clashing with anti-Tutsi militias about nine miles outside of Kibuye, a city on the eastern bank of
Lake Kivu.246 “[T]hese skirmishes greatly surprised the French soldiers,” a French TV journalist
reported that evening, after speaking with Col. Rosier.247 “There was a lot of talk about infiltration
here without really knowing if it was an irrational fear or if it was a reality. . . . Well, these
skirmishes, if they are confirmed, would first of all mean that the RPF has indeed infiltrated, has
infiltrated very, very far into the territory of the Rwandan government.”248
The possibility that RPF troops were heading for Kibuye alarmed the French government
for several reasons. For one thing, it raised the prospect that French and RPF forces, now separated
by no more than a few miles, might soon come face to face—a development General Lafourcade,
at least, had declared himself determined to avoid.249 Beyond that, French officials theorized that
the east-west corridor between Gitarama and Kibuye held important strategic value in the RPF’s
conflict with the FAR. Seizing control of this axis, French officials believed, would split the
interim government-held territory in two, separating the IRG in the north from its forces in the
south.250 At that point, there might be no stopping the RPF.
Publicly, of course, French officials insisted they had no intention of interfering in the
ongoing conflict between the RPF and the FAR.251 There could be no doubt, however, that France’s
former allies were in serious trouble. Kigali, by all indications, was likely to fall soon,252 and
French officials were not sure what the RPF’s next move would be. Ambassador Marlaud,
assessing the situation in a 27 June 1994 memo, did not rule out the possibility that the RPF army
might opt, at that point, to lay down its arms and accept a cease-fire, but concluded that this was
“far from inevitable.”253 He suggested that the more likely scenario was that the RPF forces would
chase the FAR to other parts of the country still under interim government control—with varying
ramifications, depending on which area the RPF targeted.254
Marlaud’s view was that any further offensives by the RPF forces—whether south toward
Butare, west toward Kibuye, or north toward Ruhengeri—would all but guarantee a worsening of
Rwanda’s humanitarian crisis.255 In any of these scenarios, he predicted, the consequence would
be “massacres” and a wave of refugees or displaced persons.256 This was a typical projection for
French officials during the Genocide; the assumption, frequently, was that RPF military advances
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would necessarily precipitate massacres and drive people from their homes.257 Few of these
analyses bothered to explain that the likely perpetrators of any such massacres were not the RPF
forces themselves, but the militias, who were known to have slaughtered Tutsi and others they
viewed as would-be RPF accomplices in towns along the RPF forces’ path.258 Nor did they note
that RTLM, the hate media station, often helped to fuel the Hutu villagers’ exodus, with its alarmist
rhetoric and its relentless demonization of the RPF.259
What Marlaud did note was that an RPF advance to the south (toward Butare) or to the
north (toward Ruhengeri) would put French troops in a particularly “delicate” situation, as they
“would very quickly risk being in contact with the RPF.”260 In that case, he wrote:
We will then face a choice:
- to stay [in the interim government-held territory], to try to continue to protect
threatened people, at the risk of a confrontation with the RPF,
- to retreat, knowing that the people we protect will be slaughtered, [or]
- to withdraw with these threatened people and settle them near the Zairean border,
in safe humanitarian zones.261
Marlaud favored the third option: the creation of “safe humanitarian zones” for threatened
populations.262 This proposal—which, ultimately, the French government would adopt—
represented a departure from the French government’s stated intentions at the outset of
Turquoise,263 and a controversial one at that. In placing portions of Rwandan territory under French
military control, the Safe Humanitarian Zone (SHZ or “zones,” as Marlaud envisioned) threatened
to put French troops in the RPF forces’ path, thwarting their campaign to save Tutsi lives and
topple the genocidal regime in Gisenyi. It also raised questions about how the French government
would, or should, deal with génocidaires who would surely seek sanctuary in the area under French
control.
Marlaud acknowledged that the proposal posed “problems,” but for a different reason: “[I]t
only delays the inevitable if the RPF continues its progression.”264 It was a telling criticism.
Marlaud’s view, shared by many French officials at the time, was that the solution to the Rwandan
crisis was to halt the hostilities between the RPF and the FAR, ideally by reviving the Arusha
Accords (if, perhaps, with some modifications).265 The notion that French troops, by establishing
bases on Rwandan soil, might impede the RPF’s military progress (as they had during the war that
preceded the Genocide) did not give Marlaud pause. What troubled him, rather, was knowing that
the French troops’ actions would not, ultimately, stop the RPF from winning the war.
As intelligence poured into the RPF about French plans to create a “Safe Humanitarian
Zone,” RPF leaders suspected the French would use it “to evacuate and save those they wanted to
save”—i.e., their friends in the FAR and other génocidaires.266 The RPF knew this Zone would
make it harder for their military to reach the areas where they wanted to halt the killing of Tutsi.267
With French military intelligence reports indicating that RPF forces on 27 June 1994 were
advancing on multiple fronts—blasting the western districts of Kigali with mortar rounds while,
at the same time, continuing the westward march toward Kibuye—officials in Paris were split
about how Operation Turquoise ought to proceed.268 Prime Minister Balladur preferred that France
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remain cautious—that is, it should continue to run operations from the safety of the Zairean side
of the border, forbidding its troops to spend more than 24 hours at a time on Rwandan soil and
restricting patrols to the border region.269 This, he contended, would limit the risk of French troops
coming into contact with the RPF army.270 Quesnot, perhaps unsurprisingly, was less concerned
about that. In his view, Turquoise required “more than the coming and going of some men and
some women from the Zairean border.”271 “The success of our intervention would be called into
question if massacres resumed in sectors where our presence is very fleeting,” he wrote in a 27
June note to Mitterrand.272 Quesnot warned that the consequences would be even worse, if the RPF
military succeeded in driving the FAR out of Kigali, as that, he claimed, would provoke “millions”
of additional Rwandans to flee westward, worsening the refugee crisis.273
The solution Quesnot proposed was for French troops to “control a few key points” on
Rwandan soil.274 His note was relatively light on particulars, save for one location in western
Rwanda, near the city of Kibuye, that he considered especially vital for France to secure: the Ndaba
pass.275 Ndaba, he posited, had strategic value for the RPF, as it controlled access from Gitarama
to Kibuye.276 Its seizure, he wrote, would cut western Rwanda in two.277
As previously noted, such assumptions that the RPF army sought to control the GitaramaKibuye axis were just that: assumptions; RPF military leaders have since explained they had no
plans to seize territory or to access the Gitarama-Kibuye corridor for any other purpose than to
rescue Tutsi.278 And indeed, French officials had reason to doubt the imminency of an RPF
offensive in the far west of Rwanda. As the DRM noted in a 28 June 1994 memo, the RPF forces,
with only 20,000 to 25,000 soldiers, were ill equipped to launch new, large-scale offensives while
simultaneously holding onto the vast territory they had already conquered.279 The DRM assessed
that the path to Kibuye would be treacherous for the RPF forces because it ran through “hostile”
territory, where the Hutu community, dismayed at the RPF’s military successes, was united “in a
spirit of ethnic solidarity,” and where the FAR—“supported by the militias”—would be under
intense pressure to put up a fierce fight.280 The DRM suggested the RPF military might also
hesitate to proceed west knowing that “its offensive risks triggering a massacre of Tutsi refugees
in the government zone.”281
Yet, to the French government, the consequences of a potential RPF sweep through western
Rwanda was alarming enough to warrant what Quesnot and Delaye characterized as “an additional
commitment of our forces . . . to control key points and protect the most threatened camps.”282 The
two advisors further argued, in a 28 June 1994 memo, that France should work through diplomatic
channels to persuade the RPF “to stop its westward advance.”283 This, they knew, was a
complicated proposition. Having dedicated itself, for years, to propping up the Habyarimana
government, the French government was, as Quesnot and Delaye put it, “not in the best position”
to press the RPF to agree to a cease-fire.284 This was Ambassador Marlaud’s view, too: he argued
France should prod others, including the United Nations, Uganda, and the United States, to lead
the charge for them.285 “We cannot publicly take the initiative to achieve a cease-fire,” he wrote in
his 27 June 1994 memo, “because we would be suspected of attempting to halt the situation under
the guise of humanitarian action.”286
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Jason Nshimye287
Jason Nshimye was born 5 May 1979 in Kibuye, Rwanda. The Genocide began in his second
year of high school.
After the invasion, the hate began to get worse. They’d say to Hutu that any
Tutsi they saw was their enemy, even if it was their wife or husband. They were
teaching that hatred. They were trying to make sure every Hutu was mobilized.
They were trying to identify Tutsis. Hutus, even civilians, were allowed to ask you
for your ID because they had the power. Every month was getting worse and worse.
We didn’t know how big, but we could see that something was happening because
of everything we could hear on the hate radio. The hatred, injustice, and criminal
activity caused us to know that it was heading somewhere.
When the Genocide began, we were afraid of violence because we had
experienced attacks after the 1990 invasion. My family abandoned our home when
we saw Hutu burning buildings and screaming that they were going to kill Tutsi
not far from our village. We ran to a nearby complex, where many people were
taking refuge. This lasted until the 16th of April, when waves of killings began and
left few alive. I saw many of my family members being killed. My mother, sister, a
cousin and two or three of my extended family also survived the attack on the
complex.
After that, I went to Bisesero where people formed resistance groups and
survived by engaging in hand‐to‐hand combat with the militia members to avoid
being shot or killed with grenades. This strategy worked until the génocidaires
switched tactics to longer‐ranged weapons like rockets, as well as trying to
overcome those resisting by sheer numbers and attacking from all sides. Lack of
food and increasing losses of people also eventually made the strategy of active
resistance much more difficult. There was no organization of those at Bisesero. Each
person would flee their own way when the Interahamwe would come. The
survivors would generally congregate at night to see how many we had lost during
the day. We used to chew sorghum; we did not have food or clean water. Sometimes
we had to mash the sorghum and go down the hill for running water to make
something with whatever we could find—fruits, whatever was in the bushes. We
were so hungry and weak. Everybody seemed to lose half of the weight they had.
By June, the situation had worsened because we could not resist due to
hunger. Many people were being killed each day, and I decided I could no longer
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fight and went to hide in a bush, digging a small hole to sit in and wait. I was in the
hills of Bisesero from April 16th until the Genocide ended in July.
I remember seeing people being cut and blown to pieces by machetes and
grenades in one of the worst days of killing, on a hill called Muyila, in maybe the
second or third week of May. When we were still fighting, I hid in a small bush,
and there I met a small boy and his dad. When the killers came closer to that bush,
the dad said he was going to run out of the bush because they were getting closer
and saw us inside. So, he went out, they caught him and killed him with machetes.
They were singing the songs they always did, “kill all the Tutsis,” and they hit him
in the neck with a machete. Then they took a big stick and started hitting him more
and more, cutting him on the legs and back.
It was not far from the bush I was in. I grabbed the boy and told him to come.
I was holding him because he was scared and trying to run out. I kept my hands
over his arms and mouth and spoke to him in a low voice. They finished killing his
dad when they saw another group of Tutsis running trying to hide and followed
them. Thank God they didn’t come back, I was so scared. I hid there for a long time,
trying to make myself very small so no one would see me. I was holding on to the
boy when the Hutu were closer, but after they left, he didn’t want to move anymore.
We came out of the bush at the end of the day. We saw his dad with his head
off, and so many dead bodies all around. So many babies crying on the backs of
their moms. He cried, and I cried, and I could not speak. There is no comfort you
can give to someone like that. We did not even sit down. There is nothing you can
say.
The boy was younger than ten. His father had run because the Hutu
extremists had a practice of talking as though they had already seen whoever was
hiding in the bushes, in an attempt to flush them out of hiding. The boy went to
find someone he knew on another hill before night, and I never saw him again.
Thousands of people who took refuge in Bisesero were killed. In the last
week of June, the French came along with a Hutu. One survivor had stopped the
French convoy by running into the road and refusing to move. We knew it was the
French because we had heard French troops were coming to Rwanda on the radio,
and we saw white people speaking French. Those of us hiding in the bushes came
out onto the road because we thought we were saved, despite avoiding roads
previously because of the dangers of running into Interahamwe. I spoke some
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French but could not make out the conversation between the one survivor who was
speaking to the French, Eric Nzabihimana, and the French troops, except that he
was asking them for help. The conversation was not long. The French were told that
Hutu extremists were seeking those in the hills of Bisesero, and that aid was
requested of them. Despite the fact that bodies were strewn along the road, the
French left and did not give out any sort of supplies.
When we saw the Hutu, we knew that something bad was going to happen.
Coming with a killer to see a victim, that is the worst thing you can do. Our
emergence, drawn by the illusion of safety in the presence of the French, had given
the Hutu with them a sense of how many of us were still alive and where we were
hiding.
After the French left, I remember when I was hiding in an area near the
water. Some Interahamwe were up on the hill and they came down to the creek
where some of us were hiding. They shot one of the people, and he fell in the water
in front of me. They did not see me. When he fell in the water, they started shooting
at him more. So, I was very quiet because I knew they might hear me if they came
to check his body. And then they left, because there were no other survivors. Once
they left, before dark, I came out and saw his body lying face‐down in the water,
blood all over.
F. Confronted with Evidence of Massacres in Bisesero, French Troops Failed to Intervene for
Three Days, Leaving Hundreds of Refugees to Be Slaughtered.
They hoped for our immediate protection or their transfer to a protected
place. I could only promise them that we would come back to see them, and
that humanitarian aid would arrive soon. There is an emergency situation
that will lead to extermination if a humanitarian structure is not quickly put
in place or at least the means to stop these man hunts.288
– Jean-Rémy Duval, Operation Turquoise Special Forces Officer
While officials in Paris were beginning to reassess France’s options in the face of an
impending RPF military victory, a French special forces officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Rémy
Duval, was leading a reconnaissance mission in Kibuye, on the eastern shore of Lake Kivu.289 As
Duval, the head of the air parachute commando unit, known as CPA10,290 would later tell the story,
he and his troops had visited a school run by the Sisters of Sainte Marie of Namur on the evening
of 26 June 1994, when one of the nuns alerted him to a horrific scene unfolding in the Bisesero,291
a nearby steep range of hills straddling the communes of Gisovu and Gishyita. The nun said that
Hutu residents of Bisesero, with help from FAR soldiers and militia members, were slaughtering
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Tutsi.292 The nun introduced him to a man, the former driver of the prefect, who confirmed that it
was true.293 “He himself was hiding Tutsi who were from the area. He showed me exactly [where]
on the map the scene of the massacres [were],” Duval recalled in 2013.294
Upon arriving in Bisesero the following day, 27 June 1994, Duval and his men found about
100 Tutsi refugees in the hills, living “in a state of utter destitution.”295 According to a DRM report,
the refugees told the French soldiers there were 2,000 people just like them, “hidden in the woods
and mines.”296 The soldiers, traveling in two vehicles, were not equipped to evacuate the refugees
where they found them, but promised to return with additional resources.297
It would be three days before any French troops would return to Bisesero, and when they
did, they discovered between 500 and 800 Tutsis, whom they found to be “very physically
exhausted,” with “a hundred of them wounded by bullets or blades.”298 More Tutsi had been
massacred in the days since Duval’s first visit.299 A French military report would later note: “When
the arrival of the French was announced, the bourgemestre of Gishyita intensified the actions,
calling on the militias of Kibuye.”300 In other words, not only did the French humanitarian mission
fail to prevent additional massacres, but the presence of French troops may, in fact, have compelled
the anti-Tutsi militias to finish the job they had started in April.
Characterized by opaque and competing priorities, misleading intelligence supplied by
partisan Rwandan authorities, and a pattern of obfuscation after the fact, the French humanitarian
mission at Bisesero was ineffective at best, and negligent at worst. How, exactly, the tragedy
happened has been the subject of considerable dispute among French leaders. What no one has
denied is that a contingent of French soldiers discovered a large number of Tutsi refugees hiding
in the woods, and by the time French forces could mobilize and undertake an evacuation, more of
those same refugees had been massacred.301
The reconnaissance team that Duval led on Monday, 27 June 1994 consisted of 12 men—
10 air commandos and two gendarmes—armed with automatic rifles and pistols.302 Alerted by the
nuns the prior evening of Tutsi being slaughtered in Bisesero, Duval and his men travelled through
“wooded mountains about 30 kilometers southeast of the Kibuye, two hours from Misesero by
barely passable trails”303 in a Toyota pickup truck and a Mitsubishi Pajero SUV borrowed from
the mother superior in Kibuye.304 The story of what they found that day has been chronicled by
the French writer Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, one of three reporters who accompanied the soldiers
to the scene.305 According to Saint-Exupéry, on the way to Bisesero, traveling south down the road
that connects Kibuye to Gishyita, Duval’s men came upon a Hutu policeman in the village of
Nyagurati who matter-of-factly said, “[W]e killed a few Tutsis, no more than fifty at most.” He
pointed to the houses in the surrounding hills. “You see that row of houses to the left?,” he said.
“They lived there. We burned everything. There had to be nothing left.”306 A teacher, also Hutu,
said the killings were necessary because “[e]very evening, these [Tutsi] criminals . . . come back
to attack us.” “We defend ourselves,” he said.307 Both men admitted they had killed children.308
“All this is the Tutsi’s fault,” the policeman said. “We killed them because they are
accomplices of the RPF. We know it. That is why we kill them. Women and children too. It is
normal. The children of accomplices are [also] accomplices. So we killed them.”309
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It was an organized manhunt, the policeman explained. “You know, the bourgmestre sent
us here, into this village, to scare away criminals and their accomplices,” he said. “That is what
we have done. We had orders.”310 He was referring to Charles Sikubwabo, the bourgmestre of
Gishyita, who has since been indicted for genocide and remains at large.311 The policeman added
that the prefect of Kibuye had at one point come to the village to “check how things were going”
and had told the policeman he “was doing a good job.”312 The prefect, Clément Kayishema, has
since been convicted of genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment.313
According to Saint-Exupéry, the confessions of the policeman and the teacher shocked the
French commandos, who had expected to find legitimate authorities overwhelmed by a
spontaneous upswell of reactionary violence. Instead, wrote Saint-Exupéry, “[The French troops]
want[ed] to understand, to make sure they [were] not dreaming. How do you believe . . . a
policeman who tells you of his own accord that he killed children? How he organized a man-hunt
for the sake of racial purity.”314 Lt. Col. Duval was “astounded.”315 As the French troops prepared
to depart, a voice rose up from a crowd of machete-wielding villagers that had assembled in the
village square: “Tonight we are going to attack the criminals again.”316
In Mubuga, a village northwest of Bisesero, a French tricolor flag waved at a roadblock,
and villagers greeted the soldiers with all of the enthusiasm to which the French troops had become
accustomed.317 The soldiers, feeling uncomfortable, stopped to drink a beer—“[t]o drown our
sorrow,” as Saint-Exupéry would write.318 “I am tired of seeing these murderers applauding us,” a
French gendarme said.319
With a Hutu schoolteacher for a guide, the troops continued toward Bisesero, where the
idyllic tableau of rolling green hills and deep crevasses offered places to hide for Tutsi survivors
seeking refuge from the massacres. Duval has said that his unit encountered scenes of unspeakable
tragedy upon arrival in Bisesero on 27 June: “Along the road leading there, we started to see many
corpses. The corpses were either mutilated or burnt. I do not remember there being any corpse in
a state of decomposition. So, it could have been fairly recent killings.”320 At a roadside near the
top of a hill, a French-speaking Tutsi named Eric Nzabahimana told them that local Hutu—men
from the village, supervised by militiamen, policemen, and soldiers—had been slaying Tutsi on
the hill daily.321 “The Tutsi taking refuge on this hill were fleeing the massacres every day. Some
of them were massacred, and the survivors would repeat the same thing every day. These
massacres were said to have occurred with the uniformity of systematic, well-ordered, planned and
supervised work,” Duval recalled in 2007.322
The refugees who came out of the woods to meet the French troops bore scars and bullet
wounds.323 In a 28 June 1994 broadcast, an RFI reporter at the scene alongside the French troops
reported:
[The Tutsi refugees] live like hunted beasts. By day, they hide in the forests that
remain on top of the hills. And at night they descend along these hills to fetch some
potatoes that the Hutu villagers left behind in their field after the harvest. In fact,
they are always in motion, always on the lookout for the slightest noise.324
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Nzabahimana, the Tutsi villager who had spoken earlier with Duval’s unit, told the RFI
reporter that Rwandan soldiers and militiamen had shot at the Tutsi and hunted them with
machetes.325 The Tutsi had “[s]ticks, a few spears and machetes” with which to defend themselves,
but no firearms.326 The reporter’s questioning continued:
Q: And there are no RPF fighters among you?
A: No, no.
Q: What do you expect from the French military?
A: Peace, above all peace. Our wish is that we be led to a place where we will be
protected from these killers who threaten us.327
As the survivors massed around the French troops, one young man grew visibly agitated.
As Saint-Exupéry would later write, the young man pointed at the Hutu teacher who was the
French troops’ guide: “Him, I recognize him! His name is Jean-Baptiste Twagirayezu, and he is
the leader of the militia! He was my teacher! I recognize him!”328
The schoolteacher looked petrified.329 Duval pressed the young man, but he was certain:
“He killed my sister and my brother! I recognize him! He was my teacher!”330 In the minibus, the
schoolteacher shook with a wordless fury, or possibly it was fear.331 “He wants to deny, to accuse,”
Saint-Exupéry would write, “but [he] can only manage to mutter a few words. ‘These people have
committed terrible crimes,’ he says without the slightest conviction.”332
The rising tension coupled with the approach of night—it would take between three and
four hours to return to Kibuye—persuaded Duval to leave the scene. As Duval testified in 2013,
“the orders were not to stay in night reconnaissance. Moreover, on site, we could not do anything,
as 12 [people] with light armament. We could not ensure the protection of more than a hundred
Tutsis who were there. We did not have any medicine or first aid kit.”333 However, Duval said he
did intend to return the next day:
My decision was motivated by the fact that the killers were not active at night, and
that this gave us time to get stronger and come back the next morning. I announced
this to this man, Eric [Nzabihimana], who seemed to be the representative of the
refugees. . . . I gave him my word as an officer that I would come back, “to get them
out of there.”334
This is what the Turquoise troops were supposedly sent to Rwanda to do: to prevent
atrocities and save lives. As President Mitterrand had told the world only a week earlier, it was
imperative that French forces intervene in Rwanda and do so as quickly as possible, because “every
hour counts.”335 For the Tutsi of Bisesero, the clock was now ticking.
Duval has said that, upon returning to camp that night, he called Colonel Rosier, the head
of the French special forces, via satellite phone “to report to him about the day, and what I thought
should be done.”336 Rosier, he said, “replied that it was out of the question for me to go back to
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Bisesero the next day”—first because Bisesero was technically outside of Duval’s patrol area, and
second because the Turquoise commanders needed Duval to help prepare for Defense Minister
Léotard’s visit to Rwanda, scheduled for 29 June.337 After hanging up, Duval says he compiled a
report to fax to his superiors, including Col. Rosier.338 The handwritten report described the
desperation of the estimated 2,000 Tutsi “hidden in the woods” in the Bisesero area.339 “They
hoped for our immediate protection or their transfer to a protected place. I could only promise
them that we would come back to see them, and that humanitarian aid would arrive soon,” Duval
wrote.340 He warned: “There is an emergency situation that will lead to extermination if a
humanitarian structure is not quickly put in place or at least the means to stop these man hunts.”341
Duval’s fax has long been a source of dispute. Duval has insisted that he sent the fax
“within minutes” of his phone conversation with Rosier on the night of 27 June.342 Col. Rosier,
testifying in 2007, claimed he never received any reports from Duval about the situation in
Bisesero, whether verbal or in writing, and was “stupefied” by Duval’s more recent claims to the
contrary.343
One would think that the MIP, one of two official French post-Genocide inquiries that have
summoned Lt. Col. Duval to testify, would have presented an ideal forum to address these
discrepancies. It appears, however, that the MIP wasted this opportunity, as no questions about
Bisesero are included in the meager two pages of Duval’s MIP testimony.344 Duval’s MIP
questioners seem to have been unaware that he was intimately involved in one of the most
controversial episodes of Operation Turquoise. Indeed, the MIP report does not discuss Duval’s
fax or his involvement in Bisesero.345
Putting aside the dispute about Duval’s reports, it is at least clear that Col. Rosier knew no
later than the morning of 28 June exactly what was happening in Bisesero. We know this because
it is captured on video.346
Col. Rosier had decided on 27 June that French forces would lead an evacuation of the
same nuns who had alerted Duval to the horrors at Bisesero. The nuns had become something of
a cause célèbre in the international community, as some of the nuns were Belgian or US citizens.347
Presumably because of the international interest, Rosier helicoptered into Kibuye readying for the
evacuation, accompanied by a French military public relations unit with camera rolling.348
It was that morning, on 28 June, that cameras captured the following exchange between
Rosier and Chief Sergeant Eric Meynier, one of the para-commandos who served under Duval:
Meynier: [Y]esterday we were in I do not know which village there . . . . [T]here
were beatings all day in the hills with houses that were blazing everywhere.
Rosier: Mm-hmm.
Meynier: There were people walking around with pieces of torn flesh.
Rosier: Yeah, yeah.
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Meynier: It was . . . [pause] terrible. And then the problem is that I don’t know
how they heal themselves. They are full of pus, purulent, everywhere . . .
Rosier: Yeah.
Meynier: We avoided a lynching, because . . . the guide who accompanied us,
obviously it was . . . it was one of the guys who, how would I say this, who were
guiding the militia in the preceding days.
Rosier: Yes.
Meynier: So when we found the groups of Tutsi who were fleeing in the hills, when
they recognized him, phew, it was bad . . . it was necessary to raise the sound, the
tone, because I thought they were going to stone him.349
Rosier heard the account above and took no action. In 2008, Sgt. Meynier was asked about
Duval’s claims that he had briefed Rosier the night before. “I see no reason to question Duval’s
professional integrity,” Meynier said.350 Of Rosier’s claims of ignorance, Meynier testified: “The
only possible explanation, apart from forgetting, is that Rosier had been properly updated by Duval
… but did not want us to deal with the case of Bisesero.”351 The Turquoise commanders, he noted,
had other concerns at the time, including both the planned evacuation of the nuns and the upcoming
visit of Defense Minister Léotard.352 “Regarding the case of Bisesero,” Meynier said at the
conclusion of his 2008 testimony, “I cannot understand Rosier’s position.”353
Rosier, it bears repeating, was a veteran of the French government’s pre-Genocide
intervention on behalf of the FAR, having headed Operation Noroît for a time in 1992.354 He,
among many other Turquoise officers, had come to know Rwanda in the way French officials had
framed it at the time: as a majority-Hutu nation under attack by a foreign-backed Tutsi enemy.
Two years later, the reality of the situation on the ground was jarring. “This is not what we were
led to believe,” one French noncommissioned officer told a reporter from the New York Times after
the last survivors of Bisesero were rescued. “We were told that Tutsi were killing Hutu, and now
this.”355
The troops’ misconceptions left them vulnerable to misinformation. On 27 June, the same
day Duval’s CPA10 commandos journeyed to Bisesero, a team led by another French special
forces officer, Commander Marin Gillier, was establishing a base in Gishyita, a community just
northwest of Bisesero.356 Gillier, who, two days earlier (25 June), had appeared in a French
television segment waving to a cheering crowd at the entrance to the refugee camp in Kirambo,357
reported to Col. Rosier on 27 June that his troops had spoken with Gishyita’s mayor and citizens,
as well as IRG Minister of Information Eliézer Niyitegeka.358 On the basis of these conversations,
Cdr. Gillier wrote: “A possible penetration of French troops into Bisesero must be done with force.
Multiple sources have warned us. The Mayor is ready to provide us with ‘guides.’”359 Bisesero, he
said, had been infiltrated by RPF forces, “to the point that local forces and political authorities
avoid venturing there.”360
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Turquoise officers were primed to believe that RPF forces had, indeed, infiltrated the
Kibuye area. It was, in fact, that same day, 27 June 1994, that French troops heard gunfire about
nine miles outside of Kibuye, which sits in the valley below the hills of Bisesero.361 As Col. Rosier
explained to a reporter that night, his troops assumed the sound meant RPF soldiers and militia
members were fighting in the area.362 This, however, was mere conjecture.363 And while Cdr.
Gillier was reporting that the RPF had infiltrated Bisesero, he was relying upon the representations
of the mayor of Gishyita, a man who had called on local anti-Tutsi militias to accelerate the
massacres in the wake of France’s arrival in Rwanda.364 Duval, meanwhile, had spent time in
Bisesero that very day and had taken no notice of any RPF infiltrators. On the contrary, when a
reporter accompanying Duval asked a Tutsi man in Bisesero whether there were any “RPF fighters
among you,” the man said no.365
At 10 p.m. on 27 June, General Lafourcade, the Turquoise force commander, reported to
Admiral Lanxade, the chief of defense staff: “there was a fairly high number of armed men (1000?)
dispersed” in the area of Bisesero.366 Lafourcade was “leaning towards the . . . hypothesis” that
these were armed Tutsi civilians, “who fled the April massacres and sought to defend
themselves.”367 Lafourcade did, at least, close with a clear understanding of the risk he was taking
through inaction:
In this case the risks are as follows:
- Carry out reconnaissance with Hutu “guides” and be [accused] of collaboration
with the FAR.
- Perform reconnaissance alone, with the risk of encountering RPF.
- Do nothing and let massacres be committed behind our backs.368
By 29 June 1994, French officials had publicly declared that RPF members had infiltrated
the area around Gishyita and had “joined with local Tutsi to harass villages south of Kibuye.”369
A Reuters article that day, citing French military sources, reported that roughly 1,000 fighters,
armed with machetes and grenades, were coming down at night from their hideaways in the hills
and terrorizing the villages below. “If among its fighters are Tutsi villagers who fled massacres,
the French believe that there are also many rebels,” the article stated.370 Reuters quoted Cdr. Gillier
and relied on him for some of its assertions about the French troops’ observations in the area.371
The contrary observation in Duval’s fax—of terrorized Tutsi refugees, hiding in the hills to protect
themselves from armed anti-Tutsi soldiers and militiamen—received no mention.
An AFP article that same day acknowledged that French intelligence about the possible
presence of RPF fighters in the area was “still patchy.”372 The article reported that French marines
in Gishyita had seen fighters with their own eyes, using night vision, and had followed their
movements.373 “However,” the AFP stated, French marines “have not yet been able to acquire the
‘certainty’ that it is indeed the RPF.”374
In 2019, in an interview with the French journalist Laurent Larcher, Lafourcade was asked
whether caution was the reason it took France three days to intervene in Bisesero.375 “Yes, that’s
it,” Lafourcade replied. “I regret it a lot, but what do you want? … [I]f, from the first days, we had
found ourselves in a fight with the RPF, it would have been a total political and diplomatic
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catastrophe.”376 Larcher pressed: “So it was out of fear of the RPF that you did not intervene
quickly in Bisesero?” To that inquiry, Lafourcade was both contrite and defiant:
We took some time. . . . It took a while to get the whole detachment there, it took
eight, ten, fifteen days. . . . And that is the responsibility of the commander of the
operation. That’s my responsibility. And I take it on. . . . And I take it on while
regretting the deaths that there may have been in Bisesero . . . but . . . that’s that!377
Defense Minister Léotard visited both Gishyita and Kibuye on 29 June.378 Duval, we know,
spoke with him in Kibuye, though there is some dispute about what he told the minister. Rosier
has said that Duval “explained to the minister that he was convinced the massacres were continuing
without giving more detail.”379 Duval has provided a different account, testifying:
When Minister Léotard visited us in Kibuye on the 29th at 3:30 pm, accompanied
by General Lafourcade and Colonel Rosier . . . I reported on . . . Bisesero and the
discovery of refugees. I explained what we saw, whom we met, the discovery of
the mass graves, the wounded refugees including a child who had taken a bullet in
the buttocks. It was explicit.380
Capt. Charpentier, who was also present for the briefing, has confirmed that information on
Bisesero was conveyed to the French defense minister.381
Journalists covering Léotard’s visit pressed the minister about Bisesero but found him
initially reluctant to commit troops there.382 “We do what we can, it’s a delicate operation. There
is no question of interfering,” Léotard replied. “The soldiers are still only three hundred men in
Rwanda, for hundreds of thousands of displaced or hidden people whose cases are highlighted by
journalists every day.”383 The assembled journalists, though, did not let the matter drop there. As
Le Monde would later report, a New York Times reporter pressed further, at which point Léotard,
“who was leaving, stopped and turned around. . . . ‘Okay, he said, we’re going to go. Tomorrow
we’re going to go.’”384
On 30 June, French troops at last set out to investigate the claims that Duval says he had
relayed three days earlier.385 Once the survivors were discovered, according to a memo Gillier, the
leader of the operation, submitted to the MIP inquiry,
the shock was grueling. An investigation on foot into the valley of Bisesero, which
was not accessible to vehicles, revealed hundreds of corpses, victims of all ages. It
was unbearable. I set off again towards Gishyita, about five kilometers away, and
asked to be received by the mayor. . . . As soon as I saw him, I ordered him to tell
me what happened in the territory he was responsible for. He finally explained to
me that it was necessary to get rid of the scum.386
Three days earlier, the same mayor had convinced Gillier that the district of Bisesero was largely
infiltrated by the RPF.387
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When Gillier arrived at the scene, according to the testimony of one journalist, most of the
French soldiers “were overwhelmed by the sight of the wounded, and some had tears in their
eyes.”388 A situation report issued the night of 30 June described the scene: “500 Tutsi civilians
were found to be very physically exhausted; a hundred of them wounded by bullets or blades. . . .
Tutsi corpses, recently killed, were found (several dozens).”389
As for the survivors, some broke into song “to thank the French soldiers,” according to
RFI’s Christophe Boisbouvier.390 Boisbouvier, who had been with Duval’s unit on 27 June, found
among the survivors the man he had interviewed three days before, Eric Nzabahimana, whose
fluent French had made him a kind of spokesperson for the survivors on both occasions.391
According to Boisbouvier: “When I asked [Nzabahimana] if he preferred to be evacuated or
protected on the spot, he replied that he preferred to be evacuated outside the country or to a place
that was not this one.”392
Undoubtedly, aiding survivors like those hidden in the Bisesero woods was the primary
goal set forth by the French politicians who promoted Turquoise and lobbied for its UN
authorization. That Turquoise commanders did not deploy forces to save those refugees for as
many as three days, costing lives in the process, calls into question the French government’s
commitment to that goal.
One explanation, cited by both Rosier and Duval, is that the French government was just
being cautious, trying to avoid a confrontation with the RPF forces.393 An exchange of gunfire—
or, worse, casualties—might have compromised the image French officials hoped to create of
Turquoise as a neutral force. It also might have sapped the French public’s support for the
operation, much as the deaths of 18 US servicemen in Somalia, just one year earlier, had eroded
Americans’ support for that operation. These risks, to be sure, were legitimate concerns, but they
also attached to every French mission in Rwanda, from guarding refugee camps to conducting
reconnaissance in search of RPF positions. To hold French troops back and allow the killings to
proceed, on the basis of these concerns, necessarily entailed a value judgment. It was a judgment
that the image of Operation Turquoise, and the security of its French troops, was not worth risking
for the sake of saving Rwandan lives. That judgment not to act called into question the purpose of
the operation.
Duval has suggested that Turquoise officers had other priorities during the critical threeday period after Duval’s unit first drove out to Bisesero. One competing priority, he said, was the
need to prepare for Defense Minister Léotard’s visit.394 Léotard’s stop in Rwanda was a highprofile event, guaranteed to attract the attention of the international press. One can imagine that
French officers might have been especially risk-averse in the days leading up to the minister’s
arrival, not wanting a possible dustup with RPF forces to taint the coverage of his visit. Turquoise,
after all, had always had a relatively heavy media component, having been born amid concerns
about the negative press coverage the Mitterrand administration received during the Genocide.395
Ironically, the French government’s failure in Bisesero would ultimately subject it to criticism far
more blistering than any it might have received had it simply tried to save the Tutsi whose lives it
knew to be in peril.396
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The French government’s history in Rwanda, and the preconceptions French officers
brought to their mission, would seem to explain why French leaders were inclined to credit the
local Hutu authorities’ accounts about potential RPF threats, even to the point of disregarding the
reporting of a French reconnaissance team. As Duval testified in 2013:
It was not explicitly stated that the RPF was the enemy. But it happened that many
of the officers . . . had served in Rwanda in various supervisory, consulting or
training capacities . . . . And in the words that were exchanged, there was a
widespread feeling that the RPF was still ‘the adversary’ with quotation marks, as
if the FAR had legitimacy and the RPF were the rebels.397
Preoccupied with stopping the RPF foe that had stymied them for years, leaders in the
Mitterrand administration, including the president, chose to deploy military officers to Rwanda
who, in many cases, arrived with conflicting priorities, preexisting loyalties, and fundamental
misperceptions of the realities on the ground and their mission. In that context, failures like that of
Bisesero were inevitable, and particularly galling in light of the French government’s proud
representations at the time. Indeed, according to the notes of Delaye and Quesnot, Léotard’s 30
June briefing in Paris concluded that “the operation is, for the moment, a success.”398 Turquoise,
the defense minister had insisted, was accomplishing its goal of saving lives—and while he
acknowledged that massacres were still occurring, he allowed only that this was happening “in
areas where we are absent.”399 In saying this, Léotard was presumably referring to parts of western
Rwanda where French troops had simply not yet established a presence. Only later would it
become clear that there were other reasons why French troops, despite the risk of ethnic killings,
were “absent” from an area. Sometimes, as in Bisesero, it was a choice.
G. With the RPF on the Verge of Victory, President Mitterrand Sought to Excuse France’s
Role in the Lead-Up to the Genocide While Working behind the Scenes to Persuade the RPF
to Stop Its Advance.
Before the assassination of President Habyarimana, I was not made aware
of tragedies in the interior of the country.400
– François Mitterrand, President of France (1981 – 1995)
From President Mitterrand’s perspective, the news at a restricted council meeting in the
Élysée on 29 June 1994 could not have seemed encouraging. “Kigali should fall in the coming
days. Afterwards, the FAR will [either] withdraw in good order or collapse,” Admiral Lanxade,
the chief of defense staff, reported at the meeting.401 When Mitterrand asked to know what was
happening in “the Tutsi area” (i.e., RPF-controlled territory), Lanxade explained: “They have
cleared out. The Hutu have fled toward Tanzania and Uganda. The Tutsi area is becoming a
Tutsiland.”402
In the discussion that followed, Mitterrand took a moment to expound on how, from his
perspective, things had gone so wrong in Rwanda. “Historically, the situation has always been
dangerous,” he said.403 He complained that the press had a tendency to oversimply what was
happening in Rwanda. The truth, he insisted, was that the country’s problems were “complex.”404
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Mitterrand was speaking defensively now. There was no denying the scale of the tragedy
in Rwanda, but the story of how it had happened—and how the French President and his
administration had played a role in it—was still being written. In Mitterrand’s telling, the wave of
bloodletting that followed the 6 April 1994 plane crash was not planned and therefore not
foreseeable. “[Habyarimana’s] assassination caused reactions of fear and unleashed the
massacres,” Mitterrand said. “The extremist Hutu faction, some of whose leaders were on the
president’s plane, engaged in inexcusable reprisals.”405 (This was essentially the same version of
events that many génocidaires would peddle from the witness stand in the ICTR, while defending
themselves against charges of genocide and crimes against humanity,406 a version that, during
separate proceedings, would be rejected by a French court.407)
Mitterrand’s point was not merely that France could not have seen the Genocide coming,
but that he, personally, had no way of foreseeing it. In what was perhaps the most revealing portion
of his remarks at the meeting, Mitterrand declared: “Before the assassination of President
Habyarimana, I was not made aware of tragedies in the interior of the country.”408 This claim
warped reality, removing himself from the history of calamity in which he was one of the principal
actors. For instance, on 10 March 1993, then Minister of Cooperation and Development Marcel
Debarge, speaking at a restricted council meeting over which Mitterrand presided, drew the
president’s attention to the newly released International Federal of Human Rights (FIDH) report,
which, among other things, accused the Habyarimana administration of orchestrating killings of
civilians, most of them Tutsi.409 Debarge noted then that the report discussed “abuses committed,
on both sides, on the population” and that it was “harsh on the behavior of government troops.”410
(While the notes of the March 1993 meeting are short on detail, Debarge’s summary of the FIDH
report’s findings was at least troubling enough that Mitterrand felt compelled to order the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs to summon Rwanda’s ambassador in Paris “to provide explanations.”411)
Mitterrand struck a similarly defensive tone while meeting with Ugandan President
Museveni in Paris two days later, on 1 July 1994. “France has no responsibility for this tragedy,”
Mitterrand insisted in the course of their conversation, though his guest had not been so
undiplomatic as to allege that it did.412 Mitterrand remarked that the RPF “is mad at” France
because of Operation Noroît—an operation that he had, since its inception in October 1990,
claimed was solely intended to protect French nationals, but that he now acknowledged had
“served as a warning” to the RPF.413 Noroît, in any event, was over. Now, he said, “the French
Army has come back for an altogether different purpose.”414
Bruno Delaye had prepped Mitterrand for the meeting with the Ugandan president.415 One
day earlier, on 30 June, he and the director of the Quai d’Orsay’s Africa bureau spoke with
Museveni for two hours in London, urging him to “put pressure on the RPF” to accept a ceasefire.416 Museveni agreed to do so, on two conditions: first, that steps be taken to “clearly establish[]
that the assassins of the [IRG] will be prosecuted and punished,” and, second, that “the Arusha
Accords be revised to exclude those who have been guilty of massacres” from serving in the new
Rwandan government.417
Mitterrand told Museveni he had no objection to modifying the Arusha Accords.418 (He
appears not to have commented on Museveni’s other condition: prosecuting and punishing IRG
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assassins.) “You have to help us,” he pleaded, adding later: “I have always found you responsible.
I treated you as a friend. You are the natural ally of the RPF with a Tutsi majority.”419
Museveni was obliging. “I will talk to these RPF children,” he said.420
H. The French Government Established a Safe Humanitarian Zone in Southwestern Rwanda
in Part to Limit RPF Control of Rwanda.
With Operation Turquoise now entering into its second week, Mitterrand and other French
officials found it useful to note that French troops, to that point, had yet to fire a single bullet.421
Tensions, though, were rising, and with French troops fanning farther out from the RwandanZairean border,422 the potential for a confrontation between French soldiers and the RPF had rarely,
if ever, been higher.
One French officer who participated in Operation Turquoise has alleged that France
seriously contemplated a direct attack on the RPF at that moment and even issued an order to strike
RPF troops from the air, only to back down at the last minute. Captain Guillaume Ancel was
assigned to the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment (REI),423 part of the “south group” operating out of
Bukavu, under the command of Lt. Col. Jacques Hogard.424 In the years since the Genocide, Ancel
has said that while in Nîmes on 22 June 1994, shortly before deploying to Rwanda, he received a
copy of a “preparatory order” with instructions to prepare to “carry out a land raid on Kigali, the
capital of Rwanda, to restore the government.”425 According to Ancel, his unit’s task would have
been to “clear a corridor” for Turquoise troops to storm the city before the RPF could react.426
“Tactically, it made sense, since we had been practicing this type of operation for several years,”
Ancel wrote in a 2018 memoir. “In practice, it was obviously risky [and] very violent.”427
The plan, it seems, was momentarily scrapped. (Ancel said he did not know why a final
order did not follow, but he speculated it might have been because the unit’s equipment failed to
arrive in Zaire on time.428) Ancel, however, has said that on 30 June 1994, roughly one week after
receiving the preparatory order, his unit commander notified him that the mission was back on,
saying they “received the order to stop the advance of RPF soldiers.”429 Kigali, at this time, was
on the verge of falling to the RPF, and French officials had been contemplating what the RPF’s
next move might be.430 They did not know which direction the RPF forces would choose to go,
but suspected the rebel troops would not rest until they controlled Rwanda.431
The operation, according to Ancel, called for 150 French troops to queue up on the eastern
edge of the Nyungwe forest, southwest of Kigali, in the early morning hours of 1 July 1994.432
Ancel’s task was to identify targets for the fighter jets to hit; the jets, in turn, would drop bombs
and rockets on the unsuspecting RPF columns.433 Ancel said that on the morning of the operation,
he headed out to the Bukavu airport tarmac and boarded a helicopter.434 But, as the rotor spun, an
officer came out to say that the operation had been cancelled.435 “We have an agreement with the
RPF, we are not engaging in combat,” the officer said.436 As Ancel recalled, the officer explained
that the RPF had agreed to stop its advance and allow the Turquoise forces to occupy a vast swath
of western Rwanda—an area that would come to be known as the “Safe Humanitarian Zone.”437
(The RPF did not, in fact, stop its advance on 1 July 1994. However, the French government did
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send word to RPF leadership in early July 1994 about its plans to create a safe humanitarian zone
in southwestern Rwanda (discussed below).438)
Several of Ancel’s superior officers, including General Lafourcade, Col. Rosier, and Lt.
Col. Hogard, have denied his claims.439 “You cannot be serious! I am amazed that a former artillery
officer could seriously say such things,” Lt. Col. Hogard, the commander of the southern group,
told an interviewer in 2014.440 While Hogard said it is possible that Ancel may at some point have
flown on a Puma helicopter as part of a reconnaissance mission, he maintained that Ancel’s
primary missions were not to provide air support, but to liaise with NGOs and recover Tutsi
survivors of the Genocide.441 “On the other hand,” Hogard said:
it should be remembered that Kagame, for his part, had been claiming for months
that, if he came to meet French units, it would be to shoot at them. We had therefore
very logically taken precautionary and protective measures, in the face of the RPF
who said they wanted to “break the French”!442
One member of the Rwandan military’s high command at the time, General Paul
Rwarakabije,443 provides corroboration for Ancel’s assertion that French forces did at least
contemplate an air strike on the RPF units.444 Rwarakabije said that at some point between 26 and
28 June 1994, a group of French and Rwandan officers met at a hotel in Gisenyi. The meeting was
conceived as a tête-à-tête between General Augustin Bizimungu, the FAR chief of staff, and a
French officer.445 (Rwarakabije, who waited outside while the two men spoke, could not recall the
French officer’s name—only that it was not General Lafourcade, who Rwarakabije knew was in
Goma at the time.446) While the meeting was under way, Rwarakabije loitered outside the hotel
and spoke with some French soldiers.447 He recalled that the soldiers pressed him for information
on where the RPF forces were presently positioned.448 They were asking, they said, so they could
launch air attacks against the RPF troops.449
Contemporaneous documents lend additional support to Ancel’s account. These documents
show, first, that France had the airpower necessary for an attack of the kind Ancel described, with
four Jaguar fighter jets and four Mirage-F1CT fighter jets positioned at the French air base in
Kisangani, a city in northeastern Zaire.450 Those planes arrived in Kisangani on 28 and 29 June
1994—just a few days before the aborted air strike.451 Documents also show that, on the morning
of 1 July 1994—the morning of the alleged aborted attack—the RPF’s representative to the United
Nations complained to UN officials and diplomats in New York that French planes were frequently
overflying RPF-held territory and failing to respond to RPF air traffic controllers.452 The
representative told diplomats the RPF “had intercepted French communications” indicating that
the planes intended to bomb RPF military installations.453 To date, the French government has not
released documents that describe its flight operations or missions at the time.
General Dallaire, the UNAMIR force commander, could see that Turquoise was taking an
increasingly assertive tack, noting with some concern on 30 June 1994 that French forces were
“advancing toward the center of the country” and had reportedly arrived at Gikongoro, just 12
miles from the RPF front line.454 Dallaire was especially troubled to learn that French troops were
en route toward the southern city of Butare, outside of the area where Turquoise forces had, to that
point, been patrolling in western Rwanda.455 French officials had suspected for some time that the
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RPF forces had designs on Butare,456 the country’s second largest city,457 and it was either in spite
of this, or because of it, that General Lafourcade, in late June 1994, had ordered Turquoise troops
to conduct “discreet reconnaissance” in the region.458 (Delaye, making note of the general’s
decision in a 28 June 1994 memo, warned Mitterrand that the region was “potentially highly
sensitive.”459) It surely mattered, too, that Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Roman Catholic
archbishop of Paris, had urged French officials to send troops to rescue about 40 nuns living in the
southern Rwandan city.460 Prime Minister Balladur approved the rescue operation on 30 June
1994.461
Dallaire received advance notice about planned French operations in Butare while meeting
with Lafourcade in Goma that same morning, 30 June 1994.462 In his memoir, Dallaire recalled
being taken aback by the chatter of the men on Lafourcade’s staff when they broke for lunch.463
The men were critical of UNAMIR, arguing it “should help prevent the RPF from defeating” the
interim government forces.464 “They refused to accept the reality of the genocide and the fact that
the extremists leaders, the perpetrators and some of their old colleagues were all the same people.
They showed overt signs of wishing to fight the RPF,” Dallaire wrote.465
A French special forces detachment arrived in Butare on 1 July, joined, despite unfavorable
weather, by two helicopters.466 In his memoir, Colonel Tauzin said he was struck by the fact that
for the first time since the detachment’s crossing into Rwandan territory on 23 June, no journalists
had come along for the ride.467 Not yet knowing what their mission would be, Tauzin began to
speculate:
Assuming that in Paris the eternal struggles for influence have not ceased, I imagine
for a moment the improbable. What if we were here, very far ahead of the Turquoise
plan, to rush towards Kigali by this road that leads straight to it, less than 150
kilometers away?! Rush towards Kigali, seize the airport to prepare the airlift of the
forces needed to retake the city.468
The detachment’s actual mission in Butare disappointed Tauzin: to “secure the city” and
“stop the abuses,”469 which anti-Tutsi militias were said to be perpetrating in anticipation of the
RPF’s arrival.470 (“I really hope[d] that Paris [would] give Kagame the lesson he deserves, and
that we [would] change our attitude for that, not to save those who have turned into killers, but to
attack the evil at its root: the RPF!” Tauzin wrote.471)
In General Lafourcade’s account of the special forces’ detachment’s first day in Butare, a
group of French soldiers was heading to a Catholic mission a few miles north of the city when
RPF forces fired in the direction of the lead vehicle.472 The vehicle reportedly turned around,
sustaining no damage.473
The special forces team did, ultimately, evacuate 16 nuns and one Tutsi family by
helicopter that night.474 Dallaire, though, remained distressed. In a phone call with Lafourcade that
evening (1 July), he “reproached” the French general “for going too fast to the East,” according to
a handwritten note Lafourcade scrawled just before midnight that night.475 [Dallaire] seemed
perfectly aware of the intentions of the RPF and confided to me that [the RPF] was leading an
offensive on Butare,” Lafourcade wrote.476 Lafourcade assured him that the French operation in
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Butare would be limited: the troops, after spending the night on site, would conduct evacuations
on the morning of 2 July before returning west to Gikongoro.477 Dallaire, he wrote, “seemed
relieved” and said he would “warn the RPF.”478
There was more that Lafourcade hoped to accomplish in Butare. The French troops had
evacuated only 20 people on 1 July,479 leaving many more behind, including several hundred
children from a Butare orphanage.480 To Lafourcade’s way of thinking, the RPF was doubly
responsible for the threat these people were continuing to face: it was the reason their lives were
in danger, and also the reason French troops were struggling to save them.481 “We still do not have
the means to ensure the protection of Butare, and it is likely that the RPF will seize the city before
our arrival,” he wrote in a 2 July memo.482 Anticipating the press coverage the French operation
was all but guaranteed to generate, Lafourcade warned: “We therefore risk being accused of doing
nothing for these refugees by the media.”483
The RPF, at that time, was advancing on multiple fronts.484 By the morning of 2 July, its
troops had Kigali completely surrounded.485 A French Ministry of Defense memo reported that the
10 remaining FAR battalions in the capital were boxed in and running low on supplies.486
Admiral Lanxade, assessing the situation in a 2 July note, took it as a given that the RPF
would not stop fighting until its troops had reached the Burundian and Zairean borders.487 In the
face of these ambitions, he argued, France had two options. The first option, which, he made clear,
he did not favor, was to retreat.488 Although a retreat, in theory, would have reduced the risk of an
armed confrontation with the RPF, he wrote: “As soon as this is known, the RPF will be
encouraged to continue. Our units will then have to gradually abandon the protection of the refugee
camps, while trying to prevent any massacre before the RPF takes control of the areas.”489 The end
result, he warned, would be “a complete withdrawal of our forces to Zaire.”490
The alternative—“Option 2,” in Lanxade’s note—was to establish a “protected
humanitarian zone” in Rwanda.491 Under this plan, which echoed a concept Ambassador Marlaud
had floated in various memos over the previous week,492 the Turquoise forces would mark off a
large portion of Rwanda as off-limits to RPF forces.493 “It would be clearly indicated to the RPF
that its military units shall not penetrate [the zone], so that the security of the various populations
can be maintained,” Lanxade wrote.494
Marlaud, in his own writings on this subject, had argued the creation of one or more such
zones would serve two goals: first, it would limit the flow of refugees into neighboring countries,
and, second, it would “deter the RPF from going too far.”495 Marlaud acknowledged, though, that
the French government could expect some complications. One issue was the FAR, whose troops,
he noted in a 1 July memo, would either take sanctuary in the French-controlled zones or would
continue to wage war against the RPF outside of the zones, with no way to retreat.496 Marlaud also
cautioned that the French government would have to contend with “the risks of infiltration” by the
RPF.497
Lanxade did not touch on these issues in his memo. The one risk that he acknowledged
was the possibility that RPF forces would continue to advance in full disregard of the zone’s
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boundaries, triggering a clash with French troops.498 “However,” he wrote, “we can believe that
the display of our determination should reasonably limit this risk.”499
President Mitterrand quickly let it be known that he supported option two: establishing a
safe humanitarian zone.500 A handwritten postscript on Lanxade’s 2 July memo indicated that
Prime Minister Balladur, Foreign Minister Juppé, and Defense Minister Léotard also favored this
proposal, provided that, as Lanxade recommended, France present the plan to the UN Security
Council for its approval.501 In a matter of hours, Ambassador Mérimée, France’s permanent
representative to the United Nations, dispatched a letter to Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali.502
The letter stated that the French government believed it already had the authority, under previous
UN Security Council resolutions, to establish the safe humanitarian zone (SHZ).503
“Nevertheless,” it said, “it is the wish of France that, through you, the United Nations should
indicate its support for the establishment of such a zone.“504 Mérimée warned, in closing, that “if
France is unable to organize a safe humanitarian zone with the support of the international
community, it will have no other choice than to withdraw very rapidly from Rwandan territory.”505
The initial plan for the SHZ, as conceived by General Lafourcade, would have “cut the
country in two.”506 It was a radical proposal, in that it threatened to carve out a buffer zone between
the two sides’ Armed Forces. The IRG and FAR would be safely ensconced on the western side
of the country, while French troops barred the RPF forces from proceeding any farther. Lafourcade
would later say his hope was that the French-imposed détente would pressure the RPF to agree to
a cease-fire.507
The Mitterrand administration settled on a less aggressive course of action, in the end. Even
so, the boundaries that the French government ultimately chose for the SHZ were telling. In his
letter to Boutros-Ghali, Mérimée said “the zone should comprise the districts of Cyangugu and
Gikongoro and the southern half of the district of Kibuye, including the Kibuye-Gitarama road as
far as the N’Daba pass.”508 It was a large area, covering roughly one-third of the interim
government-held territory and about one-fifth of the whole of Rwanda.509 One could not help but
note, though, that all of the localities the Quai d’Orsay, through Mérimée’s letter, had expressly
sought to place under French protection—Cyangugu, Gikongoro, and Kibuye510—were places
French officials had identified as likely targets for a coming RPF offensive.511 It was likely not
coincidental, either, that the French government wanted the protected zone to extend “as far as the
N’Daba pass,” given that French officials had previously voiced concerns that an RPF takeover of
that area would sever the interim government-held territory in two.512 Ultimately, the lines left
little doubt about what the French government was trying to do: it was trying, as it had so many
times before, to stop the RPF.
The RPF needed no further evidence of the French government’s unstated aims. The proof,
in its view, was already on display in Butare, where French forces had resolved to resume their
planned evacuations, even as RPF troops were closing in on their goal of seizing control of the
city.513 “This coincidence is all the more suspect in their eyes because Butare is far from French
bases and because such in-depth operations were not initially planned,” the DGSE reported on 4
July.514 “The RPF thus considers that the French authorities are revealing their true intentions as
operation ‘Turquoise’ progresses: to protect the self-proclaimed government and give the FAR a
second wind.”515
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The RPF captured Butare on the afternoon of 3 July 1994.516 That day, as shelling
continued, a convoy of French jeeps mounted with machine guns escorted half a dozen buses into
the city to evacuate several hundred orphans and religious workers.517 When the rescue operation
was complete, Col. Tauzin led the French trucks back toward Gikongoro via a road that had come
under RPF control.518 At the Butare city limits, their path was blocked by RPF soldiers.519 “The
moment was delicate,” Tauzin recalled in his memoir.520 “Of course we were very seriously armed,
but we were only 58 [men] and accompanied by 600 refugees!”521
The RPF soldiers allowed the French convoy to pass.522 “[W]e continued on our way,”
Tauzin wrote, “when suddenly I heard Kalashnikov fire coming from the second RPF line, up there
on the hill to the north.”523 The French troops did not hesitate. According to Tauzin: “The patrol
just behind me reacted ‘with panache’ with ‘a fireball,’ that is, by retaliating with all available
weapons.”524
The French troops suffered no injuries;525 according to Tauzin, damage on the French side
was limited to a single bullet found in the glove compartment of a French jeep.526 (A Le Monde
reporter wrote that Tauzin “could not really clarify if the incident resulted in casualties among the
Rwandans [i.e., the RPF], but he ha[d] every reason to believe it.”527) For the French government,
though, the clash proved harmful in another way, as news of the incident broke at the same time
that French officials were announcing, on 4 July 1994, the decision to establish the SHZ.528 The
story fed a media narrative that tensions between France and the RPF were rising and that further
confrontations were, as one reporter put it, “inevitable.”529 Admiral Lanxade quickly sought to
push back on that narrative, advising the Turquoise force commanders to clarify that French forces
had conducted an evacuation operation with the RPF’s consent, and that “the shots were provoked
by uncontrolled units.”530 (This last assertion was consistent with RPF Commander Kagame’s
assurance that he had not directed his troops to fire on the French forces; his explanation, as
reported in a French cable on 4 July 1994, was that an RPF soldier had either ignored orders or
had responded to “provocation from the government side.”531)
The French government opted, in the end, to announce the establishment of the SHZ
without the benefit of a UN Security Council vote approving the initiative.532 “It may be that
France has concluded that it would be unlikely to secure Council support for the proposal and is
therefore not seeking it,” a New Zealand Foreign Ministry official wrote in a 4 July 1994 cable.533
For its own part, the New Zealand delegation had several concerns about the initiative, not the
least of which was that the zone’s borders were “close to, if not contiguous with, the current
confrontation between RPF and [FAR] forces.”534 “[I]n other words,” the official wrote, “by
securing such a zone, the French would inevitably be caught doing what they said they wouldn’t—
i.e., that their forces would avoid conflicting with the RPF and would not get caught in fighting
between the Rwanda parties or be interpositioned.”535 Other Security Council member states had
concerns too.536 None, however, ever went so far as to raise a formal objection to France’s plan,
allowing French officials to assert that the Council had effectively consented to the proposal,
through the silence of its members.537
Early press reports about the establishment of the SHZ indicated that the RPF was either
firmly opposed to the idea, or that its tolerance of the French initiative was, at best, begrudging.538
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Such reports, though, were quickly overtaken by events. Not long after dawn broke on 4 July 1994,
reports began to come in that the battle for control of Kigali was over.539 The FAR had abandoned
the city, with the last remaining units reportedly fleeing northwest to join their comrades about 30
kilometers outside of the capital.540 Based on what the troops left behind, it appeared to General
Dallaire, the UNAMIR force commander, that the interim government forces had finally run out
of ammunition.541
That morning, the French ambassador to Uganda received an invitation to speak with
President Museveni in the president’s office in Kampala.542 When he arrived, he was greeted not
only by Museveni, but by RPF Commander Kagame.543 The French ambassador found Kagame to
be “courteous,” if a little “reserved.”544 In the course of their conversation, Kagame said that the
RPF did not oppose the creation of humanitarian zones, and that now that Kigali had been won, it
could consider agreeing to a cease-fire.545 Kagame explained that, in the view of RPF leaders, the
launch of Operation Turquoise had threatened to give the Rwandan interim government forces “a
false sense of confidence.”546 “But,” the French ambassador wrote in a 4 July 1994 cable to Paris,
“the RPF was now convinced of our good faith.”547 When the ambassador suggested opening a
direct line of communication with Kagame, rather than continuing to rely on General Dallaire to
serve as an intermediary, the RPF commander gave him his satellite phone number.548
Whatever preconceptions the French ambassador might have had about Kagame, he
appears to have come away from this meeting persuaded of his sincerity. “[H]is openness to us,”
the ambassador wrote, “confirms that he is preparing to move from the military approach to
politics.”549
I. Leveraging the Establishment of the SHZ, French Officials Redoubled Their Efforts to
Catalyze a Cease-fire and Salvage the IRG.
While France’s envoy in Kampala was taking the first tentative steps toward
rapprochement with the RPF, French troops on the ground in Rwanda remained committed to a
strategy of military deterrence. “No one will go any further,” Col. Tauzin told an assembly of
journalists on 4 July in Gikongoro, where French special forces had begun to stake out the eastern
border of the SHZ.550 Tauzin said his troops were under orders to stay in Gikongoro,551 where,
according to his memoir, their task was to “set[] up battle stations [and] properly prepar[e] heavy
weapons ranges around our position . . . for the unlikely event that the RPF would attack.”552 He
told the reporters that more French troops would be joining them soon.553 “We will not allow
anyone to bother the population—whether they are militias, the Rwandan Army, or the RPF,” he
said.554 He directed his bluntest warning to one of those entities in particular: “If the RPF comes
here and threatens the population, we will fire on them without hesitation. We have the means, and
more are on their way.”555
One of the French journalists who heard Tauzin speak that day recalled asking the colonel
how French troops could possibly hold back the RPF forces who had just seized Butare and vastly
outnumbered the Turquoise troops in Gikongoro.556 “Ah yeah,” he remembered Tauzin
responding, “but then, let them move a foot, and I’ll smash in their faces.”557
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Tauzin was not speaking entirely out of turn. That same day, aboard a helicopter flight to
Gikongoro, his superior officer, Col. Rosier, told photographers that the RPF was “going to be
very surprised.”558 Rosier spoke in metaphor, invoking some of the highs and lows of French
military history as reference points for its latest operation. “We won’t call this Dien Bien Phu,” he
said, referring to France’s 1954 defeat in Vietnam. Reaching further back in history, to the scene
of one of Napoleon’s most famous victories, he declared: “we’ll call it Austerlitz.”559
It was not surprising that Tauzin and Rosier—two officers who, before the Genocide, had
labored to help the FAR fight RPF forces—framed their mission in these terms, as though French
troops were boldly standing their ground against the oncoming rebel forces. In fact, there were
officials in Paris who similarly characterized the SHZ as an effort to establish a buffer zone
between the advancing RPF forces and the “retreating Hutus” and former regime elements.560 One
US embassy official in Paris at the time recalled that a Quai d’Orsay staffer framed the SHZ as a
“stop line” that would supposedly prevent the RPF from engaging in reprisal killings and
provoking an even greater humanitarian catastrophe.561 Such talk, though, was out of step with the
message officials in the Élysée were hoping to convey.562 At a joint press conference with Nelson
Mandela in South Africa on 5 July 1994, Mitterrand said: “France does not intend to carry out
military operations in Rwanda against anyone. . . . The Rwandan Patriotic Front is not our
adversary. We do not seek to hold back its potential success.”563 According to the Duclert report,
an “order was issued to remove Colonel Tauzin from Rwanda, who had made aggressive remarks
to journalists about the RPF.”564
The softening of French rhetoric had more to do with messaging than with policy, as
Mitterrand remained committed to the same French strategy in Rwanda that had prevailed since
the early days of Operation Noroît. Mitterrand continued to combine French military
“determination,”565 as Lanxade had put it, with diplomatic pressure to forge a cease-fire and a
negotiated peace. Only now, instead of holding the northern line against the RPF, as Noroît had
done, French troops were holding the SHZ.
Whatever the French government’s intentions for the SHZ were, once the French forces
stood up the SHZ, its presence deterred the RPF from sending military missions into western
Rwanda for the purpose of saving Tutsi lives. “Many Tutsi were in Bisesero, in Kibuye, in
Nyarushishi, in Kibeho, and in former Gikongoro, and the French presence in those places was
obstructive in terms of getting information on where the Tutsi had sought refuge and our advancing
to those places,” said Charles Karamba, who commanded the RPA at the CND (Centre Nationale
de Développement) during the Genocide. “That gave more time to the killers to kill as many Tutsi
as possible.”566
Meanwhile, the diplomatic approach that had helped produce the failed Arusha Accords
was now being employed by French officials in pursuit of a cease-fire that might save the IRG
from total defeat. The strategy, always problematic, had curdled into grotesquerie, its goal being
to salvage some power for the perpetrators of a genocide.
Diplomatic outreach to the IRG fell in large part to Yannick Gérard, the Quai d’Orsay’s
deputy director of African and Malagasy affairs and a former French ambassador to Uganda.567
Gérard had arrived in Goma on 30 June with plans to open a dialogue with the Gisenyi authorities
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and deliver what essentially boiled down to three key requests: first, that they cooperate in any
way necessary “to ensure that [Operation Turquoise] goes smoothly”; second, that they “exert their
influence, in the right direction, on the militia”; and third, that they “put a stop to the propaganda”
on the hate-media radio station RTLM.568
The question of what to do about RTLM had taken on some urgency in the days preceding
Gérard’s arrival. UN Secretariat officials and Security Council representatives had grown
increasingly frustrated with the IRG’s failure to stop the torrent of bilious rhetoric the station
continued to spew.569 The principal target for the station’s venom was, of course, the Tutsi; a 28
June 1994 report by a UN special rapporteur observed that RTLM, widely known as “the killer
radio station,” “does not hesitate to call for the extermination of the Tutsi and is notorious for the
decisive role that it appears to have played in the massacres.”570 What most galvanized UN
officials, though, was a recent trend among RTLM broadcasters of claiming, falsely, that
UNAMIR and General Dallaire were secretly backing the RPF.571 (An RTLM broadcast on 25
June, to cite just one example, alleged that Dallaire “advises the Inyenzi Inkotanyi [i.e., RPF
cockroaches]” and “teaches them how to handle these large-caliber bombs that they continuously
drop on this town of Kigali.”572)
French officials contemplated what it would take to jam Rwandan radio transmissions, but
decided, according to a 30 June Foreign Ministry cable, that the Turquoise forces were not close
enough to the transmission sites and lacked the equipment they would need.573 The Ministry also
ruled out the idea of forcibly stopping the broadcasts, on the grounds that this would not fall within
Turquoise’s UN mandate and would represent “an act of force against one of the parties,” after
which Turquoise “could no longer be seen as impartial.”574 A remaining option, one French
officials chose to pursue, was to “intervene,” verbally, “with Rwandan officials who may have an
influence on the content of the programs.” The cable called for a French envoy to reach out to
RTLM founder Ferdinand Nahimana, who had returned to Rwanda through the Bukavu/Cyangugu
crossing in late April,575 and “insist that all calls for massacres or murder as well as attacks against
UNAMIR and its commander be stopped on this radio station.”576
Gérard, in the days that followed, would twice admonish IRG officials to halt the station’s
violent rhetoric—first in a 2 July 1994 meeting with Nahimana, and then in a meeting the following
day with IRG President Théodore Sindikubwabo.577 His words, though, had little impact.578 After
a couple of days of silence, RTLM reportedly returned to the air, its broadcasters’ tone as coarse
as ever.579
Based on the way the Gisenyi officials approached their meetings with Gérard, it seemed
that nothing the French government had done in the opening phase of Operation Turquoise had
disabused them of their assumption that France remained their ally. The officials were apparently
confident enough of the French government’s ongoing support that they felt comfortable asking
for various favors or special privileges.580 It was not merely that they pressed for France to expand
the SHZ to cover northwestern Rwanda and even “certain areas of Kigali.”581 One official, MRND
Chairman Mathieu Ngirumpatse (later sentenced to life in the ICTR for genocide and other
crimes),582 even went so far during the 3 July meeting with President Sindikubwabo and other IRG
officials as to “express[] his wish that France help the FAR in their fight against the RPF.”583 It
was not as though Ngirumpatse had no reason to believe Gérard might agree to the request; Gérard,
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after all, had just finished detailing the French government’s plans to shield a large swath of IRGcontrolled territory (i.e., the SHZ) from RPF forces.584 (Gérard said he told Ngirumpatse, in
response to his request for military assistance, “that this was out of the question.”585)
Gérard would later write that he left these meetings convinced that the IRG authorities
“were preparing . . . to complicate our task and deliberately worsen the situation.”586 Though he
soon decided to distance himself from the IRG and its associates (without cutting off direct contact
entirely),587 he let General Lafourcade know that he remained available “to have any contact with
the local authorities in the SHZ that he deemed might be useful for [Operation] Turquoise to
proceed smoothly.”588 (Indeed, the instructions he received from Paris were that he should
maintain contact with local authorities, as this “will be necessary for the smooth execution of
Operation Turquoise.”589) Gérard apparently became acquainted with several of the most
prominent local authorities within the SHZ. In an 8 July cable, he noted that the prefect of
Gikongoro had proven “very cooperative,” while the prefect in Cyangugu “sometimes create[d]
difficulties.”590 Gérard’s lone comment about their counterpart in Kibuye was that he “has his
hands all covered with blood, like most of the bourgemestres of the area.”591 All of them, he
remarked, were criminals who would have to be arrested in due course and brought to justice as
soon as possible.592 (Notably, Gérard—in line with other French officials at the time—viewed
arresting génocidaires as something that UNAMIR should do, rather than Turquoise forces.593)
As for the IRG itself, its fortunes were fading more and more rapidly, with the RPF
establishing its authority over Butare and Kigali on 3 and 4 July, respectively. Before long,
according to Gérard, French Foreign Ministry officials “no longer saw the usefulness” of
continuing to meet with IRG contacts.594 “They are totally discredited,” Gérard wrote in a 7 July
cable, explaining that he and General Lafourcade were in complete agreement on this issue.595
“Any contact with them is now useless or even harmful . . . . We have nothing more to say to them
except to step aside as quickly as possible.”596
French officials, continuing to harbor hopes for a cease-fire,597 and recognizing they would
need to find a replacement for the IRG to sit across the table from the RPF in prospective peace
talks, settled on one of the country’s most prominent génocidaires: the FAR’s chief of staff,
General Augustin Bizimungu. General Bizimungu, who, in late June 1994, had pressed General
Lafourcade to supply the interim government’s Army with much-needed ammunition to continue
its fight against the RPF,598 committed many crimes during the Genocide—not only at the outset,
but as late as 7 June 1994, when soldiers under his command murdered about 100 Tutsi civilians
who had sought refuge at a religious order’s compound in Nyamirambo, Kigali.599 (The ICTR
would later convict Bizimungu of genocide, among other crimes.600) Lafourcade and Gérard were
aware that Bizimungu “retain[ed] some authority over the militias” slaughtering Tutsi.601
Nevertheless, they and other French officials hoped Bizimungu “could . . . play a role in a possible
settlement with the RPF,” if only they could persuade him to break ranks with the IRG.602
The French government attempted to gauge Bizimungu’s willingness to play such a role
on 6 July 1994, in a series of meetings French officials arranged with the general in Goma.603
Bizimungu’s responses were not encouraging. In a meeting with Admiral Lanxade’s deputy,
General Raymond Germanos, Bizimungu asked, yet again, whether France would agree to supply
the interim government’s Army with more ammunition.604 (“This was refused,” a French cable
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about the meeting stated.605) Bizimungu also questioned whether he and his troops might be
permitted to take refuge in the SHZ.606 (“He was told that this was impossible,” the cable
reported.607)
Bizimungu, according to the cable, “seemed to understand” that a cease-fire with the RPF
“was the only possible solution.”608 He let on, though, that he suspected the RPF would try to delay
any negotiations to “gain time to regroup its forces in the north in order to attack the RuhengeriGisenyi region.”609 Germanos told him not to worry: “UNAMIR and possibly elements of
Turquoise could control the northern area to prevent this from happening.”610
Bizimungu did not, ultimately, break off from the IRG.611 In a matter of days, as the RPF
forces were bearing down on Gisenyi in mid-July 1994, he would flee to Zaire.612 There, he would
continue to command the ex-FAR, preparing his reconstituted troops for a reconquest of
Rwanda.613
In his attempts to induce someone else from the ex-FAR to step forward, Gérard met
several times with Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, who, from June 1993 to June 1994, had served
as the FAR’s commander in Gisenyi.614 (Nsengiyumva stepped down from that post in June 1994,
when the FAR designated him as its liaison to Operation Turquoise.615 As this report has
previously noted, he later served a 15-year sentence following his convictions in the ICTR for
genocide, crimes against humanity, and other offenses.616) Nsengiyumva, to Gérard’s
disappointment, “remained very close to the [interim] government.”617
J. The Safe Humanitarian Zone Offered Refuge to the Interim Government’s Army and Other
Perpetrators of Massacres, as French Officials Did Not Order Their Troops to Arrest or
Systematically Disarm Génocidaires.
As they began to assert control over the country, RPF leaders sought to assure the
international community that they were prepared to take necessary measures to restore law and
order throughout the parts of Rwanda already under their authority.618 They let it be known, too,
that while they did not object “in principle” to the French government’s decision to seal off much
of southwestern Rwanda, they viewed this decision as “absolutely unnecessary.”619 “The advance
of the Rwandese Patriotic Front does not in any[ way] threaten the security of innocent civilians,
as millions living in other parts of the country would testify,” a representative of the RPF political
bureau wrote in a 6 July 1994 letter to the UN Security Council President.620
The representative did not dwell on the point. It was, however, an important one. One of
the core French government rationales for the creation of the SHZ was the notion that the RPF
forces’ advance threatened Rwanda’s stability. Over and over, throughout late June and early July
1994, French officials predicted that the RPF troops’ progress would drive people from their homes
and precipitate more killings.621 The assumption was that, by stopping the RPF in its tracks, the
SHZ would keep the crisis in check.
RPF leaders chafed at this idea. The crisis, they kept having to remind the French
government, was not of their making. The other side—the IRG, its Army, and the militias—was
the one waging a genocide; the RPF was the one trying to stop it. “We are not fighting to drive out
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the civilians, who are our compatriots and for whom we are concerned, but to chase down and
capture the assassins who have dismantled this country,” Commander Kagame told Le Monde in
an interview published on 6 July 1994.622 Kagame did not deny that the fighting between the RPF
and the interim government’s Army had spurred people to flee their homes.623 If, however, some
of those people were afraid of what RPF troops might do, it was not because of the troops’ own
actions;624 rather, as Kagame explained in a 10 July 1994 letter to General Lafourcade, it was the
natural result of “the propaganda from extremist circles.”625 “In either case,” Kagame told
Lafourcade, “we do not see why the RPF should be held responsible for this flow of refugees of
which it is not the cause.”626
The conquest of Kigali offered Kagame and other RPF leaders an opportunity to show that
many of the French government’s assumptions about the organization had been wrong from the
start. Among its first steps was to announce the formation of a national unity government, in which
members of moderate Hutu political parties would play a significant role.627 “This new
Government would be broad-based, encompassing the broad spectrum of Rwandese political
opinion,” the RPF’s special envoy in New York wrote in his 6 July 1994 letter to the Security
Council President. “It would be formed in the framework of the Arusha Peace Agreement to which
the Rwandese Patriotic Front reaffirms its commitment, but will exclude the perpetrators of
genocide.”628 Following words with action, the RPF soon announced that Faustin Twagiramungu,
the MDR party leader, would take his place as prime minister of the new government—just as he
had been slated to do in the transitional government provided for in the August 1993 Arusha
Accords.629 RPF leaders also signaled they would soon announce a unilateral cease-fire.630
At least one French official—General Huchon, the head of the French Military Cooperation
Mission—was not primed to credit the RPF for any of this. “The RPF will still be our adversary
(enemy?) because [it is] Marxist and totalitarian, thus irremediably opposed to our democratic and
humanist culture,” he wrote in a 5 July 1994 note.631 Written on the day after RPF forces seized
Kigali, the note laid bare Huchon’s evident frustration with Turquoise and its pretense of
neutrality. He complained that “concessions” to the RPF had only made it stronger and more
ambitious.632 At the same time, he said, the decision to situate Turquoise’s bases on the RwandanZairean border “has blocked all supplies to the FAR who are running out of ammunition while the
RPF is burning through large quantities of artillery ammunition.”633 Though Huchon appears to
have recognized that a new government was about to take its place in Kigali, he insisted that France
must continue to denounce the RPF and must reflect on the future of its relationship with Rwanda.
“[O]ur political objective for the future Rwanda is of immediate interest to African leaders,” he
wrote. “They are waiting, watching, and judging. What is our plan?”634
A contemporaneous DGSE analysis was less hostile to the new authorities in Kigali, if still
distrustful. “The RPF’s strategy is undoubtedly not devoid of ulterior motives with regard to the
French presence,” the French intelligence agency assessed in a 7 July memo.635 The agency
suspected the RPF’s attempts to court international goodwill were driven, at least in part, by a
desire “to embarrass France and provoke its departure from Rwanda.”636
Kagame’s public position on the SHZ was no different than what he told the French
ambassador in Kampala on the day Kigali fell: he did not oppose it.637 He did, however, want
assurances that France would administer the zone responsibly, and he let it be known that he was
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prepared to sit at the table with French officials to discuss the ways in which France could do so.638
What was most important, he indicated, was “that the militiamen and the perpetrators of abuses do
not take refuge there.”639
It was an eminently foreseeable concern. French officials were certainly aware that militias
were present in the SHZ.640 Rwandan refugees in Tanzania, for example, noted in conversations
with the DGSE that the SHZ included the Nyungwe Forest, “which had long served as a training
base for Hutu Interahamwe militia, and that there was therefore a real risk of the formation of a
protected maquis [i.e., resistance fighters].”641 It was not difficult to imagine that the militias would
take advantage of French protection, using the SHZ as a safe space in which to regroup and prepare
new attacks. Nor was it difficult to imagine that their compatriots in areas outside of the SHZ
would seek to join them.
What Twagiramungu, the incoming prime minister, found just as concerning, if not more
so, was the likelihood that the interim government’s army would use the SHZ to its advantage,
knowing that RPF forces could not reach its troops there.642 Twagiramungu told an interviewer
that when he raised this concern with Ambassador Marlaud in Brussels on 6 July, the French
ambassador “assured me that the Rwandan Armed Forces were not in the security zone.” “I can
only record the promises of the French government,” Twagiramungu told the interviewer, “but the
reality on the ground seems very different to me.”643
Twagiramungu’s intuition was correct. FAR units were indeed active in the SHZ,644 and
French officials knew it. The DRM, in fact, on the same day that Twagiramungu met with
Ambassador Marlaud, reported that the FAR’s new commander in the province of Cyangugu had
positioned a battalion west of the Nyungwe forest—which is to say, inside the SHZ.645 Gérard,
France’s liaison to the IRG, estimated a few days later (10 July) that roughly 1,600 Rwandan
soldiers—about one-tenth of the FAR’s total strength—were inside the SHZ.646 He cautioned that
more might soon be on the way, writing in a 9 July cable: “The possible temptation of the FAR to
take refuge in the humanitarian zone with their weapons is very worrying.”647
French defense officials were not blind to these concerns.648 What was unclear was whether
they had the means—or, for that matter, the will—to do something about it.
In a 7 July 1994 memorandum, General Lafourcade identified two goals for French forces
in the SHZ: first, to clamp down on any activity that threatened the security of people in the zone;
and, second, to prepare to hand over control of the zone to UNAMIR upon the completion of
Operation Turquoise.649 The memorandum went on to list a number of activities the Turquoise
forces would consider threatening, including the following: roadblocks preventing the free
movement of people and goods; destruction of property, herds, and crops; weapon fire on either
side of the zone’s borders; movement of armed troops; unauthorized flights over the zone; hostile
acts toward Turquoise or UNAMIR; and, finally, the introduction or circulation of weapons,
ammunition, or explosives in the zone.650 What remained vague was how, precisely, the Turquoise
forces were supposed to respond to these threats. The key provision in this regard said only that,
in the event of a violation of these terms, it would be up to Lafourcade to decide, as a matter of
discretion, whether the troops may respond with force.651
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The French government, ultimately, proved far more adept at keeping RPF troops out of
the zone than at policing the threats already within it. Chris McGreal, a reporter for the Guardian,
noted in a 7 July 1994 dispatch from Gikongoro, within the SHZ, that French troops were
continuing to dig in mortars and roll out cannons in an effort to reinforce their positions in the city,
about 10 miles from the RPF front line.652 “The French say the city is virtually impregnable if
defended properly,” McGreal reported.653 These efforts, though, presented no impediment to FAR
soldiers already in Gikongoro, who, according to McGreal, were “leaving the front in droves,
packed into lorries or marching with bands of refugees” deeper into the French-controlled zone.654
McGreal noted that French troops continued to stage rescue missions; one operation by
French special forces shortly after the establishment of the SHZ reportedly saved a family of 21
who had been hiding for two months.655 The zone, however, remained unsafe for many Rwandans,
in McGreal’s estimation.656 “Militia roadblocks remain in place, supposedly as a security measure,
but Tutsi victims are still sought,” he reported.657
Turquoise officers were disinclined to eliminate all roadblocks in the SHZ, believing, as
one situation report put it, that even “unauthorized” roadblocks could, at times, be “useful.”658
Meeting, on 8 July, with the subprefect of Kibuye, French officers recommended that they
“harmonize this system and control it,” by permitting only authorized checkpoints and placing
them in “strategic locations.”659 They suggested that the checkpoints be controlled by mayors and
gendarmes and “be entrusted to Rwandans of good moral character known for their integrity and
old enough (youths should no longer be found on the roadblocks).”660 It is not at all clear whether
the French officers considered the possibility that the mayors and gendarmes they would be
empowering to control the checkpoints were themselves génocidaires, or whether any thought was
given to who, exactly, would be rendering judgments about the checkpoint operators’ “moral
character.”
French defense officials lamented that the area under their ostensible control lacked both
“a functioning police force and a national judicial system,” describing the absence of these critical
institutions as “a significant problem.”661 But it was a problem as foreseeable in early July 1994,
when Mitterrand decided to create the SHZ, as it was a few weeks earlier, when he chose to launch
Operation Turquoise.662 Having failed to commit the resources necessary to govern and police the
SHZ,663 the French government would have to placate and collaborate with local authorities and
genocidal forces fleeing the RPF advance. Support and collaboration were baked into Mitterrand’s
plan.664 French officials knew, though, that many of the local authorities in the zone were
implicated in unspeakable crimes. As Admiral Lanxade, the chief of defense staff, would later
write in his memoir:
Little by little, a system [was] being set up, despite the extreme difficulty of
determining which local administrative structure to rely on. Most of the former
leaders were compromised in the killings. We need[ed] all our officers’ know-how
to find the right representatives as well as the right solutions.665
Lanxade did not go so far as to say that French troops did not collaborate with “compromised”
officials. Given that, as Lanxade conceded, the majority of them had blood on their hands, it is
difficult to see how French officials could have steered clear of them. Indeed, Lt. Col. James
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Babbitt, an American defense attaché who was temporarily embedded with the Turquoise troops
in Cyangugu in July 1994, said they did not. Babbitt said the French troops appeared to confer
authority on former municipal leaders, permitting them to reassume control regardless of their
likely participation in the Genocide.666
Attempts to identify reliable partners to enforce security in the SHZ proved futile. For
instance, Rwandan gendarmes could not be trusted to detain suspected génocidaires, even if
French troops delivered them directly to the Gendarmerie.667 That would have posed a problem if
the Turquoise officers had, indeed, been serious about bringing the perpetrators of the massacres
to justice. Often, though, they were not. A handwritten French sitrep recounts, for example, an
episode at the Murambi refugee camp in Gikongoro, where, on 6 July, six génocidaires tried to
pass themselves off as refugees.668 French officers, speaking with Tutsi refugees at the camp,
confirmed that the six interlopers had participated in massacres in Butare in April 1994.669 The
officers held the six of them prisoner for the night, but were conflicted about what to do with them
after that.670 “[I]f we release them, they may turn the population against us,” the sitrep stated. “If
we hand them over to the Gendarmerie, they will probably be [set] free and [the end result] will
be the same.”671
The RPF had tried to set clear expectations for French activity in the zone, explaining to
French and UN officials that its tolerance of the SHZ was subject to certain “conditions.”672 One
of those conditions, as stated in its special envoy’s 6 July 1994 letter to the Security Council
President, was that “[a]ny troops or members of the militia entering the zone[] should be promptly
disarmed.”673 Another was that “[p]erpetrators of acts of genocide and other human rights
violations living in the security zone[] should be apprehended as information of their complicity
in atrocities becomes available.”674
The French government did not fully comply with either of these terms. To be sure,
officials in the Quai d’Orsay anticipated, from the moment of the SHZ’s creation, that there would
be calls for French troops to systematically disarm the FAR and militias within the zone.675 Their
view, though, was that this was both “impossible and hardly desirable.”676 To do so, they
contended, “would in fact require more means than those we currently have at our disposal.”677
They argued, at first, that it would be enough to simply appeal to soldiers and militia members to
voluntarily surrender their arms.678 (It is hard, though, to believe that anyone at the Quai d’Orsay
actually thought an appeal to surrender weapons voluntarily would work. Indeed, Foreign Minister
Juppé would later scoff at the idea, telling an interviewer in 2018, “I do not imagine that the
génocidaires would have let themselves suddenly be disarmed by throwing down their weapons,
it would have been necessary to go find them, and stop them, and fight them.”679)
All available evidence suggests that decisionmakers in Paris never seriously entertained
any arguments to systematically disarm the FAR and militias.680 “Many are asking us to take care
of it, but it is not within our mandate, and we do not have the means,” key Mitterrand advisors
Bruno Delaye and General Quesnot wrote in a 7 July memo.681 Defense officials, including
General Lafourcade, were of the same view.682 As General Dallaire would later recount,
Lafourcade sent him a memo in early July stating
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that Turquoise was not going to disarm the militias and the [FAR] in the [SHZ]
unless they posed a threat to the people his force was protecting. As a result, the
extremists would be able to move about freely in the zone, safe from any
interference from the French, and also safe from retribution from or clashes with
the RPF.683
That armed elements, both FAR and militia, would take refuge in the safety the SHZ provided was
predictable. French politicians’ decision to erect the SHZ without the means or intention of
disarming those elements offered those responsible for the Genocide an opportunity to regroup.
To be clear, Turquoise troops did confiscate some weapons in the SHZ.684 On 7 July, for
instance, a Rwandan prefect asked Turquoise forces to do something about a group of militiamen
who had threatened residents in Gikongoro and, as General Lafourcade subsequently recounted in
an interview, had “entrenched themselves like madmen in a house.”685 Lafourcade said a team of
French special forces, equipped with night vision goggles, “showed these thugs that they knew
everything they were doing.”686 The French soldiers disarmed the group of nine.687 Incredibly, the
general noted, without any evident misgivings, that French special forces turned the men over to
the interim government’s Army.688 (Lafourcade’s explanation was the French troops knew that if
they instead handed the men over to the Gendarmerie, the men would likely be released.689)
There remains some question about what the Turquoise troops did with the weapons they
did confiscate over the course of their work in the SHZ. US and UN documents confirm that
Turquoise forces supplied at least some of these weapons to gendarmes in the SHZ.690 These
documents indicate that, after creating the SHZ, the French government established and armed an
ad hoc Gendarmerie in Cyangugu.691 A draft cable from the US embassy in Kigali in mid-August
1994, just before the end of Operation Turquoise, said embassy officials believed the arms given
to the newly deputized gendarmes were weapons French troops had previously confiscated from
FAR soldiers and militia members.692 The Kigali authorities, following the conclusion of the war
and the establishment of a national unity government in the latter half of July 1994, would later
deem these gendarmes illegitimate and would demand their disarmament.693
The US embassy’s assessment differed from the conclusion that General Dallaire’s
successor as UNAMIR force commander, General Guy Tousignant, reportedly drew following his
first visit to Cyangugu on 18 August 1994, where he spoke with departing French officers in the
waning days of Operation Turquoise.694 Tousingnant, according to the US draft cable, “said that
while the French may have confiscated weapons earlier from ex-FAR soldiers and militia
members, they have subsequently given them back.”695
As for whether Turquoise troops would arrest and detain suspected génocidaires, there
appears to have been little or no debate over this question either. The French government’s
position, officially, was that, as a general matter, the operation’s mandate did not authorize the
troops to take such measures.696 The exception to this rule, French Foreign Ministry officials
suggested in a 7 July 1994 memo, was that arrests and detentions may be permissible in cases of
“flagrants délits”—essentially only if soldiers witnessed a massacre taking place before their own
eyes.697
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Quai d’Orsay officials said France was willing to offer its assistance to “those who are
responsible” for bringing génocidaires to justice.698 That did not mean Turquoise soldiers would
help identify suspects; General Lafourcade told a UN official on 6 July 1994 they would not.699
All that French officials were promising to do was to provide information in their possession to
UNAMIR and to the newly created, but not yet operational, UN Commission of Experts,700 a body
whose charge was to collect information “with a view to providing the Secretary-General with its
conclusions on the evidence of grave violations of international humanitarian law committed in
the territory of Rwanda, including the evidence of possible acts of genocide.”701
The French government certainly had information to share. “Arrests are not our role. But
people are getting more talkative,” General Lafourcade told Le Monde in an interview published
on 9 July. “There are even people who admitted in front of us that they had killed civilians, and
some are starting to think that things are turning sour for them. It will be up to the international
commission of the UN to sort it out.”702 It was a striking thing to say, upon reflection. It meant
that French troops had, in some instances, heard Rwandans confess to killing other Rwandans, and
had simply allowed the killers to go free.
If French officials feared the repercussions of their troops making arrests, there was no
reason to believe UNAMIR would be in a better position to bring the killers to justice. If anything,
UNAMIR’s fraught relationship with the former Rwandan government would raise the level of
danger for its troops. French officials sacrificed the possibility of efficient and effective criminal
justice when Mitterrand decided to create the SHZ, the administration of which required
collaborating with genocidal forces. Further, the idea that UN authorities would make arrests at
some later date assumed, among other things, that the killers would still be in Rwanda when
UNAMIR troops were finally ready to track them down. This was wishful thinking, at best. With
every passing day, more and more Rwandans crossed the border into neighboring countries,703 and
it was no secret that génocidaires were among them.704 A 7 July 1994 US cable reported:
“[S]everal camps in the south Kivu region of Zaire serve as training bases for militias. Cases of
assassinations, torture and disappearances have been reported in these camps. At the Banako camp
in Tanzania, the refugees include individuals accused of having organized or participated in
massacres in Rwanda.”705
Years after the fact, French officials have continued to claim that their hands were tied. In
2019, Hubert Védrine, the secretary-general of the Élysée during Mitterrand’s presidency, asserted
in a television interview:
I don’t see how France at the time could have done something, because there was
no clear mandate from the Security Council. It would have been different if the
Security Council’s mandate had said that there will be both a humanitarian
operation, and also one to arrest those who we are certain were responsible for what
happened. The United Nations mandate was a humanitarian one, not a judicial
one.706
Foreign Minister Juppé echoed Védrine’s point in an interview with Laurent Larcher in
December 2018, when asked why Turquoise troops did not disarm the “killers.”707 Larcher had
just challenged Juppé’s assertion that France “did not have a policing mission.”708 If, as Juppé said,
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French troops were truly there to protect people, how could they do that without disarming and
arresting the murderers who had massacred so many of their countrymen? “No, no,” Juppé said.
“[It would be] a mission change. I’m sorry. Maybe we were wrong, I don’t know. It’s possible.
That the mission should have been more ambitious. But it’s not the same mission.”709
There is some reason to wonder whether French officials’ claims about the limitations on
Turquoise’s mandate were entirely sincere. At least one Quai d’Orsay official, its secretary
general, acknowledged behind closed doors, in a 20 July 1994 meeting with a US official in Paris,
that the mandate was not the issue.710 A US cable following the meeting reported that the secretary
general said that “France had only 1,500 troops in the safe zone and 1,000 further north, and they
were in no position to investigate or detain suspects. It wasn’t a question of lacking a mandate, but
rather of limited manpower and other priorities.”711
It bears noting, in any event, that it was France that drafted Security Council resolution
establishing Operation Turquoise’s mandate.712 Had French officials believed it necessary to
expand the mandate to empower Turquoise troops to make arrests, they could have returned to the
Council to press for its authorization. They never did.713 In fact, when American diplomats
suggested that the United States might support an effort to broaden Turquoise’s mandate to allow
French forces to arrest génocidaires, France balked, with one French Foreign Ministry official
writing that this suggestion “does not seem to us to be worth exploring.”714 The French
government’s reluctance to affirm or expand Turquoise’s authority in the zone would end up
benefitting the leaders of the Genocide, who, in mid-July, would escape to Zaire with the French
government’s assistance.
K. While Slowing the RPF Forces’ Progress, the French Government Struggled to Adequately
Care for Refugees in the SHZ and Allowed Génocidaires’ Safe Passage to Zaire.
The Turquoise intervention, it needs to be said, created more problems than
it solved.715
– Philippe Biberson, President of the French division of Médecins
sans Frontiére (1994 – 2000)
Following the RPF victories in Butare and Kigali in early July, French officials had
expected the RPF forces to continue marching west toward Gikongoro.716 Thanks to the SHZ, that
was now an impossibility. “The establishment of the safe zone in the south has slowed the RPF’s
progress,” the DGSE wrote in an 11 July 1994 memo. “Its command, wanting to avoid any clashes
with the men of Operation Turquoise, has had to adjust its strategy.”717 The new strategy surprised
no one.718 After capturing Rushashi (a community northwest of Kigali) on 10 July,719 the RPF
troops continued their northwest progression toward Ruhengeri, one of the largest of the IRG’s
last remaining holdings outside of the SHZ.720 From there, the RPF army would have a more or
less clear path to the IRG’s home base of Gisenyi.721
French officials could see that the interim government’s Army, short on both ammunition
and vehicles, was in no shape to repel the opposing forces’ advance.722 Some Rwandan Army
officers, they noted, had simply abandoned their men on the front.723 Fearing more desertions, the
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Army’s leadership ordered special protections for the Gisenyi brewery, ensuring it would continue
to produce enough beer for the rank and file.724
The French government saw worsening refugee crisis on the horizon. French officials
anticipated that many more Rwandans would join the estimated one million displaced persons
already in the SHZ.725 In Paris, French officials characterized the situation in the SHZ as a “human
disaster in the making.”726 An Élysée official complained to US diplomats on 7 July that, without
help from the rest of the international community, France was “being overwhelmed” by the hordes
of refugees streaming into the zone.727 Many among them were hungry, sick, or injured.728 The
Quai d’Orsay secretary general, in a separate meeting with US embassy officials in Paris that same
day, said “some of the scenes were so appalling that it was necessary to frequently change
personnel convoying refugees and wounded.”729
French officials acknowledged, privately, that they were not equipped to care for the
number of people they had now assumed a responsibility to protect.730 The military doctors were
overwhelmed, and more people were needed to distribute aid packages to those in need.731 French
officials never presented this as France’s failing. Always, in their accounts, it was the fault of the
international community, and particularly of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who,
in their view, were unjustifiably reluctant to cooperate with French forces in the SHZ.732
The Mitterrand administration, however, had put NGOs in a difficult situation when it
decided, despite its checkered history in Rwanda, to redeploy troops there. “NGOs cannot appear
to be at the French intervention’s service. By doing so, they would strip themselves of all
credibility in the eyes of any and all populations,” the president of one international NGO,
Médecins sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), told a French newspaper on 12 July
1994.733 MSF, he noted, had been helping people in Rwanda since the start of the Genocide, long
before the French government decided to send soldiers there.734 He said the launch of Operation
Turquoise had presented his organization with a difficult choice, given the risk that the public
might view its activities as “a backing of the French operation.”735 “The Turquoise intervention, it
needs to be said, created more problems than it solved,” he added.736
It was mid-July when French journalists, after weeks of covering Operation Turquoise,
spotted a familiar face on their televisions, during the coverage of the annual Bastille Day military
parade in Paris.737 Leading a formation of paratroopers from the 1st RPIMa was a man they had
known, and regularly quoted, as “Colonel Didier Thibaut”—the French special forces commander
who had paraded over the bridge from Bukavu to Cynagugu during Turquoise’s inaugural
operation on 23 June 1994, and who later threatened to fire on RPF troops if they dared set foot in
the SHZ. Only now, squinting at the nameplate on his chest, the reporters could see that his name
was not actually “Thibault.” It was Tauzin.738 A bit of research soon revealed that at least one other
French special forces officer they had come to know during Turquoise had used an alias as well.739
“Why play hide-and-seek with identities in the context of an operation that, according to
the government, is ‘purely humanitarian’?” the reporters wondered.740 The deception, which struck
them as “amusing in its clumsiness,”741 could be read as evidence of an attitude among some
French officers that their efforts to hold themselves out as humanitarian workers were mere
performance, not to be taken too seriously. “What politicians ask us to do changes all the time,”
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the reporters quoted one French officer as saying. “[B]esides,” the officer said, “we don’t know
how to do humanitarian work.”742
As the crisis along Rwanda’s western border deepened, French officials were forced to
reckon with the realization that they had once again committed French troops to a mission that
proved far more complicated than initially anticipated. While Prime Minister Balladur had insisted,
at first, that Operation Turquoise would conclude at the end of July 1994,743 it was evident that
UNAMIR would be nowhere near ready to take its place by then.744 With the international
community still reluctant to commit troops to the UN force, Balladur was forced to adjust his plans,
announcing at a special meeting of the UN Security Council on 11 July that France’s withdrawal
would only just begin on 31 July, and that it would be gradual.745 He pleaded for other countries
to pledge their support to “enable the strengthened UNAMIR to be deployed quickly.”746
President Mitterrand, too, admitted to having concerns about the crisis that French forces
might soon leave behind.747 As much as anything, though, the focus of his fears appears to have
been the RPF and what it would do with the power it now wielded in Kigali. “If we leave on 31
July,” he said at the G7 Summit in Naples on 10 July, “and if the United Nations is not there, we
will have a genocide in the opposite direction.”748 So profound was his distrust of the RPF that he
assumed its forces, having just spent the last three months fighting to stop a genocide against the
Tutsi, would mark their victory by launching a second genocide against Hutu.
While reconciling themselves to the emergence of a new power base in Kigali, French
Foreign Ministry officials asked their envoy to the RPF to deliver the message that the new national
unity government must include members of the MRND, President Habyarimana’s old party.749
Faustin Twagiramungu, the incoming prime minister, agreed that the new government must be
broad-based,750 but found it significant to note that the MRND had never issued any statements
denouncing the massacres against the Tutsi and had never disassociated itself from the militias
responsible for the killings.751 On 10 July, an RPF official announced that the MRND and the
extremist CDR party would be excluded from the new government, as would members of any
other parties “considered as bearing, individually, a responsibility in the massacres perpetrated
against the Tutsis.”752 This decision, the DGSE wrote the following day, “puts the ministers of the
[IRG] in a desperate situation. They thus have only two options: take flight or, despite the near
certainty of a military rout, continue fighting.”753
If IRG ministers were not already planning their escapes, they soon had a reason to start
doing so: In an 11 July press conference in Goma, General Lafourcade told journalists that if IRG
ministers flee into the SHZ, French soldiers would welcome them “as mere refugees.”754 The
general reiterated that he did not see it as Turquoise’s role to assess the culpability of Rwandans
in the protected zone—that would be a task for the UN commission, once it was up and running.755
(The ministers would hardly be the only génocidares in the zone. As a US cable noted, Defense
Minister Léotard “admitted” in a 12 July interview on French TV “that many of those responsible
for the massacres probably were in the French protected zone.”756 Léotard, the cable reported,
“emphasized that it was not up to France to punish them. The [French government] would
cooperate fully, however, with the UN and other ‘responsible authorities.’”757)
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Officials in Paris would soon contradict Lafourcade, insisting that “the fleeing Hutu
officials would not be welcome in the safe haven.”758 They suggested, though, that there was little
the French government could do to enforce this stance, as it “did not have the means to keep [IRG
officials] out.”759 It was already too late. On 13 July, RPF troops seized Ruhengeri.760 The next
morning, at 5 a.m., the IRG ordered the Hutu population in northwestern Rwanda to “leave the
country and take refuge in Zaire.”761 Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans did as they were told,
crowding the dirt road that led to Goma.762 Reporting to Paris, Lafourcade said he expected many
FAR and militiamen would do the same.763 He also reported that some IRG officials, including
President Sindikubwabo, had apparently fled south to Cyangugu, in the SHZ.764 “It is regrettable
that this sensitive situation . . . was not taken into account in time by our diplomacy,” Lafourcade
wrote in a 14 July sitrep. “I am now awaiting orders, but the Turquoise force will have one more
problem to solve.”765
French officials would confirm over the next few days that President Sindikubwabo and
several of his ministers had, in fact, absconded to Cyangugu and were attempting to reconstitute
the IRG there.766 This news, when it inevitably became public, would not look good for the French
government, which could hardly claim to be running a purely humanitarian operation while
knowingly sheltering the remnants of a genocidal regime. In New York, French diplomats insisted
they did not want the Rwandan Army or its leaders in the zone and urged the Security Council to
issue a statement “warning them off.”767 It seemed telling, though, that when one of the other
delegations to the Security Council suggested that France advise IRG officials that they could enter
the zone only as individuals—indicating, in short, that their government was at an end—the French
diplomats dismissed the idea on the ground that it “would have no practical effect.”768 “[I]t became
clear,” a New Zealand diplomat wrote in a 14 July cable, “that what [France] really wanted was
cover from the Security Council in case things started to go badly wrong.”769 What actually
troubled France, the diplomat wrote, was not the prospect of harboring a genocidal interim
government and its Army, but the possibility that RPF forces might pursue that Army into the
SHZ, “leaving France with some very difficult choices.”770
At that moment, General Lafourcade was contemplating precisely that scenario.
“Continued FAR movements, in the long term, in the SHZ could serve as a pretext for the RPF to
enter the area,” he cautioned in a 14 July memo.771 Lafourcade’s solution was to reason with the
interim government’s Army—to explain to its troops that they must “remain at their current
combat locations or in their garrisons,” as this was the only way “to guarantee the integrity of the
SHZ.”772 Lafourcade took a decidedly stricter line, by contrast, with the RPF. Should RPF forces
infiltrate the zone, he wrote, “it is a question of being vigilant and demonstrating our determination
to fulfill our mission in the SHZ. If an infiltrating RPF element is identified with certainty, it would
have to be destroyed or neutralized by possibly calling in the force’s air support.”773 (There is, to
be sure, no evidence that French officials ever contemplated using fighter jets against their former
pupils in the FAR, no matter their role in the Genocide.)
Gérard, who, as France’s liaison to the IRG, had met personally with several of its highestranking officials, argued the French government needed to do more to bring those officials to
justice.774 “[W]e know that the authorities bear significant responsibility in the Genocide,” he
wrote in a 15 July cable.775 (A few days earlier, Gérard had reported to Paris that President
Sindikubwabo was “said to have called for the total ‘elimination’ of the Tutsis during numerous
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public meetings and demanded that the Gendarmerie not obstruct the executions.”776) Gérard
concluded: “[W]e have no other choice, regardless of the challenges, but to arrest [the IRG
authorities] or to put them immediately under house arrest while waiting for the competent
international judicial bodies to rule on their case.777
His argument fell on deaf ears. Instead of directing Turquoise troops to arrest the IRG
authorities when they had the chance, Paris pressed Gérard to quietly send word to the authorities
that France would like them to leave the SHZ.778 The Quai d’Orsay advised Gérard to remain
discreet, suggesting he may “use all indirect channels and especially your African contacts” to
deliver the message “without exposing yourself directly.”779 The Quai, of course, made no mention
of these back-channel communications in its public messaging on the subject, which instead
warned that France “will not tolerate any political or military activity in the safe zone, which was
strictly humanitarian in purpose. If members of the ‘interim government’ engage in such activities,
France will take every measure to enforce respect for the applicable rules in the safe zone.”780
RPF leaders demanded that France do more. “If the French arrest them and hand them over,
there is no need for us to move in,” an RPF military spokesman said, alluding to the possibility
that RPF forces might muscle their way into the SHZ to arrest the IRG officials themselves. “But
we have a duty to follow up these criminals, a safe zone notwithstanding. It is our right to bring
the criminals to justice.”781 French authorities, having erected the SHZ as a barrier to the RPF
forces, did not take kindly to the threat. “They won’t get through, we’ll stop them,” a “military
source in Paris” told the French newspaper Libération. “We have 12 fighter bombers in the area.
We are not especially keen to fight, but we will not let these people be massacred.”782
Some French officials maintained that Turquoise troops lacked authority to arrest the IRG
authorities. This interpretation of the operation’s UN mandate (which, as previously noted, the
French government was responsible for drafting) suited officials in Paris, who showed no interest
in expanding the mandate to explicitly authorize French troops to arrest and detain criminals, and
who found it inconvenient when US diplomats suggested they might favor such an amendment.783
“We cannot [. . .] turn ourselves into police officers in our zone,” one French official reportedly
said at a crisis cell meeting at the Quai d’Orsay on 16 July. “We are not in favor of extending our
mandate to [authorize] the arrest of those responsible for the massacres.”784
The French government, it bears noting, was effectively protecting the IRG ministers at the
very moment that other western powers were turning their backs, once and for all, on the interim
government. Most prominently, on 14 July 1994, the US Department of State ordered the IRG
ambassador and his staff in Washington to shut down the Rwandan embassy there and leave the
United States.785
General Lafourcade would later say that the “problem” of the IRG officials’ presence in
the French-protected zone “solved itself” because the officials ultimately chose to flee to Zaire.786
This phrasing seems calibrated to absolve the French government of any responsibility for their
escape. The truth, though, is that the French government not only encouraged IRG officials to flee
the country, but actively facilitated their safe passage to Zaire.787 In his memoir, Lt. Col. Hogard,
the south group commander, acknowledged that he and a team of French paratroopers paid a visit
to the IRG authorities in Cyangugu on 16 July.788 “I summarized our conditions to the president
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and his minister: they had twenty-four hours to leave, them and their families,” Hogard wrote.789
To make things easy for them, Hogard reached out to a Zairean military officer “to arrange with
him the passage to Zaire.”790 The IRG officials left the next day, 17 July, but, according to Hogard,
“not without having launched over the airwaves of Radio Rwanda an appeal in Kinyarwanda to
the Hutu populations, encouraging them to flee the country en masse. This was the signal for a
truly unreal exodus!”791
The French government’s assistance enabled the IRG authorities to reestablish themselves
in exile, where they prepared their remaining forces for a return to war.792 It would be years before
any of the officials who fled the SHZ would be brought to justice—and, in fact, some never would.
President Sindikubwabo and Defense Minister Bizimana both died in exile.793 Prime Minister Jean
Kambanda was finally found, and arrested, in Kenya in July 1997, three years after the
Genocide.794 Kambanda pleaded guilty to genocide and crimes against humanity, among other
offenses, and is currently serving a life sentence.795
L. As the War Ended, French Officers Crossed the Border to Meet with Ex-FAR Leaders in
Exile and Express Their Support.
The object of these negotiations was to see how the defeated FAR could
reconstitute itself as soon as possible and reconquer the country.796
– Paul Rwarakabije, Gendarmerie Operational Commander (1994)
The IRG ministers were part of a wave of Rwandans who fled to Zaire in mid-July 1994,
as the RPF forces marched from Ruhengeri to Gisenyi.797 UN officials estimated that by midday
on 17 July, the day the RPF began shelling Gisenyi,798 the number of newly displaced Rwandans
in Zaire had topped one million.799 In Goma, refugees teemed the streets, building fires to cook
whatever they could scrounge for meals, and relieving themselves on the side of the road.800
French officials were quick to blame the exodus on the RPF, finding it sufficient to note
that displacements often preceded, or coincided with, the RPF troops’ progress on the battle
front.801 These assessments, though, overlooked the role that IRG authorities and other extremists
played in spurring, or even ordering, people to leave their homes.802 The fact is, French officials
were aware that both the IRG and its Army (now, for all intents and purposes, the former Rwandan
Armed Forces, or ex-FAR) had prodded civilians to flee to Zaire.803 One French document even
noted on 18 July that Rwandan soldiers, while making their own escapes over the border, had
threatened civilians in an attempt to “bring as many people as possible with them,” and that some
local Rwandan authorities had done likewise.804
Charles Karamba, who commanded the RPA at the CND (Centre Nationale de
Développement) during the Genocide, said the extremists’ task was made easier because of the
SHZ. “The government that was being defeated got a sense of protection from the SHZ,” Karamba
said. “It gave them time to mobilize the population to move to Zaire with them, and they did.”805
Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, head of RPA operations, said local officials loyal to the previous
Rwandan government “used to herd people away” to Zaire.806 “Not all who fled wanted to flee,”
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he explained. “To the extent it would have been risky for them to go, they would not have fled,”
were it not for the SHZ and the local Rwandan officials within it.807
The French government’s position on the causes of the exodus—its reflexive blaming of
the RPF—also tended to disregard the impact of the extremists’ relentless campaign to demonize
the RPF. For months, RTLM and Radio Rwanda had been drumming up fears that RPF forces
would mercilessly slaughter any Hutu in their path, fueling what one NGO official described as a
“psychosis.”808 A US cable on 18 July noted that RTLM “exhorts the Hutus to flee the RPF
advance, telling its listeners that the RPF will kill them if they stay in their home areas.”809 (ProIRG radio broadcasts also targeted Hutu in the SHZ, specifically, warning them that “the RPF are
arriving and France will not guarantee your safety.”810 Lt. Col. Hogard, the commander of
Turquoise’s southern group, told a reporter that those broadcasts “created a movement of
panic.”811)
The anti-RPF propaganda had served the extremists’ purpose, uniting the country’s Hutu
majority in opposition to the RPF. The evidence, though, did not back the extremists’ claims.812
UNAMIR officers, after months of observing the RPF military operation, described Commander
Kagame’s force as “remarkably disciplined,” crediting the RPF’s explanations that the misconduct
of some soldiers was generally attributable to “battle fatigue” and “stress.”813 Kagame told UN
officials the RPF had taken measures to curb such abuses—for example, court-martialing some
soldiers and, in one instance, executing a soldier who, following a trial in a military court, had
been convicted of rape.814
The French government could have blocked the incendiary radio broadcasts that were so
instrumental in rallying ordinary Rwandans to the extremists’ cause. In fact, French defense
officials contemplated doing so.815 Chiding the IRG, as Yannick Gérard had attempted to do in
early July, had not worked,816 and soon afterward, following the establishment of the SHZ, French
defense officials were increasingly concerned that the IRG might “launch appeals for rioting and
murder against Tutsis and possibly Turquoise.”817 By 11 July, the Ministry of Defense was able to
verify that it had the equipment necessary to scramble the extremist radio stations’ signals.818 “[B]e
quick,” a colonel in the Army état-major in Paris wrote that day, urging the Ministry to decide
whether to take action.819 It was, to be sure, much too late to prevent the worst of what RTLM had
wrought—the months of hate-mongering that incited listeners to hunt down and kill their Tutsi
neighbors. There was, however, still time to deny the extremists their mouthpiece at a critical
juncture, when the near certainty of a military defeat spurred them to exhort the public to flee the
country and live to fight another day. The French government never jammed the extremist
broadcasts, even after shipping the jamming equipment to the region for use by the Turquoise
forces.820 “[W]e considered it and decided not to do it,” Lanxade explained in a 2018 interview.
“Moreover, it was too late and it no longer made sense, and we didn’t have any real means at that
time.”821
As RPF forces closed in on Gisenyi, on 17 July, the ex-FAR mounted little resistance.822
“Most [ex-FAR troops] spend their days drunk, harassing refugees and looting,” a reporter for the
Guardian observed. “Sometimes soldiers shoot other looters, sometimes anyone they choose. To
refuse to hand over property is deemed sufficient reason to be killed.”823 When, on 18 July, the
RPF captured the city, Lafourcade reported to Paris that the RPF forces had managed to encircle
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the city “almost without a fight, since the FAR and the population had [already] crossed the
border.”824
The significance of the moment was seemingly unmistakable. “What is new in the situation
is that the Rwandan Patriotic Front seems to have actually won the war,” Foreign Minister Juppé
said in a 19 July interview on Europe 1.825 It was hardly a controversial concession on the foreign
minister’s part; indeed, the French military intelligence agency, the DRM, reported that same day,
“The RPF has practically become the master of the entire country, except the safe humanitarian
zone.”826 Still, Juppé’s remark irked General Lafourcade, who scribbled at the bottom of a sitrep
that evening: “Comforce did not appreciate the minister of foreign affairs’ statement evoking the
‘victory’ of the RPF.”827
Juppé had indeed used the word “victory,” but only in the course of expressing his hope
that the RPF would now demonstrate self-restraint in its moment of military triumph:
[I]f the RPF has really won, and if it is preparing to govern this country, it must
reassure the people. It will not be able to govern against 80% of the population of
Rwanda, which you know is made up of the Hutu ethnic group. And to reassure
the people, it must allow them to return home.828
RPF leaders had, in fact, been encouraging Rwandans to make their way back home (with
the lone caveat that those who had committed atrocities would not be welcome).829 Already, in
Kigali and other RPF-controlled areas, displaced people were returning home, while refugee
camps in the area were beginning to empty out.830 Meanwhile, on 19 July, a crowd that included
UN officials and several foreign dignitaries gathered at the CND complex in Kigali to watch the
swearing in of Rwanda’s new president, Pasteur Bizimungu, along with other leaders of the
national unity government: Kagame as Vice President, Faustin Twagiramungu as prime minister,
and Alexis Kanyarengwe as deputy prime minister.831 Soon afterward, the RPF announced a
unilateral cease-fire.832
The interim government’s Army was broken, but not yet finished. Though its soldiers, by
and large, had slunk off to Zaire, many took their weapons with them.833 A French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs memo reported on 19 July that roughly 10,000 ex-FAR soldiers had escaped to
Zaire with their arms.834 In Goma, the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported, “Both [Rwandan]
Presidential Guard and FAR troops have intermingled with the refugees. These forces possess
automatic weapons, grenades and hand-held [a]nti-tank rocket launchers.”835 Paul Rwarakabije, a
high-ranking ex-FAR officer at the time, said the ex-FAR used civilian trucks to sneak some of
these weapons past the Zairean troops standing guard at the border.836 In some cases, though, no
deception was necessary. While, according to US defense officials in Kinshasa, the Zairean forces
did disarm most of the ex-FAR soldiers they encountered, it seemed “that some quantities of arms
[were] still getting through . . . as the Zairean soldiers appear[ed] more content with shake-downs
and personal gain, versus the task at hand.”837
French journalist Patrick de Saint Exupéry reported in 2017 that he had learned of the
existence of a document, stashed in the Élysée archives, indicating that Turquoise officers received
an order at some point in July 1994 to rearm génocidaires in Zaire.838 The date of the order is
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unknown, since it was only described to Saint Exupéry by an unnamed “high-ranking official”
reportedly tasked with reviewing secret files in the wake of French President François Hollande’s
2014 pledge to release them—the official advised against making the files public, and Hollande’s
pledge went unfulfilled.839 However, Saint Exupéry’s article said the weapons were destined for
Hutu who “were crossing the border,” which suggests a date in late July.840 According to Saint
Exupéry, Turquoise soldiers objected to the order, but Hubert Védrine, Mitterrand’s advisor, wrote
in the margin of a document noting one of these objections that the forces should “stick to the fixed
directives, [and] therefore to rearm the Hutu.”841
While Védrine has denied the story (as Saint Exupéry predicted in his article),842 Captain
Guillaume Ancel, an outspoken veteran of Operation Turquoise, has also reported that France
secretly funneled weapons to the ex-FAR troops in Zaire.843 In his 2018 memoir, Ancel recounted
a day in late July 1994 when a superior asked him to distract a group of reporters who had stayed
on base longer than anticipated.844 Ancel held an impromptu press conference, fielding reporters’
questions to divert their attention away from a convoy of trucks leaving the base with confiscated
weapons to be delivered to ex-FAR in Zaire.845 That evening, during a debrief with a dozen
officers, Ancel raised the arms convoy with the head of the Turquoise detachment in Cyangugu,
Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Hogard. Hogard explained that France was delivering weapons to the
ex-FAR in Zaire as a “gesture[] of concilliation,” hoping it would ease their frustrations “and also
prevent them from turning against us.”846 The Turquoise force, the lieutenant colonel said, was too
small to defend itself both from the RPF on one side and the ex-FAR on the other.847
Ancel said he found this logic “indefensible”:
How to buy that delivering weapons to these soldiers, we improve our own
security? I remind them that we did not really have any doubts about the
involvement of the FAR in large-scale massacres that none of us was yet calling
genocide. But the lieutenant colonel stopped the debate there, even if he seemed
unsettled by this situation.848
As with Védrine denying Saint Exupéry’s reporting, Lt. Col. Hogard has vehemently
denied Ancel’s account.849 However, Lt. Col. Babbitt, the American defense attaché temporarily
embedded with French troops in Cyangugu, recently recalled events quite similar to those
recounted by Ancel.850 Babbitt recalled seeing six to eight shipping containers (which he described
as “Conex boxes”) filled with confiscated small arms. 851 While French soldiers took great pains
to inventory the weapons (he even helped copy serial numbers himself), Babbitt said he eventually
saw the arms being loaded onto trucks and hauled away.852
Babbit recalls reporting the arms movements to Lt. Col. Jean-Luc Nash, a fellow US
military attaché embedded in the French base in Goma, and requested that Nash relay the
information to the State Department desk officer in Washington, DC.853 Babbit placed the date as
one day after French Foreign Minister Leotard’s visit to Cyangugu on 31 July, a timing consistent
with Ancel’s account.854 Without access to an encrypted means of communication, Babbit spoke
on an open line.855 Apparently French officers listened in on his conversation, because that evening
a senior French official in Cyangugu accused him of spying and presented him with what he
described as a “PNG” (persona non grata) order, demanding that he leave Rwanda immediately.856
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The next morning, Babbit left Cyangugu for Goma, where the French command ordered that he
never return.857
Another US military attaché, Thomas Odom, received Babbit in Goma. Odom discussed
the incident in a 2005 book, confirming that Babbit had indeed been accused of spying and
dismissed from Rwanda.858 According to Odom, Babbit handed Odom the PNG order, which
Odom described as “a remarkable left-handed defense against sending the American out,”
continuing, “The author went into great detail about how intrusive and arrogant their American
guest had been around French headquarters. He stated that it was his inept social skills that had led
several French officers to conclude he was there to spy.”859 Consistent with Babbit’s account,
however, Odom offered another possible explanation for Babbit’s expulsion: “Once the French
pulled out and U.N. soldiers entered the area, it became clear the French had allowed the former
military and the Interahamwe to continue the genocide in the zone. [Babbit] may have been
exposed to evidence of French complicity whether he knew it or not.”860 Odom also identified the
author of the PNG order as Lt. Col. Jacques Hogard, the same commander who Ancel alleged had
overseen and rationalized the rearming of génocidaires.861
Babbit’s account differed from Ancel’s in one important respect: Babbit’s suspicion was
that the Turquoise troops redistributed arms in the SHZ, whereas Ancel said the weapons were
bound for forces just across the border in Zaire.862 Babbit recalled reporting to his American
colleague in Goma that French forces were re-arming a limited number of Rwandan gendarmes
and former political leaders, some of whom were responsible for genocidal massacres.863 As noted
above, documents confirm that the French government supplied some of the arms confiscated in
the SHZ to a gendarme force charged with patrolling the zone.864
Babbit, Ancel, and Saint Exupéry’s accounts raise questions that remain unanswered.
Amongst the documents requested from the French government during this investigation were
those “regarding alleged French orders to rearm FAR combatants and génocidaires in 1994.”865
The French government did not respond to this request.
Paul Rwarakabije, who was among the ex-FAR officers in Zaire after the RPF takeover of
Gisenyi, was not aware of the French government providing weapons or ammunition to the exFAR while its troops were in exile (although he suggested that this would have been the province
of intelligence officers, which he was not),866 but confirmed that communications between French
and ex-FAR officers continued after exodus to Zaire.867 He recalled that General Augustin
Bizimungu, who had quickly become the leader of the reconstituted ex-FAR in Zaire, met with
French officers several times in late July 1994, both in Goma and in Keshero, a town outside Goma
and close to the Mugunga refugee camp where Rwarakabije said he lived along with many of the
regrouping ex-FAR soldiers.868 Although Rwarakabije did not attend the meetings, he recognized
one French officer who met with Bizimungu in Keshero: Colonel Gilbert Canovas, the former
advisor to the Rwandan Army’s état-major who, since the launch of Operation Turquoise, had
headed the operation’s liaison detachments.869 “The object of these negotiations was to see how
the defeated FAR could reconstitute itself as soon as possible and reconquer the country,”
Rwarakabije told the Mucyo Commission,870 a process on which Lafourcade also provided advice,
according to Rwarakabije.871
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Evariste Murenzi, who was serving with Rwarakabije among the ex-FAR as a battalion
commander, also recalled French officers coming to Keshero for meetings with ex-FAR leaders.872
He, too, recalled seeing Canovas arrive for a meeting with Bizimungu.873 He also recalled a visit
from Commander Grégoire de Saint Quentin,874 who served under Canovas in the liaison
detachments and had previously worked as a technical advisor to the commander of the FAR’s
para-commando battalion before the Genocide.875 Though Murenzi did not attend the meeting with
de Saint Quentin, he was told that the French officers in attendance said they were not happy about
the IRG’s defeat and offered their condolences.876 According to Murenzi, de Saint Quentin, who
had led the MAM assistance to Rwandan para-commandos, said he never expected the FAR to
lose.877
According to both Rwarakabije and Murenzi, the ex-FAR did not pause to lick its wounds.
As soon as its troops arrived in Zaire, the ex-FAR pursued what it called “Operation
Insecticide.”878 The operation’s goals, Murenzi said, were to infiltrate Rwanda, destroy
infrastructure (such as electrical cables and bridges), and “kill people.”879 Operation Insecticide,
Murenzi confirmed, could be traced back to training delivered in May or June 1994 at Camp
Bigogwe—which has been linked to Paul Barril (see discussion Chapter 9). The operation would
continue for years under the rebel groups that, eventually, Rwarakabije and Murenzi would both
help command.880
It was not hard to discern the ex-FAR’s intentions at the time. “The flow of weapons now
circulating throughout Kivu [the region west of Lake Kivu] will equip the Hutu extremist militias
of Zaire and Burundi that are ready to continue the fight against the Tutsi” the DGSE wrote on 19
July.881 According to a French military intelligence report, issued that same day, the Zairean Army
planned to help the ex-FAR regroup in Rutshuru, a town about 40 miles northeast of Goma.882
There, the ex-FAR could rebuild its strength, readying itself to do what the RPF forces had done
four years earlier. “It took the RPF four years to come back with 200,000 people,” a Radio Rwanda
broadcaster reportedly said, just after the ex-FAR’s withdrawal to Zaire. “We’ll take a month with
5 million.”883
M. When French Officials Withdrew French Forces from Rwanda, They Proclaimed Operation
Turquoise a Success Despite the Humanitarian Crisis Enveloping the Region.
Today, we can say that Operation “Turquoise” has succeeded.884
– Edouard Balladur, Prime Minister of France (1993 – 1995)
General Tousignant [the new UNAMIR commander] believes the departure
of the French from the southwest is in the best interests of Rwanda.885
–Cable from US Embassy in Kigali to US Secretary of State
“The war is over in Rwanda, as the Rwandan Patriotic Front says,” the French newspaper
Les Echos observed in a 20 July 1994 editorial, “but the humanitarian disaster is only starting.”886
In the area around Goma, where as many as 1.2 million refugees crowded in unsanitary conditions
and with limited access to clean water, a cholera outbreak was claiming hundreds of lives per
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day.887 French media reported that the disease was spreading at a “frightening” speed, prompting
one international NGO president to fret, “It could be the largest epidemic of modern times. Our
efforts are doomed to fail.”888 By 22 July, “the road from the Goma airport to nearby refugee
camps” was reportedly “littered with corpses wrapped in blankets or matting.”889 French troops,
who, along with aid workers from the Catholic relief organization Caritas, took on the burden of
burying the dead, were said to have been “transformed from soldiers into grave-diggers.”890
Lafourcade, recognizing that the NGOs in Goma were “completely overwhelmed” by the
rapidly expanding humanitarian disaster, accepted that the Turquoise forces were “necessarily
involved in this tragedy,” and acceded to the NGOs’ requests for emergency assistance.891 With
more than half of his troops, though, committed to stabilizing the SHZ,892 it seemed that all he had
to offer was the services of the 700 logistical support troops working out of the Turquoise base in
Goma.893 “Most of them had never been in combat, never been confronted with death,” he wrote
in his memoir.894 Lafourcade knew that their assistance would not be enough. As he wrote in a 20
July situation report:
[A]ll this is insufficient, and we will be confronted in the near future with an
apocalyptic situation: thousands of deaths, in the streets, along roads, in refugee
camps, epidemics including cholera, serious disorders because of lack of food and
drink. I fear that the Turquoise force will bear the impact of the effects. But I don’t
see what more we can do than what we’re already doing with the means we have
on site.895
The outbreak was just one more emergency in a series of crises unfolding on both sides of
the Rwandan-Zairean border, including in the SHZ. In Paris, French officials told a visiting US
envoy on 20 July that there was an “overwhelming need” for food in the French-controlled zone,
as France was able to feed only half of the estimated 1.2 million refugees there.896 Security, too,
remained a pressing issue. In Cyangugu, interim government Army deserters could be found
roaming the streets, intimidating people and looting property.897 A French intelligence report
noted, similarly, that a gang of about 12 gendarmes in Gikongoro “continues to terrorize the
population.”898
This, in brief, was the state of affairs Turquoise troops were confronting when, on 20 July
1994, Prime Minister Balladur stood before the Council of Ministers in Paris and declared, “Today,
we can say that Operation Turquoise has succeeded.”899 Balladur reflected on the “skepticism,
indeed hostility” that had greeted France in mid-June 1994, when its leaders decided to launch the
operation.900 That decision, he said, had been made in response to an “already very serious
humanitarian situation in [a] French-speaking African state.”901 Now, one crisis had evolved into
another. Balladur, however, asserted the time had come to prepare for France’s exit. “It is now
necessary that the withdrawal of our forces happen in good circumstances,” he said, “that is to say
in such a way that disturbances do not follow our departure and that France thus preserves the
moral and political capital which the success of Operation Turquoise has earned it.”902
Whether or not the people in the SHZ would be safe following France’s departure was, to
some extent, up to the UN, which at that moment was still trying to coax member countries to
supply the troops needed to reach its target of 5,500 troops by the time of France’s scheduled
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withdrawal on 21 August 1994—a goal the UN was highly unlikely to reach.903 It was also, in
Balladur’s view, and in Foreign Minister Juppe’s, up to the new government in Kigali.904 “[F]irst
and foremost,” Juppé said at the Council of Ministers meeting, “it’s a matter of pointing out clearly
its responsibilities to the new government and of obtaining guarantees from it for the moment
when our troops will withdraw so as to guarantee people’s safety and so refugees can return
home.”905 Juppé, accordingly, announced that the Quai d’Orsay would immediately dispatch
delegations both to the UN headquarters in New York and to Kigali.906
Upon arriving in the Rwandan capital, the French Foreign Ministry’s secretary general,
accompanied by Admiral Lanxade’s deputy, General Germanos, spoke with Prime Minister
Twagiramungu in a 21 July meeting that Germanos found “constructive.”907 Twagiramungu
assured his French guests that the Kigali government would respect France’s right to continue its
operation in the SHZ.908 He also offered a “formal assurance that there will be no reprisals against
the Hutu populations,” and that the government would support international efforts to bring the
perpetrators of the Genocide to justice.909 The Quai d’Orsay secretary general, briefing Balladur
at Matignon the next morning, admitted he was skeptical of this last claim, believing the RPF
authorities would prefer to deliver justice on their own terms (with violence, presumably).910
Twagiramungu, in turn, wished to make a request of the French government: the Rwandan
government, he said, would like to send ministers to the SHZ to address the public, and was hoping
the French government would agree to ensure the Rwandan ministers’ security.911 Hearing about
this at Matignon the next morning, Balladur and Juppé balked.912 While acknowledging that France
could not “oppose” the government’s request to address its own citizens, they suggested they
would prefer to leave it to the United Nations to guarantee the ministers’ protection.913
The Kigali authorities recognized that one of their most pressing challenges now was to
persuade Rwandans, regardless of ethnicity, that it was safe to return home. The radio offered one
means of relaying this message to the public,914 but the authorities did not content themselves with
electronic communications alone. French military officials soon took note of small groups of RPF
members making “shallow infiltrations” into the SHZ to meet with locals.915 “These incursions,”
the DRM noted, “do not seem to have as their aim the harassment of the Turquoise forces, but are
part of a propaganda campaign . . . to encourage [locals] to return to their homes.”916 The effort
appeared to bear fruit.917 French defense officials would report in the days that followed that large
numbers of displaced people in the western regions of Kibuye and Musange had started to flow
back into the “RPF zone” (the term French officials were still using to refer to the approximately
80 percent of Rwandan territory outside of the SHZ).918
Rwanda, plainly, had entered a new phase. “[T]he problem is no longer military but only
humanitarian and political,” Delaye and Quesnot, the French president’s primary advisors on
Rwanda issues, wrote in a 22 July note to Mitterrand.919 Just across the border, in Goma, 500
people were dying each day, and with cholera cases spreading wildly, that figure was expected to
jump to 2,000 per day.920 The crisis had captured the world’s attention, spurring a number of
countries and international organizations that had sat on their hands during the Genocide to
announce aid packages for the refugees.921 The United States, in particular, soon seized a
leadership role, with the White House announcing on 22 July that President Clinton had ordered
an “immediate and massive increase” in US assistance to the refugees.922 Juppé, in his comments
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at Matignon on 22 July, said he expected the Americans would “try to take our place in Goma and
ask us to stay in the SHZ.”923
Since the launch of Operation Turquoise, French officials had often made a show of
lamenting the rest of the world’s seeming indifference to the plight of the Rwandan people.924
Early on in the operation, they had noted a positive trend in the international perception of the
operation, when journalists in France and around the globe wrote of the rapturous greeting Hutu
villagers extended to the French troops upon their arrival in Rwanda in late June 1994.925 Now,
the number of journalists in the region was ballooning again,926 but their attention, by and large,
was fixed on Goma. This media attention frustrated French defense officials, who called it
“regrettable . . . that the situation in the SHZ is fading into the background.”927
Ever obsessed with its media coverage, the French Ministry of Defense remained attentive
to how Turquoise was being portrayed in the press.928 (One senior French officer, Lt. Col. Hogard,
would later note in his end-of-mission report that press relations took up “a non-negligible part”
of his time as commander of Turquoise’s southern group, responsible for securing a large portion
of the SHZ.929 With tactful understatement, he suggested that, in retrospect, it might have been
helpful—“in a context where military problems, political problems, human problems, [and]
administrative problems come one after the other”—if the Ministry had sent a public affairs
specialist “so that the sector commander [could] devote all the necessary time to substantive
problems.”930) A Ministry memo on 22 July called for a media strategy that would “focus on the
humanitarian aspect of our efforts” and “highlight the usefulness of the SHZ.”931 A directive that
same day from Admiral Lanxade to the Turquoise commanders in Goma urged them to take note
of Defense Minister Léotard’s recent op-ed in the French newspaper Libération, which asserted
that French forces would leave Rwanda with their “head[s] held high.”932 An effort, Lanxade said,
would have to be made to shape the narrative concerning Turquoise’s eventual withdrawal, “so
that France is not accused of leaving a humanitarian situation that is unquestionably different, but
more disastrous than upon its arrival.”933
Having raced back into Rwanda, in June, in response to humiliating press coverage in the
first place, France was now preparing to leave altogether, in the face of a crisis that was claiming
thousands of Rwandan lives each day. While declaring itself the savior of Rwandans, the French
government had not prevented the crisis on the Rwandan-Zairean border, and it was not equipped
to respond to it, belying the humanitarian purpose of Turquoise’s mission. “On the humanitarian
level, . . . the Turquoise presence is not designed to cope with the massive influx of refugees, both
in [the] SHZ and in Zairian territory,” a French Ministry of Defense document assessed on 26 July
1994.934 The resulting situation—which the document blamed not on Turquoise, but on “the
reaction time of international organizations and NGOs”—was, by the Ministry’s own admission,
nothing short of “catastrophic.”935
In the meantime, Delaye and Quesnot were pleased to note that the tenor of the press
coverage had changed since the war ended, and the refugee crisis exploded. “The scale of the
tragedy provoked by the continued RPF offensive toward Gisenyi, after France warned the
international community in vain, silenced the critics of our intervention,” they wrote in a 27 July
note to President Mitterrand.936 It was a dubious interpretation—the press had not suddenly come
around to the French government’s view that the RPF was responsible for the crises gripping the
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region, and that France had been right to try and stop it. Delaye and Quesnot, though, had spun the
wreckage on Turquoise’s doorstep as vindication.
French officials took what a New York Times reporter, on 26 July, referred to as
“undisguised satisfaction from the fact that both the United Nations and the United States ha[d]
appealed to Paris not to pull out its troops until they are replaced by United Nations soldiers.”937
Balladur, who was embarking on a three-day trip to Africa at the end of the month, maintained, in
spite of these pleas, that Operation Turquoise would end on 21 August, in strict compliance with
its UN mandate.938 In Côte d’Ivoire, on 29 July, the prime minister announced that the French
withdrawal was already beginning, with the first 180 troops due to return to France that night,
followed by another 120 or so before the end of July.939
The French special forces troops led by Colonel Rosier were among the first to depart.940
In his end of mission report, Rosier credited his detachment with halting an exodus of refugees in
Gikongoro, at the eastern edge of the SHZ.941 More than one million refugees remained in that
area, but could yet take flight, he noted, if the food and medical care they needed failed to
materialize.942 It was a precarious situation, but one that Rosier apparently felt would be better
addressed by others. “The transfer is now strictly humanitarian. It’s outside our skillset,” he
wrote.943
While in Côte d’Ivoire, Balladur said the French forces in the SHZ would, over time, be
replaced by Turquoise’s African troops, who, upon France’s departure, would be placed under UN
authority.944 Were that to happen, he said, some French soldiers could stay behind, on the Zairean
side of the border, to provide logistical support.945
Balladur concluded his African tour with a brief stop in Goma on 31 July—a late-breaking
addition to his itinerary.946 With no more than a few hours to spare before his return flight to
France, the prime minister had just enough time to visit two hospitals in the SHZ.947 Prime Minister
Twagiramungu complained, afterward, that Balladur had failed to consult the Kigali authorities
before his visit. “Had he done it, he would have been welcome,” Twagiramungu said.948 Instead,
Twagiramungu said, [h]is visit to the security zone is a message to the whole world to say that
France occupies part of our territory.”949 Even more aggravating, from President Pasteur
Bizimungu’s perspective, was that the French government was continuing to refuse to facilitate
the Kigali government’s request to send ministers to the SHZ to encourage displaced people to
return home.950 He responded with a warning. “If by August 22 they don’t let our civil servants in
there, then the French will have violated our sovereignty,” Bizimungu declared to reporters on 2
August. “If to regain our sovereignty means going to war, we will have to go to war.”951
The French government, from the Kigali authorities’ perspective, had spent the last four
years blocking the RPF’s efforts to unify the country under new leadership. Even now, as the new
Rwandan government confronted the challenge of restoring peace and security to the nation, the
French government was impeding its progress by trying to bar the new Rwandan government from
gaining access to a vast swath of Rwandan territory and the people living on it. The authorities left
no doubt that they were ready to see France go,952 and, as General Lafourcade noted in a 4 August
situation report, they let Turquoise officers know it; the situation report said Vice President
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Kagame’s staff advised the liaison detachment that French soldiers must leave the country by 22
August.953 “Otherwise, there would be problems (threats thinly veiled),” the report recounted.954
The French government had not, to this point, put in the work to mend relations with the
new leaders of Rwanda. The Élysée’s hostility toward the RPF was now aimed at the new
government. “Do we have any interest in establishing an ongoing, special relationship with this
new regime, whose true face even its staunchest supporters are beginning to see?” Quesnot and
Pin wrote in a 2 August memo to Mitterrand. “In the short term, we have nothing to ask of this
government, which is keen to see us leave Rwanda in circumstances that reflect the least positively
on us.”955 Even if it were possible, later down the line, to thaw relations between the two
governments, Mitterrand’s advisors had difficulty seeing the value in a rapprochement. They
remained mired in the same ethnicist tropes that had guided their failed policy for the prior three
and a half years:
In the medium term, if [the RPF] does not find a way to work with the Hutu
majority, it will be drawn to a dictatorship relying on a Tutsi minority group
stretching from Uganda to Burundi. The instability of the Great Lakes region will
be guaranteed for many years. Here again, it seems it is urgent to wait and judge
this new government on the basis of the evidence.956
The Quai d’Orsay was decidedly more pragmatic. “Generally speaking, it is essential to
make the political gestures toward the Kigali authorities that will allow us to optimize the
withdrawal of French Turquoise forces from the safe humanitarian zone,” a Quai d’Orsay official
wrote in a memo a few days later. “It should not be possible to hold against us the fact that we did
not do everything possible to ensure that this withdrawal take place in the best possible
circumstances.”957
Mitterrand’s advisors seemed irritated by the news, a few days later, that Balladur had
decided on his own to send an envoy to Kigali to “discuss the circumstances” of Turquoise’s
withdrawal.958 The president’s staff sent word to the prime minister on 5 August that Mitterrand
did not agree with Balladur’s initiative.959 The decision, though, was made. The next day, France’s
ambassador to Uganda met in Kigali with President Bizimungu and Rwanda’s new foreign
minister to discuss the waning days of Operation Turquoise and the future of Franco-Rwandan
diplomatic relations.960 There, Bizimungu consented to the Quai d’Orsay’s proposal to send
diplomats to Rwanda to liaise with his government and to explore the possibility of reopening the
French embassy in Kigali.961
President Pasteur Bizimungu and the Rwandan foreign minister used the occasion of the 6
August meeting with the French ambassador to voice, again, their frustration with France for
“denying them access to the SHZ.”962 The Quai d’Orsay, hoping to put the issue to rest, decided
in response to direct France’s permanent representative in New York to send a letter to the UN
Security Council president affirming “that the Rwandan Government’s authority extends
throughout Rwanda, including the safe humanitarian zone.”963 Briefing Mitterrand about the Quai
d’Orsay’s decision, Quesnot and Pin said the letter would explain—with some disingenuousness—
“that the authorities have, of course and as we have always said, free access to the SHZ.”964 The
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French government would not, however, budge in its insistence that Kigali officials should look
to UNAMIR, not Turquoise, to ensure their personal protection in the SHZ.965
The populations in the Zairean refugee camps continued to thin over the course of the first
week of August 1994, as refugees trekked back home to Rwanda.966 Observers, though, noticed
the rate was beginning to slow,967 despite the Kigali authorities’ efforts to persuade people to come
back.968 The refugee population in the SHZ was declining as well, but slowly. Some refugees in
the zone—between 300 and 400 per day, according to General Lafourcade—were choosing not to
go home, but to try their luck among the refugees in Zaire.969
The Turquoise commanders’ read on the situation was that many of the refugees in the
SHZ were hesitant to leave the protection France was providing, with rumors circulating about
violence in the east.970 In Kibuye, local officials and residents aired their concerns in a meeting in
early August with Colonel Patrice Sartre, the commander of Turquoise’s north group, discussing
with him the rumors they had heard of violent reprisals against Hutus outside of the zone.971 Sartre,
a reporter wrote, “stressed there was no evidence of ‘systematic massacres’ and denounced ‘often
false, sometimes true but rarely verified’ rumours put about by Hutu hardliners to dissuade
refugees from returning home.”972 When asked whether refugees should leave the SHZ, he advised
“intellectuals and members of the former administration” to stay put in Kibuye, but suggested
“peasants and the ordinary people” had little to fear.973
General Lafourcade worried that the refugees in the zone were growing anxious as
Turquoise’s departure date approached.974 What concerned him was not just what the refugees
might do—i.e., stage another mass exodus to Zaire, which could only worsen the humanitarian
crisis there—but when they would do it. “We must . . . prevent this exodus from occurring while
we are still in charge of part of the SHZ,” he wrote in a 9 August situation report. “The image of
columns of refugees heading for Zaire and crossing the French presence in Cyangugu would be a
disaster.”975 A disaster, that is, for France.
There was no chance that UNAMIR would achieve its target of 5,500 troops before 21
August. The French government could, however, push for available UNAMIR troops to gradually
move into the SHZ, specifically, to take the place of the departing French soldiers. Lafourcade’s
plan was to hand operational control of the Gikongoro area over to UN troops from Ghana by 17
August.976 If, as it turned out, the handoff spurred large numbers of Rwandans to flee westward,
the remaining Turquoise troops would have to find a way to stop them in Cyangugu before they
reached the Zairean border.977 The margin for error, though, was exceedingly thin.978 Indeed, all it
would take for the plan to fall apart was for Ethiopia, which had promised to contribute troops to
UNAMIR, to fail to dispatch those troops quickly enough for them to take Turquoise’s place in
Cyangugu as the French troops moved out of the SHZ.979
In committing to this course of action, French officials either assumed the Hutu in the SHZ
would welcome the presence of UNAMIR troops, or simply disregarded the possibility that they
might not. French officials knew, though, that the IRG and its mouthpieces—primarily RTLM—
had poisoned public sentiment against UNAMIR, insisting for months that General Dallaire and
his troops were secretly in league with the RPF.980 “We have no confidence in UNAMIR,” one
worker for the Rwandan Red Cross told the New York Times.981
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As days passed, the much-feared second Hutu exodus to Zaire began to seem more and
more likely. On 13 August, a US cable reported that 5,000 people had crossed the border from the
SHZ to Bukavu in a span of just 24 hours.982 “This movement could eclipse the crisis in Goma,”
the cable warned.983 A Los Angeles Times reporter found that in Cyangugu, a city under French
protection, fleeing Hutus were “pillaging everything that can be carried—doors, beams, toilet
seats, pipes, electric wire, their neighbors’ laundry, stray chickens.”984 US officials were not only
worried the outflow might overwhelm aid workers in Zaire, but feared a recurrence of ethnic
violence as the Hutus, on their way to Bukavu, filed past the Nyarushishi refugee camp, where
Turquoise forces were ostensibly protecting an estimated 10,000 Tutsi refugees.985 “Reports have
indicated the presence of 15-20 French troops around the Tutsi camp. Their numbers are not
enough to prevent a significant disaster from occurring,” the 13 August US cable reported.986
Colonel Sartre, the Turquoise north group commander, continued meeting with locals in
the SHZ, attempting to dissuade them from fleeing to Zaire (if not necessarily to return to their
homes in parts of Rwanda outside of the SHZ, as the Kigali authorities would have liked).987
“There are more people being murdered in Bukavu by the Zairian soldiers, the old Rwandan Army
and the militia than in the humanitarian zone,” he told a group of 200 refugees on 12 August.988 A
reporter noted: “His words brought gasps of shock from the anxious crowd, who thought they had
more to fear from Front soldiers only a few miles away.”989
If Hutu in the SHZ were laboring under misimpressions about the dangers in their midst,
their confusion had not come about by accident. According to a handwritten note on a draft US
cable, dated 19 August 1994, France had, earlier that week, allowed former Rwandan ministers
“to hold three rallies in Cyangugu urging people to flee.”990 Press, meanwhile, reported that former
IRG officials and their supporters had been gathering villagers in secret to spread anti-RPF
propaganda, telling them that “when the French leave the Front soldiers will move in and massacre
them.”991 A Red Cross worker said former IRG officials were sending buses to the zone to pick up
frightened Hutu and bring them to Zaire.992 One local official in the SHZ told a reporter that
supporters of the IRG were actively “forcing people to leave” the zone.993
The new government could see what it was up against when, on 14 August, a UN helicopter
flew three of its ministers to Kibuye, located at the northern part of the SHZ, to address a crowd
of about 2,000 people at the local soccer stadium.994 The ministers stressed that the new
administration in Kigali was not an RPF Government, but a National Unity Government,” and that
it welcomed people of all ethnicities to work with it to rebuild the country.995 However, when the
crowd laughed, the new interior minister, Seth Sendashonga, at one point attempted to reassure
the attendees that the Kigali authorities were “not vengeful.”996 “People just don’t believe him,”
the mayor of Kibuye said.997
The French government had an “informant” at the event who took note one particular
exchange between Sendashonga and a questioner who pressed him about the new Rwandan
government’s attitude toward France: was it true that the government opposed France, and that it
had only reluctantly agreed to allow French-speaking African troops to participate in UNAMIR?998
A fax from the head of Turquoise, General Lafourcade, reported:
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the Minister replied that all of this was true, that the government was against [it],
because the French were in Rwanda, they had witnessed the preparation of the
massacres, [and] they had fled only to come back after the massacres. He added
that he suspected us [France] of having come with other intentions that the
establishment of an SHZ had been a way of stopping the RPF and depriving them
of a total military victory.999
From Paris’s perspective, the upside to public recriminations such as these was that they
gave the French government a convenient excuse for withdrawing its forces while a humanitarian
crisis still raged, and while UNAMIR was still cobbling together the resources it needed to
adequately respond to it. French officials could, and did, suggest they might have been inclined to
keep their forces in Rwanda, if only the new government had not been so opposed to them.1000
That was not true, though. Some French officials—Prime Minister Balladur, in particular—had
insisted from the beginning that Turquoise ought to be a time-limited operation.1001 And to the
extent that other French decision-makers might at one point have been more receptive to extending
Turquoise’s mandate, it would seem that the RPF’s victory in mid-July 1994 had drained some, if
not all, of their remaining enthusiasm for the operation—as the French chargé d’affaires in New
York had made clear on 18 July, the day Gisenyi fell, when he privately acknowledged to other
diplomats that “the French were now very keen to get out of Rwanda as quickly as possible.”1002
The argument for even trying to extend Turquoise’s mandate lost much of its force when a
first contingent of Ethiopian peacekeepers arrived in Rwanda on 15 August, ensuring there would
be at least some UN boots in the ground to take France’s place in Cyangugu.1003 Pressed, one last
time, by the UN Secretary-General’s special representative in Rwanda to drop his objection to
France’s continued presence in his country, President Pasteur Bizimungu held firm.1004 “The
president told the [special representative] that he knew the UNAMIR forces would not be ‘100
percent’ by the 21 August changeover date, but that at least the UN is a positive force for Rwanda,
while the French continue to be a negative influence on stability and security in Rwanda,” a US
cable reported after the 16 August 1994 meeting.1005
French officials, in the face of such disparagements, have long argued that France deserves
credit for the simple fact that it did something. “Other countries did nothing,” Édouard Balladur
told the MIP in 1998, a few years after his tenure as prime minister had concluded.1006 The criticism
of the international community’s complacency is fair. To acknowledge, though, that the Rwandan
people, in 1994, were crying out for the world’s help is not to say that Operation Turquoise was
the answer to their cries.
A commonly cited criticism of Turquoise is that it came too late to save many Tutsi.1007
This is true. It is not, however, the sum total of the operation’s faults. The most critical of all of
Turquoise’s defects is that France—the Habyarimana regime’s most loyal ally, and the FAR’s
most generous benefactor—was the one to spearhead it. The French government, from October
1990 through the Genocide, had not remained neutral, but rather had engaged in Rwanda as cobelligerents, supporting the FAR and opposing the RPF. The French government used Operation
Turquoise as a French-led rescue mission that doubled as a concerted effort to prevent the RPF
from overthrowing Rwanda’s interim government. While the operation, ultimately, did not keep
the RPF from achieving its military and political aims, it did embolden the génocidaires, who
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22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
found refuge in the French-controlled areas and, with French assistance, were able to abscond to
Zaire, where they began plotting to avenge their defeat. Turquoise, according to General Daniel
Schroeder, who was in charge of the US humanitarian operation in Zaire that commenced on 22
July 1994, was “a sham.”1008 “It was,” Schroeder continued, “an attempt, under the guise of a
humanitarian role, to keep the French clients supplied and protected. The French protected
génocidaires and the leadership in the country who were responsible for the Genocide, and helped
get them out of the country.”1009
The French government marked the final days of Operation Turquoise with outpourings of
self-congratulation, on the one hand, and blame-shifting, on the other. In the SHZ, the departing
troops joined their UNAMIR successors for passing-of-the-torch ceremonies in Gikongoro and,
later, Cyangugu.1010 Gen. Lafourcade described the Gikongoro ceremony as “a tribute paid to the
Turquoise forces.”1011 French officials in Paris, meanwhile, downplayed the pandemonium that, at
that very moment, was driving thousands of refugees to flee the zone.1012 In the Élysée, Pin and
Quesnot spun a wild, and entirely unsubstantiated, theory that NGOs, in league with the United
States and United Nations, were dramatizing the situation along the Rwandan-Zairean border in
order to pressure France to stay longer.1013 “The Americans, in particular, seem to want to blame
us in advance for the responsibility of an exodus that might occur after our departure,” they wrote
in an 18 August note to President Mitterrand. Turquoise’s Bureau of Civil Affairs asserted,
similarly, that the NGOs were trying to pin their own failings onto France.1014
By 18 August, UNAMIR forces from Africa had assumed control of much of the SHZ,
with remaining French troops mostly confined to Cyangugu.1015 It was General Dallaire’s last full
day in Rwanda,1016 and his successor, General Guy Tousignant, accompanied a group of Kigali
officials on a visit to Cyangugu.1017 Briefing US embassy officials afterward, Tousignant made
clear that he was not impressed with what he saw of the French troops there:
The General said that ex-FAR soldiers were looting and maliciously dismantling
buildings in and around Cyangugu in full view of the French, who claim their
mandate does not cover such activities and do nothing to stop it. As long as there is
no violence, he said the French are apparently taking an ‘anything goes’ attitude,
because their numbers are so small when compared to the population in the
[SHZ].1018
Tousignant, according to US diplomats, felt UNAMIR was up to the task of securing southwest
Rwanda.1019 “[H]e wants the French out,” the diplomats wrote in a 19 August 1994 draft cable.1020
France was not abandoning the region entirely; roughly 450 French troops would remain
in Goma temporarily to provide logistical support for the African UNAMIR troops, to control the
local airport, and to continue their humanitarian work in Zaire.1021 Already, though, there was a
sense in Paris that French officials no longer viewed Rwanda as their concern. When, just a few
days before the end of Operation Turquoise, a US diplomat there urged a senior French Foreign
Ministry official to consider issuing a statement “telling Rwandans there [was] no justification for
leaving the zone for Bukavu,” the official “reacted coolly,” replying that “France could not with
honesty say the zone will remain safe.”1022 “In any case, he added, such statements are the
responsibility of the Rwandan government to make.”1023
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French troops left Rwanda with none of the triumphalism that marked their arrival two
months earlier. The Zairean government, fearing another mass exodus, had temporarily shut down
the border on 20 August 1994, reportedly stranding tens of thousands of people who were waiting
in Cyangugu to cross one of the bridges over the Ruzizi River.1024 The next morning, Zairean
troops fired warning shots into the air as a horde of refugees tried to force its way over the
border.1025 With chaos still reigning that morning, a convoy of French military vehicles left
Rwanda, exiting via one of the bridges that, to that point, was still closed to civilians.1026 A small
number of French officers and soldiers stayed behind for a brief “farewell ceremony,” during
which the French troops reportedly lowered the French tricolor flag at their base in Cyangugu “and
watched as it was replaced by the colours of Ethiopia and the United Nations.”1027 Soon afterward,
Lafourcade boarded one last helicopter flight for Goma.1028 His mission in Rwanda was over.
Page | 481
Notes to Chapter X
1
Telephone Interview by LFM with Charles Petrie.
2
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 176 (2001).
3
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 53 (2010); see generally JOHN W.
LELAND & KATHRYN A. WILCOXSON, THE CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE C-5 GALAXY (May 2003); Cable from
Kevin Aiston (June 28, 1994) (Subject: “Meeting with French Amb. Andreani”) (“The French have withdrawn their
request for airlift of equipment from Bangui to Goma due to limitations on absorbing a large amount of equipment in
Goma in a short time. The French desk thinks they might also have dropped the request in part because they thought
the U.S. would decline it. We have not yet received any formal request for support for the Senegalese contingent.”).
4
See Cable from G.I. Peterson to Office of the Assistant to the US Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (12 Apr.
1994) (Subject: “Distant Runner Update Wrap-Up (Rwanda NEO)”); James Gerstenzang & Tyler Marshall, 10,000
Die in Rwanda; Many Foreigners Escape Africa: Bodies Are Strewn Along Capital’s Streets in Three Days of
Carnage. Belgians Appear Trapped, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11 Apr. 1994.
5
Memorandum from Dirk Dijkerman to Arlene Render (13 June 1994) (Subject: “Interagency Working Group on
Humanitarian Issues in the Rwanda-Burundi Sub-Region”); see also Cable from US Secretary of State to American
Embassy in Paris (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid Administrator Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”)
(reporting that France had twice asked the United States “on short notice for airlift support” but that US officials “were
unable to respond in time”). The United States had already been looking to limit its cost for humanitarian efforts and
believed that the planes might not actually be needed given its view that the number of displaced persons was well
below UN reporting. See Memorandum from Dirk Dijkerman to Arlene Render (13 June 1994) (Subject: “Interagency
Working Group on Humanitarian Issues in the Rwanda-Burundi Sub-Region”). The United States did provide military
aircraft to support for a promotional media event airdrop outside of Goma near the end of July. “The White House
wants to see U.S. airdrops on television,” Lt. Col. Thomas Odom, a US military attaché, recalled being told. THOMAS
ODOM, JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS 108 (2005).
6
RAPHAËL DORIDANT & FRANÇOIS GRANER,
THE GENOCIDE OF THE TUTSI]164 (2020).
L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE DES TUTSI [THE FRENCH STATE AND
7
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010); see JACQUES LANXADE,
QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULE [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 93-94 (2001).
8
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 49-50, 54 (2010).
9
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
10
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 61 (2010).
11
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 21-22, 24-26 (2010). As chief of
defense staff, Lanxade played a lead role in planning Operation Turquoise. See JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE
A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 176 (2001). Lanxade has said that, as a general matter,
Mitterrand granted him considerable autonomy in carrying out decisions made during high-level meetings in the
Élysée: “What you have to see is that there was a very strong, or at least very obvious relationship between Mitterrand
and me on these issues. . . . I reported on what we had done, but I didn’t have to ask for permission to do it.” François
Graner, Jacques Lanxade: “Le Président suivait généralement mon avis, je dirais même quasiment toujours [Jacques
Lanxade: “The President Generally Followed My Advice, I Would Even Say Almost Always”], AGONE, 17 Feb. 2020
(interview occurred on 22 Aug. 2018).
12
S.C. Res. 929, S/RES/929 (22 June 1994).
13
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 26 (2010).
14
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 26-27 (2010).
15
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 26 (2010).
16
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 27 (2010).
17
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 27 (2010).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
18
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 28 (2010).
19
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 28 (2010).
20
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 28 (2010).
21
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 & 60 (2010).
22
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 204-05 (22 Aug. 1994).
23
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 439 (2003) (“Goma, at the northern end of Lake Kivu, had a
modern airport that needed repair but could support the French.”).
24
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 439 (2003).
25
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 439 (2003).
26
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 283-84 (1995).
27
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 283-84 (1995).
28
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 284-85 (1995).
29
Cable from the American Embassy in Paris to the US Secretary of State 7 (21 June 1994). (Subject: “Quai Thinking
on Eve of UNSC Vote on Rwanda”).
30
GERARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS: HISTORY OF A GENOCIDE 285 (1995).
31
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
32
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
33
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
34
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
35
See, e.g., Graham Brown, Belgium Prepares to Evacuate from Former Colony, AFP, 8 Apr. 1994 (reporting that
Belgium had dispatched a DC-10 aircraft to Entebbe in April 1994 “in preparation of an airlift of the 1,500 Belgians
in Rwanda”); Cable from US Secretary of State to the American Embassy in Bujumbura (9 June 1994) (Subject:
“Official-Informal”) (reporting that UNAMIR had established a second supply base in Entebbe to facilitate the
transportation of relief supplies to Rwanda).
36
Memorandum from US Department of State (25 May 1994) (Subject: “Proposed concept for peacekeeping operation
in Rwanda”).
37
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 415-16 (2003).
38
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
39
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54-55 (2010).
40
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
41
See, e.g., Transcript of Paris Europe No. 1 Radio broadcast 1 (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Armed Forces Chief of Staff
Briefs on Rwanda Operation”) (transcribing an interview with Admiral Lanxade, in which he acknowledged that
“France supported the Government of Rwanda” during the war before the Genocide but maintained that, once
Operation Turquoise was under way, French troops were “demonstrating on the ground that the operation is
impartial”); Note from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (22 June 1994) (Subject: “Entretien à Paris avec des
representants du FPR”) (reporting that a representative of the French Prime Minister’s Office assured RPF
representatives that France’s Africa policy had changed since Prime Minister Balladur took office in 1993, and that
France’s aims in Rwanda were now strictly humanitarian).
42
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 54 (2010).
43
See Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (24 June 1994); Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25
June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”) (noting that, since the start of the Genocide, the RPF had seized twothirds of Rwandan territory).
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44
MIP Tome I 324 (“The analysis of operational orders demonstrates that the neutral and humanitarian nature of
Operation Turquoise is not in doubt. Even so, it does not appear possible to say that Turquoise only pursued a purely
humanitarian goal.”).
45
MIP Tome I 324.
46
MIP Tome I 324.
47
MIP Tome I 324.
48
See Letter from Hubert Védrine to François Mitterrand (18 April 1994) (discussing the possibility of a territorial
partitioning of Rwanda). To be sure, not every French official embraced this concept. Léotard publicly stated in late
June 1994 that Rwanda “must remain ‘a multi-ethnic country.’” Richard Dowden, France Rejects Role as Rwanda
“Buffer Force,” INDEPENDENT, 30 June 1994. In addition, the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security,
an arm of the Prime Minister’s Office, warned on 28 June 1994 that a partitioning of Rwanda “could further exacerbate
ethnic oppositions or even competition from rival guardians” and “should be avoided.” Memorandum from François
Lafargue to Achille Lerche 7 (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Operation humanitaire francaise au Rwanda – engagement et
perspectives”); see also Hubert Védrine, Hutus et Tutsis: à chacun son pays [Hutu and Tutsi: To Each His Own
Country], LE POINT, 23 Nov. 1996.
49
See Restricted Council Meeting Notes 161-63 (29 June 1994); François Mitterrand pour une representation
africaine au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU [François Mitterrand for African Representation on the UN Security
Council], AFP, 1 July 1994.
50
Interview by LFM with former French diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
51
Panel discussion, International Media Coverage of Genocide at the Media and Mass Atrocity conference at Carleton
University, time stamp 57:33 - 59:13 (2 Dec. 2017), https://fb.watch/4RY_GfVuKi/.
52
Panel discussion, International Media Coverage of Genocide at the Media and Mass Atrocity conference at Carleton
University, time stamp 57:33 - 59:13 (2 Dec. 2017), https://fb.watch/4RY_GfVuKi/.
53
Panel discussion, International Media Coverage of Genocide at the Media and Mass Atrocity conference at Carleton
University, time stamp 57:33 - 59:13 (2 Dec. 2017), https://fb.watch/4RY_GfVuKi/.
54
MIP Tome I 325 (“Put to the test of reality, this analysis has proven in large part utopian, insofar as the RPF, the
advances of which France never attempted to thwart, continued to advance militarily against the FAR who were in
full disarray and against a government on the run.”).
55
MIP Tome I 325.
56
See Cable from the American Embassy in Kampala to the US Secretary of State 2, 5 (22 June 1994) (Subject:
“Ambassador Rawson’s Meetings with RPF Officials and Rwandan Ambassador in Kampala”).
57
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 June 1994).
58
Jonathan C. Randal, Saved by French Troops, Rwandans Thank God; Tutsis Celebrate Mass Under Guard, THE
WASHINGTON POST, 27 June 1994 (“With everything from fighter bombers to armored fighting vehicles arriving in
growing numbers at nearby airports in Zaire, France is determined to project an image of force amid hope that its
troops will not have to employ it to stop the killing.”).
59
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 95 (2012).
60
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 291 (1997); see L’affrontement avec le FPR [Confrontation with the RPF],
RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101 4-5 (1 Oct. 1994); LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 184 (2009); ROMÉO DALLAIRE,
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 449 (2003).
61
JACQUES HOGARD, LES LARMES DE L’HONNEUR: 60 JOURS DANS LA TOURMENTE DU RWANDA [TEARS OF HONOR: 60
DAYS IN THE RWANDAN TEMPEST] 28 (2005).
62
JACQUES HOGARD, LES LARMES DE L’HONNEUR: 60 JOURS DANS LA TOURMENTE DU RWANDA [TEARS OF HONOR: 60
DAYS IN THE RWANDAN TEMPEST] 28 (2005).
63
L’affrontement avec le FPR [Confrontation with the RPF], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101, 8 (1 Oct. 1994).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
64
See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 289 (1997) (“[T]he intended firepower of the French forces seemed to
be too important for a humanitarian mission.”); LINDA MELVERN, A PEOPLE BETRAYED 184 (2009) (“Dallaire thought
it a lot of military power for what was strictly a humanitarian operation.”); see also ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS
WITH THE DEVIL 449, 551 (2003) (“Despite its humanitarian aim, Opération Turquoise had arrived extremely light in
trucks, which are essential to relief operations.”).
65
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 58 (2010).
66
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 58 (2010).
67
See, e.g., Interview by LFM by Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
68
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II, 12, 18 (22 Aug. 1994); see Restricted Council
Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”) (Mitterrand approves an intervention); see also MIP
Tome I 319 (stating that on 16 June Mitterrand agreed to launch a humanitarian operation).
69
L’affrontement avec le FPR [Confrontation with the RPF], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101, 6 (1 Oct. 1994).
70
See Report from Jacques Rosier (27 July 1994); DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE
ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 110 (2011) (noting that Rosier arrived
in Goma on 20 June 1994).
71
See LFM Interview with Karel Kovanda; LFM Interview with Colin Keating; The French in Rwanda, THE
GUARDIAN, 21 June 1994 (arguing that a “mainly African force” backed by Western technical support should intervene
in Rwanda and not France, which had a history of supporting the Habyarimana regime, “whose militias, since his
death, have launched the massacres”); Marie-Pierre Subtil, La proposition d’intervention française au Rwanda suscite
de plus en plus de critiques [The Prospect of a French Intervention in Rwanda Brings More and More Criticism], LE
MONDE, 23 June 1994.
72
See Interview by LFM with Karel Kovanda; Interview by LFM with Colin Keating; The French in Rwanda, THE
GUARDIAN, 21 June 1994 (arguing that a “mainly African force” backed by Western technical support should intervene
in Rwanda and not France, which had a history of supporting the Habyarimana regime, “whose militias, since his
death, have launched the massacres”); Marie-Pierre Subtil, La proposition d’intervention française au Rwanda suscite
de plus en plus de critiques [The Prospect of a French Intervention in Rwanda Brings More and More Criticism], LE
MONDE, 23 June 1994.
73
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (22 June 1994) (Balladur and Mitterrand approving Minister of Cooperation
Roussin’s proposal that he “continue to try to convince our African partners to participate in the operation,” following
a discussion about France’s media strategy).
74
See Visite au Sénégal—conférence de presse du Ministre des Affaires étrangères, M. Alain Juppé [Visit to Senegal—
Press Conference by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Alain Juppé], 19 June 1994 (highlighting Juppé and
Roussin’s discussions with Senegalese authorities); Michel Sailhan, Updates with Details of French Operation,
Criticism by Humanitarian Group, AFP, 24 June 1994 (reporting on Roussin’s two-day visit to Niger); Restricted
Council Meeting Notes 161-63 (29 June 1994).
75
Charles Lambroschini, Mitterrand-Juppé: les alliés objectifs [Mitterrand-Juppé: Objective Allies], FIGARO, 24 June
1994 (“Another subject of astonishment: if the cause that the French defend is so just, why are they so alone?”).
76
Letter from the Permanent representative of France to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary General,
S/1994/795 (5 July 1994) (reporting that, as of 5 July 1994, the troop contingent consisted of 2,300 French soldiers
and 32 Senegalese soldiers); Memorandum from the Ministry of Defense to the État Major des Armées (11 July 1994)
(Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 11 juillet 1994”) (reporting that, as of 11 July 1994, there were
a total of 108 foreign troops serving in Operation Turquoise, of which 98 were Senegalese and 10 were Mauritanian).
The Mauritanian contingent was a medical team that consisted of four physicians and six nurses. Cable from American
Embassy in Nouakchott to the US Secretary of State (5 July 1994) (“It is likely that the [government of Mauritania]
decided to send a token contingent to Rwanda in response to pressure from France, Mauritania’s largest aid donor.
Given the [Mauritanian government’s] meager resources, we also think it likely that the [government of France] agreed
to cover all costs incurred by Mauritania’s team.”).
77
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 3, 5 (22 Aug. 1994); see African States Divided over
French Rwanda Venture, AFP, 24 June 1994 (“Senegal, a former French colony, is the only African country due to
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22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
contribute troops—300—to the operation.”). Egypt sent seven military observers. See RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION,
OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 4 (22 Aug. 1994). French defense officials suspected the RPF had quietly dissuaded
one African country, Ghana, from making good on an earlier pledge to send troops to Rwanda, noting that RPF
representative Seth Sendashonga had visited the Ghanaian capital on 23 June. See Situation Report, Direction du
Renseignement Militaire (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 24/06/1994 – 18H00”). An RPF document
confirms that Sendashonga and a colleague met with Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, but says they merely asked
him whether it was true that he supported the French operation. Rawlings responded that he did not. See Memorandum
from Denis Polisi and Seth Sendashonga to Alexis Kanyarengwe (26 June 1994) (Subject: “Raporo y’ubutumwa Accra
(Ghana)”).
78
See GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 289 (1997) (describing two RPF representatives’ incredulity, while
meeting with a French general in Paris on 22 June 1994, upon learning that “the complete operational plan of the
future Operation Turquoise was written on two sheets of paper”).
79
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”).
80
Cable from the American Embassy in Paris to the US Secretary of State (21 June 1994) (Subject: “Quai Thinking
on Eve of UNSC Vote on Rwanda”).
81
Report from Patrice Sartre 10 (24 Aug. 1994).
82
Report from Patrice Sartre 10 (24 Aug. 1994).
83
Cable from US Secretary State to the American Embassy in Addis Ababa (20 June 1994) (Subject: “Update on
French Initiative on Rwanda”).
84
See MIP Tome I 323 (“We must recognize that by having some soldiers participate in Operation Turquoise who
were previously engaged in military cooperation operations for the benefit of the FAR, France undeniably created a
source of ambiguity and aroused suspicion or skepticism in [people’s] minds.”).
85
See, e.g., Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994) (presenting Defense Minister
Bizimana in a positive light); DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 132-33 (2011) (characterizing Brigadier General
Gratien Kabiligi as a “magnificent man”).
86
See generally LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] (2012).
87
Transcript, Interview by Laure de Vulpian with Thierry Prungnaud (22 Apr. 2005).
88
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 97 (2012).
89
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 97 (2012).
90
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 97 (2012).
91
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 97 (2012).
92
Jacques Isnard, The Ambiguous Mission of Special Operations Commandos: Candy and Guns, LE MONDE, 10 July
1994 (“A not insignificant number of special operations men knew Rwanda before ‘Turquoise.’”).
93
Report from Jacques Rosier (27 July 1994).
94
Letter from James Gasana to Juvénal Habyarimana (23 Aug.1992) (Subject: “proposition de decoration”).
95
MIP Tome I 154 & 162.
96
BERNARD LUGAN, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND, L’ARMEE FRANÇAISE ET LE RWANDA [FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND,
FRENCH ARMY AND RWANDA] 102-03 (2005).
97
Daily situation report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (21 June 1994).
98
Fiche 18885/N, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (24 June 1994).
99
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”).
100
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (20 June 1994).
101
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (20 June 1994).
THE
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
102
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 109 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
103
See MIP Tome I 164-65; DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 64, 70-71 (2011) (“I had to take the indirect command
of the FAR”).
104
See DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND
JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 59 (2011), (stating that Nsabimana “made a strong impression” on him and
struck him as “the man for the job”); id. at 70 (calling Bizimungu “clearly a remarkable man of the field” and stating,
“I have always considered it an honor to have known him and to have fought alongside him”); id. at 71 (describing
Nsabimana as a “true warrior” who “does not give up”); id. (“Nsabimana, Bizimungu and Kabiligi . . . are among the
few Hutu who have almost completely freed themselves from the psychological and intellectual oppression that the
Tutsi have been subjecting them to for centuries.”).
105
See DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND
JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 62, 117 (2011); Letter from French Embassy in Kigali to Rwandan minister
of defense 3 (10 Feb. 1993); Fax from Military Cooperation Mission to Inter-armies Operational Centre COIA (9
Mar. 1993).
106
See DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND
JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 122 (2011); Letter from French Embassy in Kigali to Rwandan minister of
defense (29 June 1993).
107
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 152-153 (22 Aug. 1994).
108
See RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 154 (22 Aug. 1994); MIP Tome I 355-56.
109
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 152 (22 Aug. 1994). Report from Rwandan Ministry
of Defense 11-12 (5 Mar. 1994). These five officers were Commander Grégoire de Saint Quentin, former technical
advisor to the commander of the FAR’s para-commando battalion; Lieutenant Colonel André Marin, former technical
advisor to the commander of the reconnaissance battalion; Lieutenant Colonel Marc Vuillemin, who had worked with
the FAR’s aviation squadron; Squadron Chief Gérard Forgues, former technical advisor to the état-major of the
National Gendarmerie; and Captain Michel Fabries, former course director at the National Gendarmerie school in
Rwanda. See Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense to the Armies Etat-Major (21 Aug. 1998) (Subject:
“L’assistance militaire au Rwanda de décembre 1993 au 10 avril 1994”) (listing Vuillemin, de Saint Quentin, Forgues,
and Fabries among French military personnel in Rwanda between December 1993 and January 1994); Letter from
Augustin Ndindiliyimana to Chief of Armies Etat Major (9 Mar. 1992); Letter from James Gasana to Rwandan
minister of foreign affairs and cooperation (5 May 1993) (referring to Battalion Chief Marin’s service as technical
advisor to the commander of the reconnaissance battalion); Letter from the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs and
cooperation to the French Embassy in Kigali (8 Apr. 1993) (approving Squadron Chief Forgues’ assignment as
technical advisor to the état-major of the National Gendarmerie); Letter from Augustin Ndindiliyimana to Chief of
Armées Etat-Major (3 Ap. 1992) (recommending Captain Fabries as EGENA course director).
110
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 161 (22 Aug. 1994).
111
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 157 (22 Aug. 1994).
112
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (21 June 1994); see Daily situation report, Direction du
Renseignement Militaire (21 June 1994).
113
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 157 (22 Aug. 1994).
114
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 157 (22 Aug. 1994).
115
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 158 (22 Aug. 1994).
116
See, e.g., Interview by LFM with Charles Petrie; Interview by LFM with Jonathan Randal.
117
LFM Interview with Charles Petrie.
118
LFM Interview with Charles Petrie.
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119
Charles Petrie noted that the narrative changed “within a few days” amongst French special forces, who were “used
to operating in small numbers and blending into their environment, and as a result [were] permeable to the realities
they [found] themselves in.” Email from Charles Petrie to LFM.
120
LFM Interview with senior French military officer.
121
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 June 1994). As the DGSE, France’s external intelligence
agency, wrote on 22 June: “The engagement of French troops, for strictly humanitarian purposes, is misunderstood
by the two Rwandan belligerents: the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) sees in it an intervention to support the
government Armed Forces; the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) believe that there is military support [in it] for them.”
122
Mark Fritz, First French Commandos Protect Tutsi Refugees, INDEPENDENT, 25 June 1994.
123
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake; see also Interview by LFM with Tito Rutaremara.
124
Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba.
125
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 June 1994).
126
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 June 1994).
127
Situation report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (25 June 1994).
128
Situation report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (25 June 1994).
129
French Charities Opposed to French Military Intervention, AFP, 21 June 1994.
130
French Charities Opposed to French Military Intervention, AFP, 21 June 1994.
131
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (24 June 1994) (“A first detachment of French paratroopers
embarked on an incursion into southwestern Rwanda, in order to assist 8,000 Tutsi and Hutu refugees and thus make
it clear to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that the French mission has only a humanitarian purpose and is not
directed against the rebel movement.”).
132
Situation report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (24 June 1994).
133
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (22 June 1994).
134
Stephen Smith, Premiers contacts au camp de Nyarushishi [Initial Contact Made at Camp Nyarushishi],
LIBÈRATION, 25 June 1994.
135
Stephen Smith, Premiers contacts au camp de Nyarushishi [Initial Contact Made at Camp Nyarushishi],
LIBÈRATION, 25 June 1994.
136
See DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND
JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 112 (2011); L’Opération “Turquoise” au Rwanda [Operation “Turquoise”
in Rwanda], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101 6 (Oct. 1994).
137
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 112-13 (2011). Transcript, TV interview by Benoît Duquesne with Jacques Rosier,
FRANCE 2 (25 June 1994) Col. Rosier touted the rapturous welcome French troops received upon their arrival in
Rwanda during a 25 June 1994 appearance on French television. The interviewer, in response, noted that some of the
people cheering the French troops had participated in massacres. “Well, yes,” Rosier said, “but still . . . .” Colonel
Rosier believed RPF infiltration in the region was a reality.
138
Alison Des Forges, Call to Genocide: Radio in Rwanda, 1994, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE 52
(Allan Thompson ed. 2007). One survivor of the Genocide recalled hearing an announcement in her home commune
of Kamembe, near the southern shore of Lake Kivu, directing Hutu girls to dress up well and go out to welcome
French soldiers. Interview by LFM with Alphonsine Mukakarangwa.
139
Stephen Smith, Premiers contacts au camp de Nyarushishi [Initial Contact Made at Camp Nyarushishi],
LIBÈRATION, 25 June 1994.
140
Stephen Smith, Premiers contacts au camp de Nyarushishi [Initial Contact Made at Camp Nyarushishi],
LIBÈRATION, 25 June 1994.
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Chapter X
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141
See Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994; Robert Block,
Rwandans Put Faith in God and Their Trust in Paratroopers, INDEPENDENT, 27 June 1994. “Refugee” is a term that
has been used to describe the Rwandans who fled their homes in search of safety, even though they would not be
considered refugees under international law, since they did not cross any national borders.
142
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994.
143
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 120-21 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
144
French Too Late to Save the Tutsis, OBSERVER NEWS, 26 June 1994 (“Of the more than 55,000 Tutsis who once
lived in the prefecture of Cyangugu, only 10,000 are left—8,000 of them in the camp of Nyarushishi.”).
145
See DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND
JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 121 (2011); Stephen Smith, Premiers contacts au camp de Nyarushishi
[Initial Contact Made at Camp Nyarushishi], LIBÈRATION, 25 June 1994.
146
Stephen Smith, Premiers contacts au camp de Nyarushishi [Initial Contact Made at Camp Nyarushishi],
LIBÈRATION, 25 June 1994. News reports during Operation Turquoise often identified Tauzin by his alias, Colonel
Didier Thibaut. See, e.g., id.; Jonathan C. Randal, Saved by French Troops, Rwandans Thank God; Tutsis Celebrate
Mass Under Guard, WASH. POST, 27 June 1994; Mark Fritz, First French Commandos Protect Tutsi Refugees,
INDEPENDENT, 25 June 1994 (identifying Thibaut as the commander of the commando unit that first visited the
Nyarushishi refugee camp at the start of Operation Turquoise); see also Communiqué from Tharcisse Karugarama 12
(5 Aug. 2008) (identifying Tauzin’s alias as “Thibault”).
147
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 121 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
148
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994.
149
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994.
150
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994.
151
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994.
152
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994.
153
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 120 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
154
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 120 (2011).
155
See Cable from MinDefense SIRPA Paris to AIG 2020 (24 June 1994); Situation Report, Direction du
Renseignement Militaire (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 24/06/1994 – 18H00”); Michel Sailhan,
Updates with Mass Graves, Shell, Troop Pledges, Reax, AFP, 24 June 1994 (reporting that French combat troops
discovered mass graves on Friday, 24 June 1994).
156
French Intelligence Note (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Le 24 – 15:00”).
157
French Intelligence Note (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Le 24 – 15:00”) (describing a mass grave 300 meters south of
Kamarampaka stadium); see François Luizet, Cris et murmures à Kibuyé [Screams and Whispers in Kibye], LE
FIGARO, 27 June 1994.
158
French Intelligence Note (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Le 24 – 15:00”).
159
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 131 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
160
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 131 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
161
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 131 (2011).
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Chapter X
162
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 133-34 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
163
Memorandum from François Regnault to Jacques Rosier (undated) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”). In his book
French Politicians, Soldiers and Mercenaries in Rwanda, author Jean-François Dupaquier said the confidential note
was transmitted on 22 June 1994. JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS
AU RWANDA [FRENCH POLITICIANS, SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 376 (2014).
164
Memorandum from François Regnault to Jacques Rosier (undated) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
165
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (23 June 1994).
166
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (23 June 1994); see Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et
al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 68-70 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008); JEANFRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS AU RWANDA [FRENCH POLITICIANS,
SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 377 (2014). Dupaquier described Rosier as a “long-time friend” of
Nsengiyumva.
167
Théoneste Bagosora and Anatole Nsengiyumva v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
168
Memorandum from Anatole Nsengiyumva to Head of the état-major of the Rwandan Army (15 Dec.1990) (Subject:
“Exploitation d’un rapport”) (from the Linda Malvern Rwanda Genocide Archive); Memorandum from Anatole
Nsengiyumva to the Head of the état-major of the Rwandan Army (11 Oct. 1990) (Subject: “Campagne médiatique”)
(from the Linda Malvern Rwanda Genocide Archive).
169
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (23 June 1994).
170
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (23 June 1994).
171
See RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE TOME II 6, 8-10, 150-215, 157, 159, 161 (22 August
1994) (discussing the liaison detachments’ efforts to gather intelligence, in part from current and former FAR
personnel).
172
See, e.g., Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”) (stating that
there had been in Rwanda, following the assassination of President Habyarimana, “a genocide perpetrated by some
units of the Rwandan military and by Hutu militias against the Tutsi minority”); JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE &
GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 28 (2010) (“We will have to deal with the IRG, the legal Interim
Rwandan Government, which is already suspected of being complicit, if not the instigator, of the massacres of Tutsis
and moderate Hutus.”).
173
See JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 27, 120-121 (2010) (from page
27: “[S]ome of them were guilty of participating in this business of death. How could we tell the difference between
those who were still fighting loyally and those who were complicit in [perpetrating] the worst?”; from pages 120-121:
“I readily believe that not everyone [in the FAR] is guilty and that there was never a consensus, nor among the
population for that matter, on the genocide. Most of them were fighting to defend their country against an enemy from
the outside. Of course, some were involved in the genocide. But these soldiers belonged to less well-trained, poorly
commanded and undisciplined units.”).
174
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade 2, 3 (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”) (emphasis added).
175
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade 2 (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”).
176
Fax to Colonel Vaganay and Colonel Pouly (20 June 1994) (Subject: “CR arrivée et HOUSSIN à Goma”).
177
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 25/06/1994
– 09H00”) (emphasis added).
178
Situation Report, Direction du Renseingement Militaire (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 27/06/1994
– 17H00”); Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (24 June 1994). The DGSE, similarly, observed that
the arrival of French forces appeared to have brought the government forces and the militias closer. “The militias . . .
seem to be more controlled by the regular Army, except in the stronghold of Gisenyi, in the northwest,” the DGSE
wrote on 24 June.
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179
Situation Report, Direction du Renseingement Militaire (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 27/06/1994
– 17H00”).
180
See, e.g., Cable from Yannick Gérard (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda point de situation au matin du 7 juillet”).
181
See Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994); DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE
FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS]132-134
(2011).
JUSTICE POUR LA
182
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994).
183
Deceased – Bizimana, Augustin (MICT-13-39), UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL RESIDUAL MECHANISM
CRIMINAL TRIBUNALS, https://www.irmct.org/en/cases/mict-13-39 (last accessed on 4 February 2021).
FOR
184
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994). Whether Rosier believed the ministers’
claims that the IRG had done nothing to orchestrate the killings is unclear. Rosier was aware, though, that Hutu militias
were still committing ethnic killings in Rwanda, more than two months into the Genocide. Stephen Smith, Dialogue
difficile avec les massacreurs [Difficult Conversation with the Murderers], LIBÉRATION (27 June 1994); see also Fax
to Colonel Vaganay and Colonel Pouly (20 June 1994) (Subject: “CR arrivée et HOUSSIN à Goma”).
185
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994).
186
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994).
187
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994).
188
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994); see also discussion in Chapter 5 concerning
the delivery of the artillery in 1992.
189
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994).
190
Memorandum from Jacques Rosier to Maurice Le Page (25 June 1994).
191
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 118 (2010).
192
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 118 (2010).
193
Augustin Bizimungu v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-00-56B-A, Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 30 June
2014).
194
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 119 (2010).
195
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 119 (2010). A DRM situation report
on 26 June 1994 noted, similarly, that the Rwandan authorities viewed the military situation as “catastrophic . . . due
to a shortage of ammunition.” Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (26 June 1994) (Subject: “Note
quotidienne de situation du 26 juin 1994”).
196
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 120 (2010).
197
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 132-134 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
198
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 72-73 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
199
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 74 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
200
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 133 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
201
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 133-34 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
202
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 133-34 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
Page | 491
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
203
L’Opération “Turquoise” au Rwanda [Operation “Turquoise” in Rwanda], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101 8 (Oct.
1994). The RAIDS magazine misspells the name “Rosier” as “Rozier.”
204
French Too Late to Save the Tutsis, THE OBSERVER, 26 June 1994.
205
MIP Tome I 319; see Restricted Council Meeting Notes (15 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
206
See discussion in Chapter 9.
207
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”); GÉRARD PRUNIER,
THE RWANDA CRISIS 284 (1997).
208
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
209
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
210
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
211
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
212
Cable from the French Ministry of Defense (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu du point presse du samedi 25
juin 1994 à 17H00”).
213
Cable from the French Ministry of Defense (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu du point presse du samedi 25
juin 1994 à 17H00”).
214
Cable from the French Ministry of Defense (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu du point presse du samedi 25
juin 1994 à 17H00”).
215
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 3 (22 Aug. 1994).
216
Jonathan C. Randal, Hailed by Hutus, French Visit Camp in Rwanda, THE WASHINGTON POST, 26 June 1994; see
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Un accueil sous les vivas [A Welcome with Cheers], LE FIGARO, 27 June 1994; Corine
Lesnes, Les ambiguïtés de l’opération Turquoise [Ambiguities of Operation Turquoise], LE MONDE, 28 June 1994.
217
Corine Lesnes, Les ambiguïtés de l’opération Turquoise [Ambiguities of Operation Turquoise], LE MONDE, 28
June 1994.
218
L’Opération “Turquoise” au Rwanda [Operation “Turquoise” in Rwanda], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101 14 (Oct.
1994).
219
RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 19 (22 Aug. 1994). (stating that, between 25 June
and 5 July, Turquoise units conducted reconnaissance missions deeper and deeper into Rwandan territory, focusing
on two axes: Gisenyi-Kibuye and Cyangugu-Butare).
220
See Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (21 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation
hebdomadaire”); ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 434 (2003); See Situation Report, Direction du
Renseignement Militaire (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 24/06/1994 – 18H00”) (reporting that the
RPF was applying heavy pressure on the capital, while, at the same time, fighting was taking place about 9 miles east
of Ruhengeri).
221
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (26 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation
du 26 juin 1994”).
222
Interviews by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
223
Interviews by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
224
See, e.g., Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade 2 (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”) (flagging a
need for information on “RPF infiltration” in the volcano park, west of Gitarama, Gikongoro, and south of Butare).
225
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade 2 (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”).
226
Interviews by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
227
Interviews by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
228
Cable from Comforce Turquoise to Armées Centops Paris (27 June 1994) (Subject: “appréciation de situation du
Dimanche 26 juin 1994”).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
229
Benoît Duquesne, Le colonel Rosier estime que les infiltrations du FPR dans la région sont une réalité [Colonel
Rosier Believes That RPF Infiltrations in the Region are a Reality], FRANCE 2, 25 June 1994.
230
L’Opération “Turquoise” au Rwanda [Operation “Turquoise” in Rwanda], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101 8 (Oct.
1994).
231
L’Opération “Turquoise” au Rwanda [Operation “Turquoise” in Rwanda], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO. 101 8 (Oct.
1994).
232
See Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de
situation du 25 juin 1994”); French Too Late to Save the Tutsis, THE OBSERVER, 26 June 1994; Raymond Bonner,
Rwandan Enemies Struggle to Define French Role, N.Y. TIMES, 27 June 1994 (“Virtually no Tutsi live in Cyangugu
any more, since all have been killed or have fled.”).
233
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation
du 25 juin 1994”).
234
French Too Late to Save the Tutsis, THE OBSERVER, 26 June 1994.
235
Philippe Boisserie & Eric Maizy, Marin Gillier à Rwesero et Kirambo le 24 juin 1994 [Marin Gillier in Rwesera
and Kirambo 24 June 1994], FRANCE 2 (25 June 1994). As a “captaine de frégate” in the French navy, Gillier held a
rank equivalent to a lieutenant colonel in the Army and air force, and would have been addressed as “Commander.”
See NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION, MILITARY AGENCY FOR STANDARDIZATION, STANAG No. 2116 (5th
ed.) A-1-1 (12 Mar. 1996) (NATO codes for grades of military personnel).
236
Philippe Boisserie & Eric Maizy, Marin Gillier à Rwesero et Kirambo le 24 juin 1994 [Marin Gillier in Rwesera
and Kirambo 24 June 1994], FRANCE 2, 25 June 1994.
237
Philippe Boisserie & Eric Maizy, Marin Gillier à Rwesero et Kirambo le 24 juin 1994 [Marin Gillier in Rwesera
and Kirambo 24 June 1994], FRANCE 2, 25 June 1994.
238
Philippe Boisserie & Eric Maizy, Marin Gillier à Rwesero et Kirambo le 24 juin 1994 [Marin Gillier in Rwesera
and Kirambo 24 June 1994], FRANCE 2, 25 June 1994.
239
Cable from Comforce Turquoise to Armées Centops Paris (27 June 1994) (Subject: “appréciation de situation du
Dimanche 26 juin 1994”) (“The populations encountered are probably those who do not fear being discovered, while
there are probably others who hide because they know they are threatened.”).
240
Raymond Bonner, Fear Is Still Pervasive in Rwanda Countryside, N.Y. TIMES, 29 June 1994.
241
Raymond Bonner, Fear Is Still Pervasive in Rwanda Countryside, N.Y. TIMES, 29 June 1994.
242
Raymond Bonner, Fear Is Still Pervasive in Rwanda Countryside, N.Y. TIMES, 29 June 1994.
243
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possible au Rwanda”) (italics added).
244
See Transcript of France 2 broadcast (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Affrontement entre soldats gouvernementaux et
Front Patriotique Rwandais à quelques kilomètres des positions françaises”).
245
Transcript of France 2 broadcast (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Affrontement entre soldats gouvernementaux et Front
Patriotique Rwandais à quelques kilomètres des positions françaises”).
246
Transcript of France 2 broadcast (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Affrontements à Kibuye le 27 juin 1994”).
247
Transcript of France 2 broadcast (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Affrontement entre soldats gouvernementaux et Front
Patriotique Rwandais à quelques kilomètres des positions françaises”).
248
Transcript of France 2 broadcast (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Affrontement entre soldats gouvernementaux et Front
Patriotique Rwandais à quelques kilomètres des positions françaises”).
249
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”) (stating that the
legitimacy of Operation Turquoise relied on “respect[ing] a strict neutrality toward the conflicting parties and . . .
avoid[ing] any armed contact with the RPF”).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
250
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec le Premier
ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 29 juin 1994”).
251
See, e.g., Transcript of Paris Europe No. 1 Radio broadcast 1-2 (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Armed Forces Chief of
Staff Briefs on Rwanda Operation”) (Jacques Lanxade: “[W]e are demonstrating on the ground that the operation is
impartial, because we are at the service of the Tutsi population . . . just as much as we are at the service of the Hutu
population . . . . We shall avoid, we mean to avoid, any physical contact with the troops fighting each other.”).
252
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda) (quoting Lanxade as saying,
“The front line between the FAR and the RPF is somewhat stable. But Kigali should fall in the coming days”).
253
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
254
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
255
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
256
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
257
See, e.g., Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject:
“Votre entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 29 juin 1994”) (asserting that RPF military
action “would lead to further significant population displacements”); Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement
Militaire (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 28/06/1994 à 06h00”) (“The advance toward Kibuye to split
the government sector in two would, among other things, result in the westward flight of Hutu refugees from the three
camps west of Gitarama.”); Alain Juppé, La responsabilité de tous [Everyone’s Responsibility], LE MONDE, 2 July
1994 (“The absence of a cease-fire and political resolution leads to the constant swelling of the number of displaced
people, who are fleeing the zones of combat.”).
258
See, e.g., Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du
28/06/1994 à 06h00”) (explaining, with more precision than most French analyses at the time, that an RPF advance
into western Rwanda would “risk triggering a massacre of Tutsi refugees in the government zone”).
259
See Raymond Bonner, French Establish a Base in Rwanda to Block Rebels, N.Y. TIMES, 5 July 1994 (“[T]he
refugees have been bombarded for months by Government broadcasts saying the rebels will kill all Hutu, and many
refugees are certain the rebels will seek revenge.”).
260
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
261
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”). Marlaud’s memo did not explain what he meant in suggesting that a French retreat from
Rwanda would precipitate a massacre of the people French troops had charged themselves with protecting. While he
may have been suggesting that the RPF forces might kill people in their path, it is just as likely, if not more so, that he
meant the Hutu militias would slaughter Tutsi (or suspected Tutsi) refugees.
262
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”) (characterizing this option as “without a doubt the most reasonable” of the three choices).
263
Marlise Simons, French Troops Enter Rwanda in Aid Mission, N.Y. TIMES, 24 June 1994 (quoting Gérard Araud,
an aide to Léotard, as saying, “Our troops will be making incursions but they will set up no bases in Rwanda”).
264
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
265
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”).
266
Interviews by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
267
Interviews by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
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Chapter X
268
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
DRM intelligence report (27 June 1994).
269
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
270
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
271
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
272
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
273
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
274
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
275
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”). Quesnot referred to this site as the “N’Gada pass.”
276
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
277
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation.”).
278
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
279
See DRM intelligence report (28 June 1994); Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre
d’opération No. 1”) (estimating the RPF to have 25,000 troops). The DGSE had previously observed, on 24 June 1994,
that the RPF was already having difficulty holding onto the territory it had won. DGSE No. 18891/N – Refugee
Movements, 24 June 1994.
280
DRM intelligence report (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 28/06/1994 à 18H00”).
281
DRM intelligence report (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 28/06/1994 à 18H00”).
282
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 28 juin 1994”) (text underlined in original).
283
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 28 juin 1994”) (text underlined in original).
284
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 28 juin 1994”) (text underlined in original).
285
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”) (characterizing this option as “without a doubt the most reasonable” of the three choices).
286
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions
possibles au Rwanda”) (characterizing this option as “without a doubt the most reasonable” of the three choices)
(italics added; original in bold).
287
Account taken from interview by LFM with Jason Nshimye.
288
Fax from Jean-Rémy Duval (27 June 1994) (“Fax No. 3”) (Subject: “C/R de situation”).
289
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
290
Note from unknown author indicating the locations and actions of the COS (24 June 1994) (Subject: “Opération
Turquoise situation COS”).
291
Deposition of Colonel Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013); COMMISSION
D’ENQUÊTE CITYOENNE, L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE [THE HORROR
THAT STRIKES US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 430 (2005).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
292
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
293
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
294
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
295
French Memorandum from unknown author (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du 29 juin
1994”).
296
French Memorandum from unknown author (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du 29 juin
1994”).
297
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007). In a 2013 deposition, Duval said that he
“decided to return to my base camp and return the next day to secure the area.” Deposition of Colonel Jean-Rémy
Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
298
Compare French Memorandum from unknown author (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du
30 juin 1994”) (“500 Tutsi civilians were discovered”) with Report from Captain Marin Gillier (30 July 1994) (Subject:
“compte-rendu de mission TURQUOISE”) (“We discover about 800 Tutsi.”).
299
VÉNUSTÉ KAYIMAHE & JACQUES MOREL, ENQUÊTE SUR LES VICTIMES TUÉES AU RWANDA DURANT L’OPÉRATION
TURQUOISE, CAS DE LA RÉGION DE BISESERO [INVESTIGATION INTO THE VICTIMS KILLED IN RWANDA DURING
OPERATION TURQUOISE, THE CASE OF THE BISESERO REGION] 1, 3, 7, 34, 36 (25 June 2014); French Memorandum
from unknown author (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du 30 juin 1994”) (“Tutsi corpses,
recently killed, were found (several dozens).”).
300
Report from Christian Lureau to EMA cellule de crise Rwanda (Subject: “Point de situation”) (1 July 1994).
301
The total number of Tutsi killed in those three days in unclear. According to a paper published by in 2014, surveys
conducted by Ibuke (1999) and African Rights (1995) of the number of victims killed in Bisesero in the Genocide do
not give precise enough information on the date of death to know how many people died between 27 June and 30
June. Kayimahe and Morel identified 381 victims killed in Bisesero on 24 June 1994 and after (the date they believe
“French special troops . . . had at their disposal arms, means of transport, observation, and communication to stop
massacres.” VENUSTE KAYIMAHE & JACQUES MOREL, ENQUETE SUR LES VICTIMES TUEES AU RWANDA DURANT
L’OPERATION TURQUOISE, CAS DE LA REGION DE BISESERO [INVESTIGATION INTO THE VICTIMS KILLED IN RWANDA
DURING OPERATION TURQUOISE, THE CASE OF THE BISESERO REGION] 1, 3, 7, 34, 36 (25 June 2014).
302
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
303
Dominique Garraud, Le Nettoyage ethnique continue dans les montagnes rwandaises [Ethnic Cleansing Continues
in the Rwandan Mountains], LIBÈRATION, 29 June 1994.
304
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
305
See Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013); Patrick de SaintExupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their Massacres], LE
FIGARO, 29 June 1994 ; see also Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, Case No. ICTR-95-1, Trial
Transcript (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Nov. 1997).
306
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994; see also Dominique Garraud, Le Nettoyage ethnique continue dans les
montagnes rwandaises [Ethnic Cleansing Continues in the Rwandan Mountains], LIBÈRATION, 29 June 1994 (offering
a similar account and many of the same quotes from local Hutu militia).
307
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
308
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
309
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
310
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
311
Wanted: Charles Sikubwabo, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DIPLOMACY
2017.state.gov/j/gcj/wcrp/206068.htm (last visited 21 Jan. 2021).
IN
ACTION, https://2009-
312
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
313
Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, Case No. ICTR-95-1-A, Appeals Judgement (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 1 Jun. 2001).
314
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
315
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
316
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
317
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
318
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE:
RWANDA] 62 (2004).
LA
FRANCE
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
319
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their
Massacres], LE FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
320
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007).
321
See Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007); Jacques Morel, La découverte, l’abandon
puis le sauvetage des Tutsi survivants de Bisesero [The Discovery, Abandonment and then Rescue of Tutsi Survivors
of Bisesero], RFI, 9 Feb. 2011.
322
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007).
323
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007).
324
Jacques Morel, La découverte, l’abandon puis le sauvetage des Tutsi survivants de Bisesero [The Discovery,
Abandonment and then Rescue of Tutsi Survivors of Bisesero], RFI, 9 Feb. 2011.
325
Jacques Morel, La découverte, l’abandon puis le sauvetage des Tutsi survivants de Bisesero [The Discovery,
Abandonment and then Rescue of Tutsi Survivors of Bisesero], RFI, 9 Feb. 2011.
326
Jacques Morel, La découverte, l’abandon puis le sauvetage des Tutsi survivants de Bisesero [The Discovery,
Abandonment and then Rescue of Tutsi Survivors of Bisesero], RFI, 9 Feb. 2011.
327
Jacques Morel, La découverte, l’abandon puis le sauvetage des Tutsi survivants de Bisesero [The Discovery,
Abandonment and then Rescue of Tutsi Survivors of Bisesero], RFI, 9 Feb. 2011.
328
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE:
RWANDA] 67 (2004).
LA
FRANCE
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
329
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE:
RWANDA] 68 (2004).
LA
FRANCE
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
330
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE:
RWANDA] 68 (2004).
LA
FRANCE
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
331
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE:
RWANDA] 69 (2004).
LA
FRANCE
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
332
LA
FRANCE
AU
RWANDA [THE UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE
IN
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE:
RWANDA] 68 (2004).
333
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
334
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 7 (18 June 2013).
Page | 497
Chapter X
335
Mitterrand Confirms Intervention, RFI, 18 June 1994.
336
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007).
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
337
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007); Memorandum from Patrice Molle (27 June
1994) (Subject: “Voyage de Monsieur le ministre d’État, ministre de la Défense au Zaïre et au Rwanda, le mercredi
29 juin 1994)
338
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Police Judiciaire (11 Oct. 2007).
339
Fax from Jean-Rémy Duval (27 June 1994) (“Fax No. 3”) (Subject: “C/R de situation”).
340
Fax from Jean-Rémy Duval (27 June 1994) (“Fax No. 3”) (Subject: “C/R de situation”).
341
Fax from Jean-Rémy Duval (27 June 1994) (“Fax No. 3”) (Subject: “C/R de situation”).
342
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 9 (18 June 2013).
343
Deposition of Jacques Rosier by Police Judiciaire 10 (13 Sept. 2007).
344
See MIP Audition of Colonel Jean-Rémy Duval, Tome III, Vol. 2, 117-119.
345
MIP Audition of Colonel Jean-Rémy Duval, Tome III, Vol. 2, 117-119. Duval went by the codename “Diego,” but
Pierre Brana seemed unaware of this when Duval testified before the MIP. “This colonel, known as ‘Diego,’ did not
check in and nobody told us about it,” Brana later stated. “But, if today he wants to give his public testimony, that can
only be beneficial in the search for the truth.” COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITYOENNE, L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU
VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE
GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 473 (2005).
346
Médiapart, Génocide au Rwanda: la vidéo qui accable l’armée française [Genocide in Rwanda: the Video that
Condemns the French Army], YOUTUBE (Oct. 25, 2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1y-9c1lGuY.
347
See, e.g., Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (22 June 1994) (Subject: “AMCIT Nuns
in Rwanda”). See also Chris McGreal, Nightly Persecution of the Whispering Tutsi Nuns, THE GUARDIAN, 27 June
1994.
348
Médiapart, Génocide au Rwanda: la video qui accable l’armée française [Genocide in Rwanda: the Video that
Condemns the French Army], YOUTUBE (Oct. 25, 2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1y-9c1lGuY; Letter
from Survie to Judge Choquet13-14, 29-30 (3 July 2015).
349
The video, courtesy of Mediapart, the French investigative journal, can be accessed at
https://iciabidjan.com/genocide-des-tutsis-au-rwanda-la-video-qui-accable-larmee-francaise/; see also Letter from
Survie to Judge Choquet 14-15 (3 July 2015); Deposition of Eric Meynier by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris
(26 June 2013) (noting the capacity in which Meynier served in Rwanda during Operation Turquoise).
350
Deposition of Eric Meynier by Direction Generale de la Police Nationale 5 (23 Jan. 2008).
351
Deposition of Eric Meynier by Direction Generale de la Police Nationale 5 (23 Jan. 2008).
352
See Deposition of Eric Meynier by Direction Generale de la Police Nationale 5 (23 Jan. 2008); Patrick de SaintExupéry, Rwanda: les assassins racontent leurs massacres [Rwanda: The Killers Recount Their Massacres], LE
FIGARO, 29 June 1994.
353
Deposition of Eric Meynier by Direction Générale de la Police Nationale 6 (23 Jan. 2008).
354
MIP Tome I 162.
355
Raymond Bonner, Grisly Discovery in Rwanda Leads French to Widen Role, N.Y. TIMES, 1 July 1994.
356
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE] 263-64 (2012).
357
Philippe Boisserie & Eric Maizy, Marin Gillier à Rwesero et Kirambo le 24 juin 1994 [Marin Gillier in Rwesera
and Kirambo 24 June 1994], FRANCE 2 (25 June 1994).
358
Report from Marin Gillier to Jacques Rosier (27 June 1994). Niyitegeka was found guilty of genocide, among other
charges, by the ICTR and sentenced to life imprisonment. Prosecutor v. Eliézer Niyitegeka, Case No. ICTR-96-14-A,
Judgement (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 9 July 2004).
Page | 498
Chapter X
359
Report from Marin Gillier to Jacques Rosier (27 June 1994).
360
Report from Marin Gillier to Jacques Rosier (27 June 1994).
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
361
Catherine Jentile, Affrontements à Kibuye le 27 juin 1994 [Clashes in Kibuye on 27 June 1994], TF1, 27 June 1994
(“Colonel Rosier, who is in charge of the plan here in the South, has given us, and more precisely it is 15 km [9 miles]
from the town of Kibuye that this clash took place, which started this morning at half past eleven and ended in the
early afternoon.”); JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 86-87 (2010) (“To
put it plainly, my men heard shots and were told that the RPF was not far away. This was happening in Rwanda, in
the vicinity of the Bisesero hill.’”).
362
Catherine Jentile, Affrontements à Kibuye le 27 juin 1994 [Clashes in Kibuye on 27 June 1994], TF1, 27 June 1994.
363
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”) (revealing that Lafourcade
had confirmed that armed men were in the area but did not know who the men were).
364
Unsigned report concerning the COS detachment’s discovery of Bisesero massacre (1 July 1994).
365
Jacques Morel, La découverte, l’abandon puis le sauvetage des Tutsi survivants de Bisesero [The Discovery,
Abandonment and then Rescue of Tutsi Survivors of Bisesero], RFI, 9 Feb. 2011.
366
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
367
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
368
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”) (emphasis added).
369
Michela Wrong, Présence FPR près du camp français à Gishyita [RPF Presence Near French Camp at Gishyita],
REUTERS, 29 June 1994.
370
Michela Wrong, Présence FPR près du camp français à Gishyita [RPF Presence Near French Camp at Gishyita],
REUTERS, 29 June 1994.
371
Michela Wrong, Présence FPR près du camp français à Gishyita [RPF Presence Near French Camp at Gishyita],
REUTERS, 29 June 1994.
372
Christian Millet, Le ministre de la défense constate au Rwanda la difficulté de l’opération “Turquoise” [Defense
Minister Notes the Difficulty of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda], AFP, 29 June 1994.
373
Christian Millet, Le ministre de la défense constate au Rwanda la difficulté de l’opération “Turquoise” [Defense
Minister Notes the Difficulty of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda], AFP, 29 June 1994.
374
Christian Millet, Le ministre de la défense constate au Rwanda la difficulté de l’opération “Turquoise” [Defense
Minister Notes the Difficulty of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda], AFP, 29 June 1994.
375
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 91-92 (2019)
376
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 92 (2019).
377
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 92 (2019).
378
Christian Millet, Le ministre de la défense constate au Rwanda la difficulté de l’opération “Turquoise” [Defense
Minister Notes the Difficulty of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda], AFP, 29 June 1994.
379
Deposition of Jacques Rosier by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 4 (8 July 2015) (emphasis added).
380
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (18 June 2013).
381
Deposition of Jean Marie Charpentier by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 4 (12 Sept. 2013) (“Question: In
your notebook, on 29 June, you mention of the visit of the minister of defense at 3:30 p.m., you mention: ‘Briefing on
the missions already carried out by the CPA 10 and on the intelligence gathered by the LCL Duval.’ Does this imply
debriefing reconnaissance on Bisesero? Answer: Of course.”).
382
Corine Lesnes, Une semaine après “le feu vert” de l’ONU à l’intervention française au Rwanda M. Léotard craint
de nouvelles difficultés pour le dispositif “Turquoise” [One Week after the U.N. Gives the “Green Light” for French
Intervention in Rwanda, Mr. Léotard Fears New Difficulties for the “Turquoise” Contingent], LE MONDE, 1 July
1994.
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
383
Corine Lesnes, Une semaine après “le feu vert” de l’ONU à l’intervention française au Rwanda M. Léotard craint
de nouvelles difficultés pour le dispositif “Turquoise” [One Week after the U.N. Gives the “Green Light” for French
Intervention in Rwanda, Mr. Léotard Fears New Difficulties for the “Turquoise” Contingent], LE MONDE, 1 July
1994.
384
Corine Lesnes, Une semaine après “le feu vert” de l’ONU à l’intervention française au Rwanda M. Léotard craint
de nouvelles difficultés pour le dispositif “Turquoise” [One Week after the U.N. Gives the “Green Light” for French
Intervention in Rwanda, Mr. Léotard Fears New Difficulties for the “Turquoise” Contingent], LE MONDE, 1 July
1994.
385
Unsigned report concerning the COS detachment’s discovery of Bisesero massacre (1 July 1994).
386
Memorandum from Marin Gillier (30 June 1998) (Subject: “Turquoise: intervention à Bisesero”) (emphasis added).
387
Report from Marin Gillier to Jacques Rosier (27 June 1994).
388
Deposition of Michel Peyrard by Police Judiciaire 5 (1 June 2006).
389
French Memorandum from unknown author (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du 30 juin
1994”).
390
Deposition of Christopher Boisbouvier by Police Judiciaire (16 June 2006).
391
Deposition of Christopher Boisbouvier by Police Judiciaire (16 June 2006).
392
Deposition of Christopher Boisbouvier by Police Judiciaire (16 June 2006).
393
See, e.g., Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 5 (18 June 2013) (“We were
instructed to avoid contact with any belligerents, that is, the RPF, the FAR, and the militias. Because to clash with one
would be interpreted as taking sides with the other. . . . I couldn’t allow myself to even leave a group of six whose
lives were at risk.”); Deposition of Jacques Rosier by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (8 July 2015).
394
See, e.g., Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 5-6 (18 June 2013) (describing
his presentation to Minister Léotard on 29 June in a school classroom); see also Deposition of Eric Meynier by
Direction Generale de la Police Nationale (23 Jan. 2008) (commenting that Minister Léotard’s visit may have
contributed to the apparent breakdown in communication).
395
See, e.g., Annotated Transcript, Day 2, International Decision-Making in the Age of Genocide: Rwanda 19901994, THE HAGUE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE 71-72 (2 June 2014) (discussing French NGOs’ “aggressive media
campaign on the theme of” French responsibility for the upheaval in Rwanda).
396
See, e.g., Patrick de Saint Exupery, Le role de la France au Rwanda en question [France’s Role in Rwanda in
Question], LE FIGARO, 18 Mar. 2006; Vincent Hugeux, Dix ans après le genocide: Retour à Bisesero [Ten Years After
the Genocide: Return to Bisesero], L’EXPRESS, 12 Apr. 2004.
397
Deposition of Jean-Rémy Duval by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 10 (18 June 2013).
398
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon”).
399
Letter from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda –
Réunion à Matignon”).
400
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
401
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
402
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
403
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
404
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
405
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
406
See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 7 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008) (“The Defence has . . . advanced a number of alternative explanations for the
events which unfolded. One of them is based on the view that it was the RPF which shot down President Juvénal
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
Habyarimana’s plane on 6 April 1994, and that this event, together with other factors, triggered spontaneous
killings.”).
407
Decision No. 51/2016 of the Cour d’Assises de la Seine-Saint-Denis siégeant à Bobigny in the appeal of Pascal
Senyamuhara Safari alias Pascal Simbikangwa 7 (3 Dec. 2016) (finding that the Genocide was the product of a
“concerted plan”).
408
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
409
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (10 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Situation dans l’Ex-Yugoslavie, Situation au
Rwanda”); see FIDH REPORT 3-4 (1993).
410
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (10 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Situation dans l’Ex-Yugoslavie, Situation au
Rwanda”).
411
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (10 Mar. 1993) (Subject: “Situation dans l’Ex-Yugoslavie, Situation au
Rwanda”).
412
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye concerning President François Mitterrand’s meeting with President Yoweri
Museveni (1 July 1994) (Subject: “entretien avec Museveni”).
413
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye concerning President François Mitterrand’s meeting with President Yoweri
Museveni (1 July 1994) (Subject: “entretien avec Museveni”); see Press Conference, Conférence de presse de
Monsieur François Mitterrand (15 Oct. 1990).
414
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye concerning President François Mitterrand’s meeting with President Yoweri
Museveni (1 July 1994) (Subject: “entretien avec Museveni”).
415
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Entretiens avec
Museveni”).
416
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Entretiens avec
Museveni”).
417
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Entretiens avec
Museveni”).
418
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye concerning President François Mitterrand’s meeting with President Yoweri
Museveni (1 July 1994) (Subject: “entretien avec Museveni”).
419
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye concerning President François Mitterrand’s meeting with President Yoweri
Museveni (1 July 1994) (Subject: “entretien avec Museveni”).
420
Meeting Notes from Bruno Delaye concerning President François Mitterrand’s meeting with President Yoweri
Museveni (1 July 1994) (Subject: “entretien avec Museveni”).
421
See François Mitterrand pour une représentation africaine au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU [François Mitterrand
for African Representation on the UN Security Council], AFP, 1 July 1994.
422
See Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject:
“Votre entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 29 juin 1994”) (noting that Prime Minister
Balladur on 27 June 1994 authorized an extension of the Operation Turquoise detachment’s area of operation);
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda –
Réunion à Matignon”) (noting that Balladur asked Defense Minister Léotard to authorize operations in Gikongoro and
Butare).
423
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 13-14 (2018).
424
Report from Jacques Hogard (22 Aug. 1994).
425
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 17 (2018); see also Mehdi Ba,
Guillaume Ancel: “L’histoire mythique de l’opération Turquoise ne correspond pas à la réalité” [Guillaume Ancel:
“The Mythical History of Operation Turquoise Does Not Correspond to Reality”], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 7 Apr. 2014
(discussing the preparatory order, but saying he received it “around June 24”). Memo by Guillaume Ancel (15 Sept.
1994). This is not mentioned in Ancel’s after action report.
Page | 501
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
426
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 22 (2018).
427
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 23 (2018).
428
Mehdi Ba, Guillaume Ancel: “L’histoire mythique de l’opération Turquoise ne correspond pas à la réalité”
[Guillaume Ancel: “The Mythical History of Operation Turquoise Does Not Correspond to Reality”], JEUNE AFRIQUE,
7 Apr. 2014.
429
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 42 (2018).
430
Restricted Council Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”).
431
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”) (inferring, on the basis of
communications between the RPF and Dallaire, that the RPF intended “to continue its action as far as the borders of
Burundi and Zaire”).
432
See GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 42-43, 49 (2018); Mehdi
Ba, Guillaume Ancel: “L’histoire mythique de l’opération Turquoise ne correspond pas à la réalité” [Guillaume
Ancel: “The Mythical History of Operation Turquoise Does Not Correspond to Reality”], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 7 Apr.
2014.
433
See GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 44-45 (2018); Mehdi Ba,
Guillaume Ancel: “L’histoire mythique de l’opération Turquoise ne correspond pas à la réalité” [Guillaume Ancel:
“The Mythical History of Operation Turquoise Does Not Correspond to Reality”], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 7 Apr. 2014.
434
See GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 49-50 (2018); Mehdi Ba,
Guillaume Ancel: “L’histoire mythique de l’opération Turquoise ne correspond pas à la réalité” [Guillaume Ancel:
“The Mythical History of Operation Turquoise Does Not Correspond to Reality”], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 7 Apr. 2014.
435
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 50 (2018).
436
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 50 (2018).
437
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 50-51 (2018).
438
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to Jacques Lanxade (3 July 1994) (Subject: “zone humanitaire
sûre”) (“Here are the new boundaries of the safe humanitarian zone that I will propose to the RPF.”); ROMÉO
DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 457-58 (2003) (noting that Dallaire and Kagame each received copies of
the French proposal).
439
See Letter from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (12 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Communiqué”); Deposition of Jacques Rosier
by Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (20 May 2015); Jean Guisnel, Rwanda 1994: “Il n’a jamais été question
d’un raid sur Kigali!” [Rwanda 1994: “There Was Never a Question About a Raid on Kigali!”], LE POINT, 9 Apr.
2014.
440
Jean Guisnel, Rwanda 1994: “Il n’a jamais été question d’un raid sur Kigali!” [Rwanda 1994: “There Was Never
a Question About a Raid on Kigali!”], LE POINT, 9 Apr. 2014.
441
Jean Guisnel, Rwanda 1994: “Il n’a jamais été question d’un raid sur Kigali!” [Rwanda 1994: “There Was Never
a Question About a Raid on Kigali!”], LE POINT, 9 Apr. 2014.
442
Jean Guisnel, Rwanda 1994: “Il n’a jamais été question d’un raid sur Kigali!” [Rwanda 1994: “There Was Never
a Question About a Raid on Kigali!”], LE POINT, 9 Apr. 2014.
443
Philip Gourevitch, The Life After, THE NEW YORKER 44 (4 May 2009).
444
LFM Interview with Paul Rwarakabije.
445
LFM Interview with Paul Rwarakabije.
446
LFM Interview with Paul Rwarakabije.
447
LFM Interview with Paul Rwarakabije.
448
LFM Interview with Paul Rwarakabije.
449
LFM Interview with Paul Rwarakabije.
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
450
Yves Debay, L’Opération “Turquoise” au Rwanda [Operation “Turquoise” in Rwanda], RAIDS MAGAZINE NO.
101 5 (Oct. 1994).
451
See Cable from ARMEES CENTOPS PARIS to COMFOR TURQUOISE (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Communiqué
– Rwanda”) (noting the arrival of the Jaguar fighter jets); Report from Raymond Germanos (29 June 1994) (Subject:
“Operation Turquoise – Point de situation du 29 juin 1994”) (noting the arrival of the Mirage F1 CT aircraft).
452
See Letter from Claude Dusaidi to President of the United Nations Security Council (1 July 1994); New Zealand
diplomatic cable from New York to Wellington (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
453
New Zealand diplomatic cable from New York to Wellington (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”);
see Letter from Claude Dusaidi to President of the United Nations Security Council (1 July 1994); Press Release,
Rwandese Patriotic Front (1 July 1994).
454
See Fax from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan 2 (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Daily Sitrep 300600B June to 301800B
June 94”); Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de
Situation”).
455
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”);
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 448-50 (2003) (Dallaire had told Lafourcade during a visit to
Goma the previous day that “Butare was in essence in RPF hands.”).
456
See Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions possibles au Rwanda”) (listing
Butare among the locales the RPF forces might target after seizing Kigali); Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25
June 1994) (Subject: “Ordre d’opération No. 1”) (raising the possibility that the RPF might seize Butare).
457
Raymond Bonner, French Establish a Base in Rwanda to Block Rebels, N.Y. TIMES, 5 July 1994.
458
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 29 juin 1994”).
459
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 29 juin 1994”).
460
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Réunion à
Matignon”).
461
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (30 June 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Réunion à
Matignon”).
462
Fax from Roméo Dallaire to Kofi Annan (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Special Sitrep”).
463
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 450-51 (2003).
464
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 450 (2003).
465
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 451 (2003).
466
Report from Aérienne Regnault (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Situation à Butare”).
467
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 136 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
468
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 136 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
469
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 137-138 (2011).
470
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 137-38 (2011); see Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (30 June
1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 30/06/1994 à 18H00”) (“Tensions are mounting in Butare where the militias
could resume their abuses in the event of a pronounced threat from the RPF (20 to 30 assassinations of Tutsis are
committed there each night).”); JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 112
(2010) (“The RPF’s infiltration throughout the front line and in particular in the center and south of the country raises
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22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
fears that, in the coming hours, there will be an increase in Hutu militia abuses in the Butare region, where many
camps and religious communities are particularly at risk.”).
471
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 137-38 (2011).
472
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
473
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”);
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
474
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”);
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to unknown (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”); Report from
Raymond Germanos to EMA COIA (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 02 juillet
1994”).
475
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
476
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
477
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
478
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
479
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”);
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade to unknown (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
480
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 112, 129-30 (2010).
481
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (2 July 1994) (“[T]here remains a large
number of [refugees] in Butare whose evacuation will be very difficult given the current positions of the RPF.”); JEANCLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 111 (2010) (“[T]he RPF’s advance can only
lead to further massacres, especially in Butare.”).
482
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (2 July 1994).
483
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade to EMA COIA CCR (2 July 1994).
484
See Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”); Report from Raymond
Germanos to EMA COIA (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 02 juillet 1994”).
485
Memorandum from the French Directorate of Military Intelligence (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de
situation du 2 juillet 1994”).
486
Report from Raymond Germanos to EMA COIA (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation
du 02 juillet 1994”).
487
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
488
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
489
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
490
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
491
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
492
See Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Évolutions possible au Rwanda”);
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Éléments pour une solution politique au Rwanda”).
493
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
494
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
495
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Éléments pour une solution politique au
Rwanda”).
496
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Éléments pour une solution politique au
Rwanda”).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
497
Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (1 July 1994) (Subject: “Éléments pour une solution politique au
Rwanda”).
498
Memorandum from Admiral Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
499
Memorandum from Admiral Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
500
Note from François Mitterand to Bruno Delaye (2 July 1994).
501
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
502
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994 from the
Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994)).
503
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (1 July 1994) (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994
from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994)). Mérimée
cited, specifically, Resolution 925 of 8 June 1994 and Resolution 929 of 22 June 1994. Id.
504
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (1 July 1994) (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994
from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994)).
505
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (1 July 1994) (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994
from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994)).
506
GABRIEL PERIES & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUETE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GENOCIDE RWANDAIS
[A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 331 (2007).
507
GABRIEL PERIES & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE: ENQUÊTE SUR LES ORIGINES DU GENOCIDE RWANDAIS
[A DARK WAR: INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE] 331-32 (2007).
508
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (1 July 1994) (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994
from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994)).
509
See La France établit une zone de sécurité contestée par le FPR qu’elle entend défendre par les armes [France
Creates a Safe Zone, Disputed by the RPF, which It Plans to Defend by Force of Arms], AFP, 4 July 1994 (reporting
that the SHZ would cover roughly one-fifth of Rwanda and one-third of the territory under the IRG’s control); La zone
humanitaire sûre “est créée,” selon l’amiral Lanxade [The Safe Humanitarian Zone “Has Been Created,” According
to Admiral Lanxade], AFP, 4 July 1994 (reporting that the SHZ would cover roughly one-fifth of Rwandan territory).
510
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (1 July 1994) (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994
from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994)).
511
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda–Zaïre–France Éléments de
situation militaire”) (reporting that the RPF “was apparently wishing to continue its offensive on Gikongoro” and
speculating that its “next objectives . . . would be Kibuye and Cyangugu”).
512
Letter from Jean-Bertrand Mérimée to the UN Secretary-General (1 July 1994) (Annex to Letter Dated 2 July 1994
from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/798 (6 July 1994));
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec M.
Léotard le 27 juin à 17 heures. Situation”).
513
Fiche Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation”).
514
Fiche Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation”).
515
Fiche Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation”).
516
See Fiche Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation”); Cable
from COMFOR TURQUOISE to ARMEES CENTOPS PARIS (4 July 1994) (Subject: “compte rendu quotidien du”).
517
See Raymond Bonner, French Force in Skirmish in Rwanda, N.Y. TIMES, 4 July 1994; DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA:
JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS]
141 (2011).
518
See Alain Frilet, La France a décidé de créer une “Zone humanitaire sûre” dans le sud-ouest du Rwanda [France
Decided to Create a “Safe Humanitarian Zone” in the South-West of Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 4 July 1994; DIDIER
Page | 505
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE
AND ITS SOLDIERS] 141 (2011).
519
See Alain Frilet, La France a décidé de créer une “zone humanitaire sûre” dans le sud-ouest du Rwanda [France
Decided to Create a “Safe Humanitarian Zone” in the South-West of Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 4 July 1994; DIDIER
TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE
AND ITS SOLDIERS] 141-42 (2011).
520
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 142 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
521
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 142 (2011).
522
See Alain Frilet, La France a décidé de créer une “zone humanitaire sûre” dans le sud-ouest du Rwanda [France
Decided to Create a “Safe Humanitarian Zone” in the South-West of Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 4 July 1994; DIDIER
TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE FOR FRANCE
AND ITS SOLDIERS] 142 (2011).
523
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 142 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
524
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 143 (2011). The French response included machine gun fire. See Alain Frilet, La
France a décidé de créer une “zone humanitaire sûre” dans le sud-ouest du Rwanda [France Decided to Create a
“Safe Humanitarian Zone” in the South-West of Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 4 July 1994.
FOR
525
526
Raymond Bonner, French Force in Skirmish in Rwanda, N.Y. TIMES, 4 July 1994.
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 143 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
527
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: Une mission sur le fil du rasoir [Rwanda: A Mission on the Razor’s Edge], LE MONDE, 5
July 1994.
528
See La zone humanitaire sûre “est créée”, selon l’amiral Lanxade [The Safe Humanitarian Zone “Has Been
Created,” According to Admiral Lanxade], AFP, 4 July 1994 (reporting that Admiral Lanxade announced the creation
of the SHZ at a press briefing on 4 July 1994); Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance,
REUTERS, 4 July 1994 (reporting both on the decision to establish the SHZ and on the exchange of gunfire in Butare).
529
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994.
530
Cable from Jacques Lanxade to COMFOR TURQUOISE (4 July 1994) (“Secundo: Directive de Communication”).
531
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Réunion du 4 juillet
1994”).
532
New Zealand diplomatic cable from Wellington to New York (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
533
New Zealand diplomatic cable from Wellington to New York (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
534
New Zealand diplomatic cable from Wellington to New York (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
535
New Zealand diplomatic cable from Wellington to New York (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”).
536
See, e.g., Memorandum from Peter Fromuth and Laurie Shestack to Karl Inderfurth (5 July 1994) (stating that
“Paris’ decision to establish a secure humanitarian zone in the contested area of southwestern Rwanda creates a defacto interpositionary force” and commenting that, while US Department of State officials “understand” the decision,
they remain “anxious to assure that this does not lead to conflict with RPF forces”) (memorandum partially redacted).
537
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Votre entretien avec le
Premier ministre, mercredi 6 juillet – Situation”).
538
See, e.g., Raymond Bonner, French Force in Skirmish in Rwanda, N.Y. TIMES, 4 July 1994; La France établit une
zone de sécurité contestée par le FPR qu’elle entend défendre par les armes [France Creates a Safe Zone, Disputed
by the RPF, which it Plans to Defend by Force of Arms], AFP, 4 July 1994.
Page | 506
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
539
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du
04 juillet 1994”); ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 459 (2003).
540
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Note quotidienne de situation du
04 juillet 1994”).
541
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 459 (2003).
542
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
543
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
544
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
545
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
546
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
547
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
548
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
549
French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”)
(presumably from François Descoueyte, French Ambassador to Uganda).
550
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994; see François Luizet,
La France décide de s’interposer [France Decides to Intervene], LE FIGARO, 5 July 1994.
551
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994.
552
DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS
FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 146 (2011).
[RWANDA: I DEMAND JUSTICE
553
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994; see François Luizet,
La France décide de s’interposer [France Decides to Intervene], LE FIGARO, 5 July 1994.
554
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994.
555
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994.
556
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 357 (2019).
557
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 357 (2019).
558
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994.
559
Michela Wrong, France Promises to Halt Rwandan Rebel Advance, REUTERS, 4 July 1994.
560
Telephone interview by LFM with William Bellamy. A 5 July 1994 article in the New York Times reported, along
similar lines, that the SHZ’s purpose was “to prevent the rebels’ westward advance,” quoting a French Army captain
as saying, “It is a line in the sand.” Raymond Bonner, French Establish a Base in Rwanda to Block Rebels, N.Y.
TIMES, 5 July 1994.
561
Telephone interview by LFM with William Bellamy.
562
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda:
Restricted Committee of 4 July 1994”) (“A communication effort must be made so that the media does not interpret
our position as being hostile to the RPF.”).
563
Joint press conference by François Mitterrand and Nelson Mandela Africa (5 July 1994).
Page | 507
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
564
Duclert Commission Report 461. Tauzin has denied that his public comments had anything to do with his
repatriation. DIDIER TAUZIN, RWANDA: JE DEMANDE JUSTICE POUR LA FRANCE ET SES SOLDATS [RWANDA: I DEMAND
JUSTICE FOR FRANCE AND ITS SOLDIERS] 149 (2011).
565
Memorandum from Jacques Lanxade (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise”).
566
Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba.
567
Two Emissaries from Paris Are in Charge of Contacts with the RPF and the Interim Government, AFP, 29 June
1994. The Quai d’Orsay had announced its selection of Gérard for the role on 29 June 1994, as part of an initiative in
which it also tapped another former French ambassador to serve as an emissary to the RPF. Id. The emissary to the
RPF was Ambassador Jacques Warin, a former French permanent representative to the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization. See id.; Décret du 2 septembre 1992 portant nomination d’un ambassadeur, représentant permanent de
la France auprès de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture à Rome [Decree of 2
September 1992 Appointing an Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization in Rome] (5 Sept. 1992). A Quai d’Orsay spokesman explained at the time that France was
“anxious to keep in touch with all parties.” Two Emissaries from Paris Are in Charge of Contacts with the RPF and
the Interim Government, AFP, 29 June 1994.
568
Cable from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”).
569
See, e.g., Cable from Madeleine Albright to the American Embassy Paris (23 June 1994) (Subject: “French Action
to Stop Rwandan Radio Broadcasts”); RENÉ DEGNI-SÉGUI, SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR OF THE COMMISSION ON HUMAN
RIGHTS, REPORT ON THE SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN RWANDA ¶ 59, E/CN.4/1995/7 (28 June 1994).
570
RENÉ DEGNI-SÉGUI, SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR OF THE COMMISSION ON
OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN RWANDA ¶ 59, E/CN.4/1995/7 (28 June 1994).
HUMAN RIGHTS, REPORT ON THE SITUATION
571
See Press Release, United Nations, Secretary-General Demands End to Hostile Radio Broadcasts against UNAMIR
Force Commander (28 June 1994); Fiche Particuliere No 18921/N (30 June 1994); New Zealand Cable from New
York to Wellington (27 June 1994).
572
Transcript, Radio RTLM (25 June 1994) (exhibit in Case No. ICTR-99-52-T).
573
Notes on TD Diplomatie (Subject: “Rwanda – Émission de la radio ‘mille collines’”) (30 June 1994).
574
Notes on TD Diplomatie (Subject: “Rwanda – Émission de la radio ‘mille collines’”) (30 June 1994).
575
Ferdinand Nahimana se défend d’avoir eu un contrôle sur la RTLM [Ferdinand Nahimana Denies Having Had a
Control over RTLM], JUSTICEINFO.NET, (26 Aug. 2002).
576
Notes on TD Diplomatie (Subject: “Rwanda – Émission de la radio ‘mille collines’”) (30 June 1994).
577
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec MM. Jérôme Bicamumpaka et Ferdinand
Nahimana (Fondateur de la Radio des Mille Collines)”); Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Safe
humanitarian zone”).
578
See Cable from Roméo Dallaire to Maurice Baril (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Radio report”) (showing that RTLM
attacks on Dallaire continued on 3 July 1994, the day after Gérard’s first meeting with Nahimana).
579
See Cable from French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Quelques Commentaires sur les
Questions en Cours”); Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche on
French humanitarian zone in Rwanda”).
580
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (2 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec MM. Jérôme Bicamumpaka et Ferdinand
Nahimana (Fondateur de la Radio des Mille Collines)”) (reporting that IRG Foreign Minister Jérôme Bicamumpaka,
who joined Nahimana at the 2 July meeting, pressed Gérard to agree to set up “working contacts with [French officials]
in regard to” Operation Turquoise); Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Safe humanitarian zone”)
(reporting that on 3 July, during Gérard’s meeting with President Sindikubwabo and other officials, Mathieu
Ngirumpatse “expressed his wish that France help the FAR in their fight against the RPF”).
581
Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Safe humanitarian zone”).
582
Édouard Karemera & Matthieu Ngirumpatse v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-44-A, Appeals Judgement (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 29 Sept. 2014).
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Chapter X
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583
Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Safe humanitarian zone”) (reporting that on 3 July, during
Gérard’s meeting with President Sindikubwabo and other officials, Mathieu Ngirumpatse “expressed his wish that
France help the FAR in their fight against the RPF”).
584
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Safe humanitarian zone”) (reporting that Gérard delivered
a presentation about the plan to establish the SHZ).
585
Cable from Yannick Gérard (3 July 1994) (Subject: “Safe humanitarian zone”).
586
Cable from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”).
587
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (9 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche de Trois Personnalities Politiques”); Cable
from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”).
588
Cable from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”).
589
Cable from Catherine Boivineau (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Relations avec les Autorités de Gisenyi”).
590
Cable from Yannick Gérard (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Relations avec les Autorités de Gisenyi et avec les
Autorités Locales”).
591
Cable from Yannick Gérard (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Relations avec les Autorités de Gisenyi et avec les
Autorites Locales”).
592
Cable from Yannick Gérard (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Relations avec les Autorités de Gisenyi et avec les
Autorités Locales”).
593
Cable from Yannick Gérard (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Relations avec les Autorités de Gisenyi et avec les
Autorités Locales”).
594
Cable from Yannick Gérard, French Liaison to IRG (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 juin
au 25 juillet”); see also Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”)
(“Under these conditions, it does not seem desirable to maintain contacts with the Gisenyi personalities.”).
595
Cable from Yannick Gérard (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation au Matin du 7 Juillet”).
596
Cable from Yannick Gérard (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation au Matin du 7 Juillet”).
597
See, e.g., Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (8 July 1994) (Subject: “GOF More Confident on
Rwanda”) (stressing “a need to restart the Arusha process as quickly as possible”).
598
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”);
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”); JEAN-CLAUDE
LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE 119 (2010).
599
Augustin Bizimungu v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-00-56B-A, Appeals Judgement ¶¶ 175, 186, 194, 201-02 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 30 June 2014).
600
Augustin Bizimungu v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-00-56B-A, Appeals Judgement ¶ 409 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 30 June 2014).
601
Cable from Yannick Gérard (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Point de Situation au Matin du 7 Juillet”).
602
Cable from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”).
603
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]); Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le
Général Dallaire du 6 juillet 1994”).
604
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]).
605
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]).
606
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
607
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]).
608
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]).
609
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]).
610
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Rencontre du Général Germanos avec le
Général Bisimungu” [sic]). Later that day, in a meeting with UNAMIR Force Commander Dallaire, Bizimungu
inquired whether, in the event of a cease-fire, both UNAMIR and the Operation Turquoise troops could operate as
observers and verify that neither side was violating the cease-fire. When Dallaire and UNAMIR’s political adviser
replied that they did not believe cease-fire monitoring and verification was within Turquoise’s mandate, Bizimungu
explained “that he had suggested the involvement of Operation Turquoise because the Rwandese population did not
have confidence in the impartiality and neutrality of UNAMIR, and in particular General Dallaire.” Memorandum
from Sammy Kum Buo (9 July 1994) (Subject: “Force Commander’s Visit to Goma, Zaire, on 6 July 1994”).
Evidently, Bizimungu believed Rwandans would feel comfortable entrusting the responsibility to French soldiers.
611
Cable from Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet). Notably,
some other FAR generals did disassociate themselves from the IRG in mid-July 1994. See Memorandum from the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Réunion du 11 juillet 1994”). General Dallaire
suggested to General Lafourcade on 14 July that it would be better to present some of the dissident generals, rather
than Bizimungu, as “valid interlocutors” with the RPF. Lafourcade disagreed, writing in a memo: “I told him my
reservations about this scenario, [in] which the dissident generals seem to me to have no authority over the FAR and
are considered traitors.” Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le
Général Dallaire”).
612
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 473 (2003).
613
COMMISSION D’ENQUÊTE CITYOENNE, L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU VISAGE: L’ÉTAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GÉNOCIDE
[THE HORROR THAT STRIKES US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 77 (2005).
614
See Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶¶ 70-71 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008).
615
See Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 70 (Int’l Crim.
Trib. for Rwanda 18 Dec. 2008); Curriculum Vitae of Col. Nsengiyumva Anatole ¶¶ 26-28 (exhibit in Case No. ICTR98-41-T).
616
Théoneste Bagosora & Anatole Nsengiyumva v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeals Judgement (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
617
Cable from Yannick Gérard, French Liaison to IRG (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin
au 25 Juillet”).
618
Letter from Gerald Gahima to President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
619
Letter from Gerald Gahima to President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
620
Letter from Gerald Gahima to President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
621
See, e.g., Memorandum from Jean-Michel Marlaud (27 June 1994) (Subject: “Evolutions possible au Rwanda”)
(predicting that the RPF’s advance would present a risk of “massacres and the influx of hundreds of thousands of
displaced persons”); Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (28 June 1994)
(Subject: “Votre entretien avec le Premier ministre et Conseil restreint, Mercredi 29 juin 1994”) (asserting that a
“massive” RPF attack outside of Kigali “would provoke an uncontrollable flood of refugees”); Restricted Council
Meeting Notes (29 June 1994) (Subject: “Situation au Rwanda”) (quoting Lanxade as saying, “The push of the RPF
will cause a Hutu exodus, the flight of populations to the West”).
622
Jean-Philippe Ceppi, Les Rebelles Rwandais Prets au Dialogue avec la France [Rwandan Rebels Ready for
Dialogue with France], LE MONDE, 6 July 1994.
Page | 510
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
623
Jean-Philippe Ceppi, Les Rebelles Rwandais Prets au Dialogue avec la France [Rwandan Rebels Ready for
Dialogue with France], LE MONDE, 6 July 1994.
624
See, e.g., Half a Million Rwandans Cross Zaire Border in 2 Days, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 16 July 1994 (“No evidence
of reprisals has surfaced.”).
625
Letter from Paul Kagame to Jean-Claude Lafourcade (10 July 1994).
626
Letter from Paul Kagame to Jean-Claude Lafourcade (10 July 1994).
627
Raymond Bonner, France Backs Away from Battle in Rwanda, N.Y. TIMES, 6 July 1994; see Memorandum from
Dominique Pin to Anne Lauvergeon (5 July 1994).
628
Letter from Gerald Gahima to President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
629
Rwanda Rebels Plan Government, Reportedly OK Pact with French, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 6 July 1994; see Peace
Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, Rw. - RPF, 4 Aug.
1993.
630
Raymond Bonner, France Backs Away from Battle in Rwanda, N.Y. TIMES, 6 July 1994.
631
Transcription of archival document by Mehdi Ba quoting Note from Jean-Pierre Huchon to the minister of
cooperation (5 July 1994), reproduced in COMMISSION D’ENQUETE CITYOENNE, L’HORREUR QUI NOUS PREND AU
VISAGE: L’ETAT FRANÇAIS ET LE GENOCIDE [THE HORROR THAT STRIKES US IN THE FACE: THE FRENCH STATE AND THE
GENOCIDE IN RWANDA] 494 (2005); see Duclert Commission Report 881 (citing ADIPLO, 415COOP/1194, Note
« sous couvert de Monsieur le Directeur de Cabinet ». « Réévaluation de notre stratégie »).
632
Duclert Commission Report 881 (quoting ADIPLO, 415COOP/1194, Note « sous couvert de Monsieur le Directeur
de Cabinet ». « Réévaluation de notre stratégie »).
633
Duclert Commission Report 880 (quoting ADIPLO, 415COOP/1194, Note « sous couvert de Monsieur le Directeur
de Cabinet ». « Réévaluation de notre stratégie »).
634
see Duclert Commission Report 881 (quoting ADIPLO, 415COOP/1194, Note « sous couvert de Monsieur le
Directeur de Cabinet ». « Réévaluation de notre stratégie »).
635
Fiche Particuliere No. 18997 (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Le FPR Joue la Carte Politique”).
636
Fiche Particuliere No. 18997 (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Le FPR Joue la Carte Politique”).
637
See Jean-Philippe Ceppi, Les Rebelles Rwandais Prets au Dialogue avec la France [Rwandan Rebels Ready for
Dialogue with France], LE MONDE, 6 July 1994; French diplomatic cable (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Entretien avec le
Président Museveni et Paul Kagame (4 juillet)”).
638
Jean-Philippe Ceppi, Les Rebelles Rwandais Prets au Dialogue avec la France [Rwandan Rebels Ready for
Dialogue with France], LE MONDE, 6 July 1994.
639
Jean-Philippe Ceppi, Les Rebelles Rwandais Prets au Dialogue avec la France [Rwandan Rebels Ready for
Dialogue with France], LE MONDE, 6 July 1994.
640
See, e.g., Fiche Particuliere No. 18972, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Le
FPR joue la carte politique”).
641
Fiche Particuliere No. 18972, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Le FPR joue
la carte politique”).
642
Faustin Twagiramungu: les forces françaises doivent avoir quitté le Rwanda fin juillet [Faustin Twagiramungu:
French Forces Must Leave Rwanda by the End of July], AFP,7 July 1994.
643
Faustin Twagiramungu: les forces françaises doivent avoir quitté le Rwanda fin juillet [Faustin Twagiramungu:
French Forces Must Leave Rwanda by the End of July], AFP,7 July 1994.
644
See, e.g., Raymond Bonner, French Establish a Base in Rwanda to Block Rebels, N.Y. TIMES, 5 July 1994
(“Rwandan Government Troops moved freely throughout the area today, and a checkpoint less than a mile from the
French base was manned by militiamen with machetes, rifles and grenades.”). A DGSE report in August 1994
Page | 511
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
acknowledged that “most of the former Presidential Guard (PG) had taken refuge in the Safe Humanitarian Zone.”
Duclert Commission Report 630 (quoting DGSE/Diffusion, Fiche particulière no19229/N du 11 août 1994).
645
French intelligence report (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de Situation du 06 juillet 1994”).
646
Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Attitude des FAR”).
647
Cable from Yannick Gérard (9 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Point de la Situation au Matin du 9 juillet”).
648
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Zone humanitaire protégée”) (“The
principle laid down by France is that the area must not be used as a rear base for the FAR.”).
649
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Modalités de déploiement de la force
Turquoise dans la zone humanitaire sure (ZHS)”).
650
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Modalités de déploiement de la force
Turquoise dans la zone humanitaire sure (ZHS)”).
651
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Modalités de déploiement de la force
Turquoise dans la zone humanitaire sure (ZHS)”).
652
Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
653
Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
654
Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
655
Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
656
Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
657
Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
658
French intelligence report (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu d’activté Kibuye le 8 juillet 1994”).
659
French intelligence report (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu d’activté Kibuye le 8 juillet 1994”).
660
French intelligence report (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu d’activté Kibuye le 8 juillet 1994”).
661
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation
du 07 juillet 1994”).
662
As noted above, in his end-of-mission report, Colonel Patrice Sartre noted that the mission orders provided no
instruction on what to do if French forces apprehended someone who posed a threat to them or civilians. See Report
from Patrice Sartre 10, 12 (24 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rapport de fin de mission Turquoise du Chef de corps du GIAR”).
663
See Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de
situation du 07 juillet 1994”) (reporting that, as of 7 July 1994, France had just 1,500 troops in Rwanda and 1,055 in
Zaire); Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche on French
humanitarian zone in Rwanda”) (“[France] does not administer the territory, which it considers to be the responsibility
of local Rwandan authorities.”).
664
As noted above, Yannick Gérard and local leaders in the SHZ acknowledged the need to have contact with local
authorities in the SHZ in order “to ensure that Operation Turquoise runs smoothly,” but also observed that all of them
were criminals who would have to be arrested in due course and brought to justice as soon as possible. Cable from
Yannick Gérard (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Report de Mission a Goma: 30 Juin au 25 Juillet”); Cable from Yannick
Gérard (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Relations avec les Autorités de Gisenyi et avec les Autorités Locales”).
665
JACQUES LANXADE, QUAND LE MONDE A BASCULÉ [WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN] 93 (2001) 179-80
(2001).
666
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt. Babbitt was on a temporary assignment. He had flown in from Brazzaville,
Republic of the Congo, where he was serving as the US defense attaché, to embed himself for roughly two weeks with
the Turquoise forces and report his observations about the refugee crisis back to Washington.
667
French Situation Report (6 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 6/7/94”) (predicting that if Turquoise troops delivered
suspected killers to the Gendarmerie “they will probably be [set] free”); Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le
général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone
Page | 512
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the
RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone], LE MONDE, 9 July 1994 (stating the French troops
handed militia members over to the FAR, rather than to the Gendarmerie, “to be sure they were not released”).
668
French Situation Report (6 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 6/7/94”).
669
French Situation Report (6 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 6/7/94”).
670
French Situation Report (6 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 6/7/94”).
671
French Situation Report (6 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 6/7/94”).
672
Letter from Gerald Gahima to the President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
673
Letter from Gerald Gahima to the President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
674
Letter from Gerald Gahima to the President of the UN Security Council (6 July 1994).
675
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda; concept de zone humanitaire
protégée; contenu, évolution”).
676
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
677
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (4 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda; concept de zone humanitaire
protégée; contenu, évolution”).
678
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
679
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 807 (2019).
680
See Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand and Hubert Védrine (7 July
1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (asserting that disarming the FAR and militias inside the SHZ “is not within our mandate
and we do not have the means”); Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994.
681
See Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand and Hubert Védrine (7 July
1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
682
See Chris McGreal, Rwandan Troops Pack French Safe Haven, GUARDIAN, 7 July 1994; DANIELA KROSLAK, THE
FRENCH BETRAYAL OF RWANDA 263-64 (2008).
683
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 457 (2003); see also Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 July 1994)
(Subject: “Rwanda. Point de Situation (Matin 10 juillet)”) (“[T]he disarmament of militias cannot be arranged without
stirring up widespread reactions against Operation Turquoise.”).
684
Cable from Yannick Gérard (10 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda. Point de Situation (Matin 10 juillet)”) (“Unless it
were to provoke generalized reactions against Operation Turquoise, the disarming of militias cannot be made
systematic. It is currently done on a sporadic basis on occasions where militia threaten population groups.”).
685
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que
le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the
Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone],
LE MONDE, 9 July 1994; see French Situation Report (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Comtel General Lafourcade 7 Juillet –
08:15 Point de situation”).
686
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que
le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the
Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone],
LE MONDE, 9 July 1994.
687
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que
le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the
Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone],
LE MONDE, 9 July 1994.
688
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que
le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the
Page | 513
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone],
LE MONDE, 9 July 1994.
689
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que
le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the
Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone],
LE MONDE, 9 July 1994.
690
See Cable from Shaharyar Khan to Kofi Annan (6 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Weekly Sitrep Period Covering 29 Aug
to 04 Sep 94”); Memorandum from American Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 Aug. 1994)
(Subject: “Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force Commander”).
691
See Cable from Shaharyar Khan to Kofi Annan (6 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Weekly Sitrep Period Covering 29 Aug
to 04 Sep 94”); Memorandum from American Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 Aug. 1994)
(Subject: “Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force Commander”).
692
Memorandum from American Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force Commander”).
693
Cable from Shaharyar Khan to Kofi Annan (6 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Weekly Sitrep Period Covering 29 Aug to 04
Sep 94”).
694
Memorandum from American Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force Commander”).
695
Memorandum from American Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force Commander”).
696
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”); see also Duclert
Commission Report 629-30 (stating that General Germanos “explained during a crisis cell meeting on 7 July, ‘we can
provide information and [illegible] take note of the killers, but not arrest people” (quoting ADIPLO, 643COOP/18,
carton 1, Verbatim de Jean-Marc Simon sur la réunion de la cellule de crise, 7 juillet 1994)).
697
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
698
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
699
Memorandum from Sammy Kum Buo (8 July 1994) (Subject: “SRSG’s Meeting with Foreign Minister of
Rwanda”).
700
See Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”); Memorandum
from Sammy Kum Buo, (8 July 1994) (Subject: “SRSG’s Meeting with Foreign Minister of Rwanda”); S.C. Res. 935,
¶ 1, S/RES/935 (1 July 1994); see also Memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (13 July 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda – Réunion du 13 juillet 1994”) (noting that the members of the commission had yet to be appointed as of 13
July 1994).
701
See S.C. Res. 935, ¶ 1, S/RES/935 (1 July 1994).
702
Corine Lesnes, Rwanda: un entretien avec le général Lafourcade: Le chef de l’opération “Turquoise” prévoit que
le FPR va progresser jusqu’à la limite de la zone humanitaire [Rwanda: An Interview with General Lafourcade: the
Head of Operation “Turquoise” Predicts That the RPF is Going to Advance to the Edge of the Humanitarian Zone],
LE MONDE, 9 July 1994.
703
See Slaughter Continues in Rwanda: UNHCR, AFP, 12 July 1994 (reporting that 2,000 Rwandans were arriving in
Tanzania daily and that 15,000 arrived in Burundi the previous week); Cable from US Mission in Geneva to US
Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Human Rights Commission: Special Rapporteur Concludes Genocide Has
Occurred in Rwanda”) (“The conflict has led to a mass exodus unprecedented in Rwanda.”).
704
See, e.g., Cable from Yannick Gérard (9 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda, Point de la Situation au Matin du 9 juillet”)
(“‘Authorities’ of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi have reportedly already fled to Zaire.”); RENÉ DEGNI-SÉGUI, SPECIAL
RAPPORTEUR OF THE COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, REPORT ON THE SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN RWANDA ¶¶
37-40, E/CN.4/1995/7 (28 June 1994) (reporting on militia activity in refugee camps in Tanzania and Zaire).
Page | 514
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
705
Cable from US Mission in Geneva to US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Human Rights Commission:
Special Rapporteur Concludes Genocide Has Occurred in Rwanda”) (“The conflict has led to a mass exodus
unprecedented in Rwanda.”).
706
Eye
on
Africa,
FRANCE
24,
14
Feb.
2019
(available
at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5dlnNlnpwY&list=PLCUKIeZnrIUmf9GvUfbvVE4QRLbnPH5Sf&index=23
at 9:00 to 9:26).
707
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 807 (2019).
708
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 807 (2019).
709
LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 807 (2019).
710
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to US Secretary State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid Administrator
Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”).
711
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to US Secretary State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid Administrator
Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”); Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (20 July
1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid Administrator Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”) (“The French feel they are
being overwhelmed by the situation in Rwanda. They went in to stop the killings but now find themselves faced with
a humanitarian disaster of horrendous proportions.”).
712
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand and Hubert Védrine (21 June
1994) (Subject: “Conseil restreint du 22 juin. Rwanda”) (referring to the “French text” of what would become
Resolution 929); see also LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA: ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP] 807 (2019).
713
Interview by LFM with Colin Keating (4 Sept. 2019). French representatives to the United Nations touched on the
issue in mid-July 1994, after notifying the UN Security Council that some IRG leaders were taking shelter in the SHZ
(discussed below). According to a 15 July 1994 French diplomatic cable, the French diplomats “indicated that France
was prepared to give support to any UN decision concerning these persons.” Duclert Commission Report 630 (quoting
ADIPLO, 789SUP/15, Letter from H. Ladsous to Jamsheed Marker, President of the Security Council, 15 July 1994).
Nothing in the cable indicates that the French diplomats urged the United Nations to authorize Turquoise troops to
arrest the IRG authorities or any other suspected génocidaires. The cable does note that members of the US delegation
“informed us at the end of the council [meeting] that they would be ready to support us in the adoption of a resolution
extending the mandate of the multinational force to allow for the arrest and detention of criminals.” Id. at 635. It is
unclear whether, in referring to “the multinational force,” the cable was alluding to Turquoise or to UNAMIR. In any
case, the cable concluded that an effort to secure such a resolution would be sure to fail absent “a specific report from
the [human] rights commission or the commission of inquiry.” Notes on TD DFRA New York 3463 (15 July 1994)
714
Duclert Commission Report 635 (quoting ADIPLO, 3727TOPO/3321, TD Diplomatie 20740,16 July 1994).
715
Stephen Smith, The Flow of Refugees Remains Inexhaustible, LIBÉRATION, 12 July 1994.
716
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (5 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de Situation du
5 juillet 1994”) (“It seems they’ve chosen to concentrate efforts in a NE-SW direction, towards Gikongoro and the
eastern edges of the Nyungwe forest, the capture of which would represent an impressive gain for the RPF.”).
717
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 July 1994).
718
See, e.g., Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (6 July 1994) (“According to the provisional
government, the RPF will seek to avoid direct clashes with French forces and will modify its strategy, favoring an
offensive toward Gisenyi. By doing so, the RPF should bypass Gikongoro and attack in the northwest, starting with
Ruhengeri.”).
719
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (10 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de Situation
du 10 juillet 1994”).
720
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Réunion du 11
juillet 1994”).
Page | 515
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
721
See Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Directives concernant la ZHS adressée aux cdts
de groupements”) (predicting, following the RPF’s capture of Ruhengeri on 13 July 1994, that Gisenyi would “fall
very soon”).
722
See Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation le 11 juillet
a 7 heures”); Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 July 1994).
723
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 July 1994).
724
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 July 1994).
725
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (12 July 1994) (Subject: “Éléments du situation du 12
juillet 1994”).
726
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (8 July 1994) (Subject: “GOF More Confident on Rwanda”)
(stressing “a need to restart the Arusha process as quickly as possible”); see also Cable from Pamela Harriman to US
Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche on French humanitarian zone in Rwanda”).
727
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche on French humanitarian
zone in Rwanda”).
728
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche on French humanitarian
zone in Rwanda”).
729
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (8 July 1994) (Subject: “GOF More Confident on Rwanda”)
(stressing “a need to restart the Arusha process as quickly as possible”).
730
See, e.g., Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (13 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise –
Point de situation du 13 juillet 1994”) (“To date, aid delivered (about 140 tons in 15 days) is laughable compared to
the estimated 1,000 needed per day.”); Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (11 July 1994) (Subject:
“Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 11 juillet 1994”) (decrying the “shortcomings in terms of quantity of
humanitarian aid” in the area and noting that the Turquoise forces were “experiencing tremendous difficulties, in the
absence of NGO’s, to distribute aid to displaced persons”).
731
See Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand and Hubert Védrine (7 July
1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”); Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération
Turquoise – Point de situation du 11 juillet 1994”). The operation’s shortcomings would only become more apparent
as more and more displaced persons flooded the SHZ in mid-July 1994. See, e.g., Memorandum from PCIAT (17 July
1994) (Subject: “Point de situation humanitaire du 17 juillet 1994”) (reporting that aid from the French government
and the World Food Program merely represented three days of need in the SHZ).
732
See, e.g., Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (“The
mobilization of the international community is still totally insufficient.”); Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and
Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand and Hubert Védrine (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”) (“For political
reasons, NGOs are always hesitant to step in alongside us.”); Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (11
July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 11 juillet 1994”) (complaining that NGOs had been
tardy and asserting that if they “do not urgently take necessary measures, the lives of several thousand people will be
threatened in the very short term”); Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (12 July 1994)
(Subject: “Votre entretien avec le Premier Minister le mercredi 13 juillet à 09 H 30”) (“Finally, humanitarian
organizations’ commitment remains very modest in spite of our repeated calls.”).
733
Stephen Smith, Le Flux Des Réfugiés Reste Intarissable [The Flow of Refugees Remains Inexhaustible],
LIBÉRATION, 12 July 1994.
734
Stephen Smith, Le Flux Des Réfugiés Reste Intarissable [The Flow of Refugees Remains Inexhaustible],
LIBÉRATION, 12 July 1994.
735
Stephen Smith, Le Flux Des Réfugiés Reste Intarissable [The Flow of Refugees Remains Inexhaustible],
LIBÉRATION, 12 July 1994.
736
Stephen Smith, Le Flux Des Réfugiés Reste Intarissable [The Flow of Refugees Remains Inexhaustible],
LIBÉRATION, 12 July 1994.
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
737
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
738
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
739
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
740
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
741
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
742
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
743
Memorandum from Ms. Lauvergeon and Mr. Mary to Hubert Védrine (28 June 1994) (reproducing a 27 June 1998
interview of Alain Juppé by Europe 1).
744
See Memorandum from Sammy Kum Buo (9 July 1994) (Subject: “Force Commander’s Visit to Goma, Zaire, on
6 July 1994); Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (8 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Réunion
du 8 juillet 1994”).
745
Paul Lewis, France Calls Rwanda Mission a Success; Asks for U.N. Force, N.Y. TIMES, 12 July 1994.
746
France Pleads for Quick Deployment of UN Force in Rwanda, AFP, 11 July 1994.
747
G7 Summit in Naples Meeting Notes (10 July 1994) (Notes by Anne Lawegen).
748
G7 Summit in Naples Meeting Notes (10 July 1994) (Notes by Anne Lawegen).
749
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
750
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
751
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to the US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Ambassador Rawson’s
June 7 Meeting in Brussels with Faustin Twagiramungu”).
752
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation le 11 juillet à
7 heures”); see Bulletin Quotidien d’Information (BQI) (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Bulletin Quotidien d’Information
(BQI) du lundi 11 juillet à 09 H 00”).
753
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (11 July 1994).
754
Lafourcade: nous accueillerons les ministres hutus [Lafourcade: We Will Welcome the Hutu Ministers], REUTERS,
11 July 1994.
755
Lafourcade: nous accueillerons les ministres hutus [Lafourcade: We Will Welcome the Hutu Ministers], REUTERS,
11 July 1994; see also Lindsey Hilsum, France Hides Rwandan Wolf with the Lamb, GUARDIAN, 10 July 1994 (quoting
a French colonel as saying, “We are here to save lives, not to judge people”).
756
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to the US Secretary of State (13 July 1994) (Subject: “GOF confirms troops
will stay slightly longer in Rwanda”).
757
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to the US Secretary of State (13 July 1994) (Subject: “GOF confirms troops
will stay slightly longer in Rwanda”).
758
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Refugees Flood Zaire as Rebel Forces Gain, N.Y. TIMES, 15 July 1994.
759
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Refugees Flood Zaire as Rebel Forces Gain, N.Y. TIMES, 15 July 1994.
760
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (13 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de
situation du 13 juillet 1994”).
761
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de
situation du 14 juillet 1994”).
Page | 517
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
762
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 14 juillet soir”);
Rwandans Flee in Panic to Zaire, N.Y. TIMES, 14 July 1994.
763
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Directives concernant la ZHS adressée aux cdts de
groupements”).
764
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 14 juillet soir”).
765
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 14 juillet soir”).
766
See Cable from Yannick Gérard (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Refuge du goubernement intermimaire a Cyangugu”);
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation
du 15 juillet 1994”). Press reports indicated that at least some members of the IRG flew from Gisenyi to Cyangugu
via helicopter. See American diplomatic cable (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda/Burundi sitrep”).
767
New Zealand diplomatic cable from New York to Wellington (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council:
Rwanda”). French diplomats in New York argued that it ought to be up to the United Nations to decide what to do
about the IRG authorities in the SHZ, “insofar as France was acting in this zone with a UN mandate.” Notes on TD
DFRA New York 3463 (15 July 1994). According to a 15 July 1994 French cable, the diplomats were frustrated to
find that other UN Security Council members seemed uneager to take up the issue. The cable noted that US diplomats
said “they would be ready to support us in the adoption of a resolution extending the mandate of the multinational
force to allow for the arrest and detention of criminals.” Id. The French delegation concluded, though, that such an
initiative would have no chance of success unless it were “to rely on a specific report from the [human] rights
commission or the commission of inquiry.” Id.
768
New Zealand diplomatic cable from New York to Wellington (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council:
Rwanda”).
769
New Zealand diplomatic cable from New York to Wellington (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council:
Rwanda”).
770
New Zealand diplomatic cable from New York to Wellington (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council:
Rwanda”).
771
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Directives concernant la ZHS adressée aux cdts de
groupements”).
772
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Directives concernant la ZHS adressée aux cdts de
groupements”).
773
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Directives concernant la ZHS adressée aux cdts de
groupements”).
774
Cable from Yannick Gérard (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Refuge du gouvernement intérimaire à Cyangugu”).
775
Cable from Yannick Gérard (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Refuge du gouvernement intérimaire à Cyangugu”).
776
Notes on TD Kigali (Subject: “Témoignage sur les autorités de Gisenyi”) (10 July 1994).
777
Cable from Yannick Gérard (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Refuge du gouvernement intérimaire a Cyangugu”).
778
Duclert Commission Report 632 (citing AN/PR-BD, AG(5)4/BD/62, TD Diplomatie 20698, 15 juillet 1994, Emié).
One reason the Quai d’Orsay was in a hurry to shoo the IRG authorities out of the zone is that officials in Paris did
not want to get into a confrontation with the new government the RPF was expected to form in Kigali. “We also run
the risk, as soon as a new government is formed by the RPF, of being asked to hand [the IRG officials] over to the
new authorities,” an unsigned Quai d’Orsay note cautioned. “It is better to prevent this risk by having those involved
leave, which will also dissuade others from joining the safe zone.” Id. at 633 (ADIPLO, 3727TOPO/3320, note non
signée, 15 juillet 1994).
779
Duclert Commission Report 632 (quoting AN/PR-BD, AG(5)4/BD/62, TD Diplomatie 20698, 15 juillet 1994,
Emié). Gérard’s reply was defiant: “For my part, I continue to believe that these members of the interim government
are indeed among the main perpetrators of the genocide and that our duty now is not to let them go free. This opinion,
of course, is my own, but I would like to see it recorded in the file of this case, given the mission with which the
Department has entrusted me.” Id. (quoting ADIPLO, 202000018ACXXX, TD Kigali 471, 16 juillet 1994).
Page | 518
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
780
Cable from Jacques Lapouge (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Présence de membres du ‘Gouvernement intérimaire’
rwandais dans la zone humanitaire sure”).
781
Julian Bedford, RPF Name New President, INDEPENDENT, 18 July 1994.
782
Stephen Smith & Jean Guisnel, L’impossible mission militaro-humanitaire [The Impossible Military-Humanitarian
Mission], LIBÉRATION, 19 July 1994.
783
See Duclert Commission Report 634-635.
784
See Duclert Commission Report 635 (quoting AN, Fonds PM Balladur, 19970446/1, Note. l’attention du PM. CR
de la cellule de crise du 16 juillet 1994).
785
Cable from US Secretary of State (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Non-Recognition of Interim Government of Rwanda”).
786
MIP Tome I 344.
787
Frédéric Fritscher, Sans abris, sans eau, sans soins [No Shelter, No Water, No Care], LE MONDE, 21 July 1994.
788
JACQUES HOGARD, LES LARMES DE L’HONNEUR: 60 JOURS DANS LA TOURMENTE DU RWANDA [TEARS OF HONOR:
60 DAYS IN THE RWANDAN TEMPEST] 96-97 (2005).
789
JACQUES HOGARD, LES LARMES DE L’HONNEUR: 60 JOURS DANS LA TOURMENTE DU RWANDA [TEARS OF HONOR:
60 DAYS IN THE RWANDAN TEMPEST] 96-97 (2005).
790
JACQUES HOGARD, LES LARMES DE L’HONNEUR: 60 JOURS DANS LA TOURMENTE DU RWANDA [TEARS OF HONOR:
60 DAYS IN THE RWANDAN TEMPEST] 96-97 (2005).
791
JACQUES HOGARD, LES LARMES DE L’HONNEUR: 60 JOURS DANS LA TOURMENTE DU RWANDA [TEARS OF HONOR:
60 DAYS IN THE RWANDAN TEMPEST] 97 (2005).
792
See, e.g., PHILIP GOUREVITCH, WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR
FAMILIES 262-63 (1998) (documenting an interview with IRG President Sindikubwabo and André Nkurunziza,
Sindikubwabo’s press attaché, during his exile in Bukavu).
793
Butare Residents Reflect on the Day Sindikubwabo ‘Launched’ Killings, THE NEW TIMES, 29 Jan. 2014
(“Sindikubwabo is believed to have died of natural causes in exile in DR Congo. He was never tried for his alleged
role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.”); Deceased – Bizimana, Augustin (MICT-13-39), UNITED NATIONS
INTERNATIONAL RESIDUAL MECHANISM FOR CRIMINAL TRIBUNALS, https://www.irmct.org/en/cases/mict-13-39 (last
accessed on 4 February 2021).
794
Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Case No. ICTR 97-23-S, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 1 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda
4 Sept. 1998).
795
Jean Kambanda v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR 97-23-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 2 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 19
Oct. 2000).
796
Mucyo Report Section 4.1.2.1 (2008). In this statement, Gen. Paul Rwarakabije is describing meetings between
Gen. Augustin Bizimungu and Colonel Gilbert Canovas in Zaire in late July 1994.
797
See Half a Million Rwandans Cross Zaire Border in 2 Days, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 16 July 1994; Raymond Bonner,
Rwandan Refugees Flood Zaire as Rebel Forces Gain, N.Y. TIMES, 15 July 1994 (“Nearly all of the refugees fleeing
into Zaire are Hutu.”).
798
Fax from the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations (18 July 1994) (Subject: “DPKO Situation Centre
Briefing Notes, 18 Jul 94”).
799
Cable from Madeleine Albright to the US Secretary of State (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – 18 Jul 94 Security
Council Meeting”).
800
See Cable from the USDAO Kinshasa to the US Secretary of State (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwandan Crisis;
Goma, Zaire Sitrep Number One”); US Defense Intelligence Agency (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Goma Threat
Assessment”).
801
See, e.g., Memorandum from PCIAT (17 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation humanitaire du 17 juillet 1994”)
(“The RPF push on Gisenyi resulted in a last wave of Rwandan peoples mixed with government forces that were
disarmed immediately upon arriving in Goma.”); Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 July 1994) (Subject:
Page | 519
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
“Directives concernant la ZHS adressée aux cdts de groupements”) (“The RPF took Ruhengeri causing the exodus of
700,000 people to Zaire, in the region of Goma.”).
802
See, e.g., Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise –
Point de situation du 14 juillet 1994”) (reporting that the IRG on 14 July 1994 ordered Hutus in northwestern Rwanda
to take refuge in Zaire).
803
See Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de
Situation du 15 juillet 1994”) (referring to the Gisenyi authorities’ “directive to leave the country”); French Situation
Report (18 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 18/7/94”); see also New Zealand diplomatic cable from New York to
Wellington (14 July 1994) (Subject: “Security Council: Rwanda”) (discussing “Rwandan Radio’s calls to flee the
‘Tutsi-led massacres’”).
804
French Situation Report (18 July 1994) (Subject: “CRQ du 18/7/94”).
805
Interview by LFM with Charles Karamba.
806
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
807
Interview by LFM with Emmanuel Karenzi Karake.
808
Cable from US Embassy in Nairobi to the US Secretary of State (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Situation –
USAID Administrator Atwood Meeting with ICRC and UN in Nairobi, July 17, 1994”); see New Zealand cable from
New York to Wellington (15 July 1994) (Subject: “ Security Council: Rwanda”) (reporting that Radio Rwanda and
[FAR] officials “were major contributors to the panic which had led to the massive exodus in recent days”); Raymond
Bonner, Rwandan Refugees Flood Zaire as Rebel Forces Gain, N.Y. TIMES, 15 July 1994 (“For the last several
months, [the Hutu] have been bombarded with propaganda against the Tutsi, and believe that the Tutsi will not only
kill them, but do so in the most gruesome ways.”).
809
Cable from US Embassy in Nairobi to the US Secretary of State (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda Situation –
USAID Administrator Atwood Meeting with ICRC and UN in Nairobi, July 17, 1994”); see also Cable from the
USDAO Kinshasa to the US Secretary of State (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwandan Crisis; Goma, Zaire Sitrep Number
One”) (“The Hutu or Hutu sympathizer-operated radio station ‘Mille Collines’ (Thousand Hills) continues to broadcast
propaganda to the Rwandan population; telling them to leave Rwanda or be slaughtered.”).
810
Lindsey Hilsum, Eyewitness: Fleeing Hutus Vow to Fight Another Day, GUARDIAN, 20 July 1994.
811
Lindsey Hilsum, Eyewitness: Fleeing Hutus Vow to Fight Another Day, GUARDIAN, 20 July 1994.
812
Half a Million Rwandans Cross Zaire Border in 2 Days, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 16 July 1994 (“No evidence have
reprisals has surfaced.”).
813
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Refugees Flood Zaire as Rebel Forces Gain, N.Y. TIMES, 15 July 1994.
814
Raymond Bonner, Rwandan Refugees Flood Zaire as Rebel Forces Gain, N.Y. TIMES, 15 July 1994.
815
See Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Brouillage RTLM”) (exploring
the possibility of jamming RTLM’s broadcasts); Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (July 1994)
(Subject: “Brouillage opération Turquoise”).
816
See French Cable (6 July 1994) (Subject: “Quelques Commentaires sur les Questions en Cours”); Cable from
Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Démarche on French humanitarian zone in
Rwanda”).
817
Memorandum from the French Ministry of Defense (7 July 1994) (Subject: “COMTEL of COMFOR Turquoise
07.09.00 B”); see Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (7 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de Situation”).
818
See Memorandum from [first name unknown] Doireau (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Fiche d’analyses”); Memorandum
from the French Ministry of Defense (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Brouillage RTLM”).
819
See Memorandum from [first name unknown] Doireau (11 July 1994) (Subject: “Fiche d’analyses”).
820
See Cable from American Embassy in Paris to US Secretary State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid
Administrator Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”) (reporting that France sent to Rwanda equipment to locate
the extremists’ radio transmitter, and that “jamming equipment was on the way”).
Page | 520
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
821
François Graner, Jacques Lanxade: “Le Président suivait généralement mon avis, je dirais même quasiment
toujours” [Jacques Lanxade: “The President Generally Followed My Advice, I Would Even Say Almost Always”],
AGONE, 17 Feb. 2020 (interview occurred on 22 Aug. 2018).
822
Chris McGreal, Remnants of Beaten Army Enter Zaire, GUARDIAN, 18 July 1994.
823
Chris McGreal, Remnants of Beaten Army Enter Zaire, GUARDIAN, 18 July 1994.
824
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du dimanche 18 juillet
soir”).
825
Transcript, Interview by Europe 1 with Alain Juppé (19 July 1994).
826
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation le 19 juillet
1994 a 07 h 00”).
827
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 19 juillet soir”).
828
Transcript, Interview by Europe 1 with Alain Juppé (19 July 1994).
829
Cable from Madeleine Albright to the US Secretary of State (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – 18 Jul 94 Security
Council Meeting”).
830
See Cable from Shaharyar Khan to Kofi Annan (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Weekly Sitrep Period Covering 11 Jul to
17 Jul 94”).
831
See Fax from the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations (20 July 1994) (Subject: “UNAMIR DPKO
Sitrep of 20 Jul 94”); Cable from Madeleine Albright to the US Secretary of State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda:
19 July Security Council – Rwanda Absent; French Intent on Leaving by August 21”); UNAMIR cable from MILOB
GP HQ to FHQ (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Sitrep covering period 190600B Jul to 191800B Jul 94”).
832
See Fax from the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations (20 July 1994) (Subject: “UNAMIR DPKO
Sitrep of 20 Jul 94”).
833
See Chris McGreal, Remnants of Beaten Army Enter Zaire, GUARDIAN, 18 July 1994; DRM intelligence report (18
July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de Situation du 18 juillet 1994”) (“[T]he interim government taking refuge in
Cyangugu seems to have chosen to withdraw to Zaire with the rest of the FAR and their weapons.”) (emphasis added).
834
Memordandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”). This figure may
not have represented the total number of FAR soldiers in Zaire at that time. An 18 July 1994 sitrep by General
Lafourcade said the FAR had reportedly exfiltrated 23,000 troops to Zaire, of whom 15,000 were in Goma and 8,000
were in Bukavu. Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du dimanche
18 juillet soir”).
835
Cable from US Defense Intelligence Agency (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Goma Threat Assessment”).
836
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
837
Cable from the USDAO Kinshasa to the US Secretary of State (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwandan Crisis; Goma,
Zaire Sitrep Number One”). Rwarakabije said the Zairean troops kept the weapons they confiscated at a military camp
in Goma. He said they returned the weapons to the FAR in 1996. See Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
838
Patrick de Saint Exupéry, “Réarmez-les!” [“Rearm Them!”], XXI 63-64 (July, Aug., Sept. 2017).
839
Patrick de Saint Exupéry, “Réarmez-les!” [“Rearm Them!”], XXI 63-64 (July, Aug., Sept. 2017).
840
Patrick de Saint Exupéry, “Réarmez-les!” [“Rearm Them!”], XXI 63-64 (July, Aug., Sept. 2017). Creating
confusion over the date of the order, however, Saint Exupéry said it came a month after the 17 May UN arms embargo,
which would have meant June and not July.
841
Patrick de Saint Exupéry, “Réarmez-les!” [“Rearm Them!”], XXI 64 (July, Aug., Sept. 2017).
842
See Cyril Bensimon, Génocide au Rwanda: Hubert Védrine dément les accusations de la revue “XXI” [Genocide
in Rwanda: Hubert Védrine Denies the Accusations of the Magazine “XXI”], LE MONDE, 19 July 2017; Patrick de
Saint Exupéry, “Réarmez-les!” [“Rearm Them!”], XXI 64 (July, Aug., Sept. 2017).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
843
Mehdi Ba, Guillaume Ancel: “L’histoire mythique de l’opération Turquoise ne correspond pas à la réalité”
[Guillaume Ancel: “The Mythical History of Operation Turquoise Doesn’t Correspond to Reality”], JEUNE AFRIQUE,
7 April 2014.
844
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 76 (2018).
845
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 76 (2018).
846
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 77 (2018). In the book, Ancel
referred to Hogard using a pseudonym, “Lieutenant-Colonel Garoh,” a thinly veiled near-anagram of Hogard’s name.
847
848
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA: LA FIN DU SILENCE [RWANDA: THE END OF SILENCE] 77 (2018).
GUILLAUME ANCEL, RWANDA:
original).
LA FIN DU SILENCE
[RWANDA: THE END
OF
SILENCE] 77 (2018) (emphasis in
849
Jacques Hogard, Le Colonel Hogard met les choses au point après la parution du livre de Guillaume Ancel [In His
Turn, Colonel Hogard Takes the Things to Point After the Publication of Guillaume Ancel’s Book, ASSOCIATION
FRANCE TURQUOISE (8 May 2018). Hogard suggested that Ancel may have “confused this imaginary delivery of
weapons with the real delivery of humanitarian cargo (plastic sheeting, blankets, food and essential drugs) that I made
on Friday afternoon, 22 July (I have all my records!) to the families of General Kabiligi’s soldiers (4300 people) who
are refugees at the western exit of Bukavu (Zaire).”
850
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
851
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
852
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
853
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
854
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
855
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
856
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
857
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
858
THOMAS ODOM, JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS 135-39 (2005).
859
THOMAS ODOM, JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS 137 (2005).
860
THOMAS ODOM, JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS 137 (2005).
861
THOMAS ODOM, JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS 138 (2005).
862
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
863
Interview by LFM with James Babbitt.
864
See Cable from Shaharyar Khan to Kofi Annan (6 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Weekly Sitrep Period Covering 29 Aug
to 04 Sep 94”); Memorandum from American Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 Aug. 1994)
(Subject: “Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force Commander”).
865
Request for documents from the Government of Rwanda to the Government of France (receipt acknowledged 10
July 2020).
866
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije. Gen. Rwarakabije did note that two civilian trucks full of weapons
crossed the border from Rwanda to Zaire without being searched.
867
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
868
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije.
869
See Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije; RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 150
(22 Aug. 1994); MIP Tome I 355-56.
870
Mucyo Report Section 4.1.2.1 (2008).
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Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
871
Interview by LFM with Paul Rwarakabije. Rwarakabije said that Bizimungu had advised him of the advice offered
to him by Lafourcade.
872
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi.
873
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi.
874
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi; Mucyo Report Section 4.1.2.1 (2008).
875
See RAPPORT DE FIN DE MISSION, OPERATION TURQUOISE TOME II 3, 9, 154, 161 (22 Aug. 1994); Letter from
Colonel BEM Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the Rwandan minister of defense, to the Army chief of staff (9 Mar. 1992)
(Subject: “Candidature du Capitaine de Saint Quentin Grégoire”).
876
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi.
877
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi.
878
See Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi; Mucyo Report Section 4.1.2.1 (2008) (summary of Rwarakabije
testimony).
879
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi.
880
Interview by LFM with Evariste Murenzi; Mucyo Report Section 4.1.2.1 (2008) (summary of Rwarakabije
testimony).
881
Fiche, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (19 July 1994).
882
Situation Report, Direction du Renseingement Militaire (19 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation le 19 juillet
1994 a 07 h 00”).
883
Florence Aubenas, L’exode tourne au cauchemar à Goma [Exodus Turns Into a Nightmare in Goma], LIBÉRATION,
19 July 1994.
884
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
885
Draft cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 August 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force”).
886
Cable from US Embassy in Paris to RUEHIA/USIA WASHDC 22 (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Daily Media Reaction
Report”).
887
See Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de
situation du 20 juillet 1994); Cable from US Secretary of State (21 July 1994) (Subject: “Press Guidance – Rwanda:
Radio Station”).
888
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to RUEHIA/USIA WASHDC (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Daily Media
Reaction Report”), quoting RWANDA Les réfugiés menacés par le choléra la situation du million de personnes qui
ont fui au Zaïre empire et les organisations humanitaires ne sont toujours pas en mesure d’y faire face [RWANDA
Refugees Facing Cholera[:] The Situation of the One Million People Who Have Fled to Zaire is Worsening and
Humanitarian Organizations Are Still Unable to Cope], LE MONDE (22 July 1994).
889
Anne Chaon, Rwanda Refugees Flee North to Escape Cholera Death, AFP, 22 July 1994.
890
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to RUEHIA/USIA WASHDC (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Daily Media
Reaction Report”).
891
Report from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 20 Juillet soir”); JEAN-CLAUDE
LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 147 (2010).
892
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to US Secretary of State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid
Administrator Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”) (reporting that France had 1,500 troops in the SHZ and
another 1,000 “further north”).
893
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 147 (2010).
894
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPERATION TURQUOISE 147-48 (2010).
895
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 20 Juillet soir”).
Page | 523
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
896
Cable from American Embassy in Paris to US Secretary of State (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: Aid
Administrator Atwood’s Meetings with GOF Officials”).
897
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de Situation
du 20 juillet 1994”).
898
Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (20 July 1994) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de Situation
du 20 juillet 1994”).
899
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
900
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
901
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
902
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
903
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994) (noting that the UN secretary general was expecting UNAMIR
to have 2,000 troops by 15 August 1994); see also Situation Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (17 July
1994) (Subject: “note quotidienne de situation du 17 juillet 1994”) (anticipating that UNAMIR would have, at best,
no more than 1,250 troops by the end of July and 2,800 by 21 August).
904
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
905
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
906
Council of Ministers Meeting Notes (20 July 1994).
907
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
908
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
909
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
910
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
911
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
912
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
913
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
914
Cable from French Defense Intelligence in Paris to French Secretary General of National Defense (26 July 1994)
(Subject: “Burundi et Rwanda – Situation du 26 juillet 1994).
915
Intelligence Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (22 July 1994 ) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de situation
du 22 juillet 1994”); see also Intelligence Report, Direction du Renseingement Militaire (23 July 1994 ) (Subject:
“Note Quotidienne de situation du 23 juillet 1994”).
916
Intelligence Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (22 July 1994 ) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de situation
du 22 juillet 1994”).
917
Intelligence Report, Direction du Renseignement Militaire (22 July 1994 ) (Subject: “Note Quotidienne de situation
du 22 juillet 1994”).
918
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (26 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – évolution de
situation du 10 au 25 juillet 1994”).
919
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
Page | 524
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
920
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
921
See, e.g., Editorial, Two Million Refugees, N.Y. Times, 20 July 1994 (noting that the United States “approved 80
airlift missions and $31 million in emergency funds for food and medicine”); International Aid Efforts Multiply as
Rwanda Crisis Deepens, AFP, 22 July 1994.
922
Christian Chaise, Bill Clinton Eager to Aid Rwandan Refugees . . . But Not Too Much, AFP, 22 July 1994.
923
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda
– Réunion à Matignon le 22 juillet à 10h00”).
924
See, e.g., Alain Juppé, La responsabilité de tous [Everyone’s Responsibility], LE MONDE, 2 July 1994, p. 2 (“I
admit to feeling some concern about the international apathy that I still see today, even as the Rwandan tragedy
continues. France cannot act alone.”).
925
See, e.g., Cable from Jacques Lanxade to Jean-Claude Lafourcade (25 June 1994) (Subject: “Directive de
communication Turquoise N 3”).
926
Situation Report (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 25 July 1994”).
927
Situation Report (23 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 23 July 1994”).
928
Situation Report (25 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du 25 July 1994”) (discussing
media coverage of Turquoise); Situation Report (23 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation
du 23 July 1994”); Cable from Jacques Lanxade to Jean-Claude Lafourcade (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Directive de
communication complémentaire Turquoise N 17”).
929
Opération Turquoise Mission Report from Jacques Hogard 6 (approx. date 12 August 1994).
930
Opération Turquoise Mission Report from Jacques Hogard 6 (approx. date 12 August 1994).
931
Memorandum from the Ministry of Defense (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – Point de situation du
22 July 1994”) (Signed by General Raymond Germanos).
932
Cable from Jacques Lanxade to Jean-Claude Lafourcade (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Directive de communication
complémentaire Turquoise N 17”); see François Léotard, La France doit garder la tête haute [France Must Keep Its
Head High], LIBÉRATION, 22 July 1994.
933
Cable from Jacques Lanxade to Jean-Claude Lafourcade (22 July 1994) (Subject: “Directive de communication
complémentaire Turquoise N 17”).
934
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (26 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – évolution de
situation du 10 au 25 juillet 1994”).
935
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (26 July 1994) (Subject: “Opération Turquoise – évolution de
situation du 10 au 25 juillet 1994”).
936
Memorandum from Bruno Delaye and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (27 July 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier ministre, mercredi, 27 juillet. Rwanda”) (emphasis in original).
937
Alan Riding, French Premier to Visit Africa to Show Continued Commitment, N.Y. TIMES, 27 July 1994.
938
Memorandum from Craig Kelly to Anthony Lake (27 July 1994) (Subject: “Your Meeting with French Defense
Minister François Léotard, July 29, 1:30 p.m.”).
939
Stephen Smith, Balladur precise le retrait français du Rwanda [Balladur Specifies French Withdrawal from
Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 30 July 1994.
940
Memorandum from French Ministry of Defense (23 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Désengagement Turquoise – Moyens
Terre et Air”) (noting COS’s withdrawal as of 27 July 1994).
941
Report from Jacques Rosier (27 July 1994).
942
Report from Jacques Rosier (27 July 1994).
943
Report from Jacques Rosier (27 July 1994).
Page | 525
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
944
Stephen Smith, Balladur precise le retrait français du Rwanda [Balladur Specifies French Withdrawal from
Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 30 July 1994.
945
Stephen Smith, Balladur precise le retrait français du Rwanda [Balladur Specifies French Withdrawal from
Rwanda], LIBÉRATION, 30 July 1994; Rwandan President Issues War Threat Over French Safety Zone, AFP, 2 Aug.
1994.
946
See Marie-Pierre Subtil, Edouard Balladur se rendra dimanche à Goma [Edouard Balladur Will Arrive in Goma
on Sunday], LE MONDE, 29 July 1994; Alan Riding, French Premier to Visit Africa to Show Continued Commitment,
N.Y. TIMES, 27 July 1994 (reporting that Balladur had initially planned to visit just three countries: Senegal, Côte
d’Ivoire, and Gabon).
947
Marie-Pierre Subtil, M. Balladur n’a pas exclu une prolongation de l’opération “Turquoise,” [Mr. Balladur Isn’t
Ruling Out an Extension of Opération “Turquoise”], LE MONDE, 2 Aug. 1994; Rwandan President Issues War Threat
Over French Safety Zone, AFP, 31 July 1994.
948
Marie-Pierre Subtil, M. Balladur n’a pas exclu une prolongation de l’opération “Turquoise,” [Mr. Balladur Isn’t
Ruling Out an extension of Opération “Turquoise”], LE MONDE, 2 August 1994.
949
Marie-Pierre Subtil, M. Balladur n’a pas exclu une prolongation de l’opération “Turquoise” [Mr. Balladur Isn’t
Ruling out an Extension of Operation “Turquoise”], LE MONDE, 2 Aug. 1994. See Meeting Notes (3 August 1994)
(Subject: “Dominique Pin entretien avec Françoise Carle”). French officials had evidently thought it sufficient to reach
out through the United Nations, as an intermediary; Cable from French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (3 Aug. 1994)
(Subject: “TD Diplomatie 22364: Entretien téléphonique avec le ministre des affaires étrangeres Rwandais”) (stating
that PM Twagiramungu had at least expected a telephone call from Balladur); Memorandum from Direction du
Renseignement Militaire (5 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Éléments de situation sur les rapports entre les forces Turquoise et
le FPR et sur les retours de réfugiés au Rwanda”). The DRM later reported that the UN failed to relay the message in
time.
950
See Rwandan President Issues War Threat Over French Safety Zone, AFP, 2 Aug. 1994; Cable from French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (3 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “TD Diplomatie 22364: Entretien téléphonique avec le ministre
des affaires étrangères Rwandais”).
951
See Rwandan President Issues War Threat Over French Safety Zone, AFP, 2 Aug. 1994.
952
See Letter from Jean Marie Vianney Ndagijimana to Boutros-Boutros Ghali (5 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “L’application
de la résolution no. 929 du Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies”).
953
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (4 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 4 aout soir”).
954
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (4 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 4 aout soir”).
955
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier Ministre mercredi 3 août – Rwanda – Cameroun”).
956
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Bruno Delaye to François Mitterrand (2 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Votre
entretien avec le Premier Ministre mercredi 3 août – Rwanda – Cameroun”).
957
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: réunion ministérielle du 8 août
1994).
958
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (5 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Situation au Rwanda”) (reporting that the ambassador would travel to Kigali on 6 August).
959
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (5 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Situation au Rwanda”) (reporting that the ambassador would travel to Kigali on 6 August).
960
See Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: réunion ministérielle du 8
août 1994”); Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (5 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Situation au Rwanda”) (reporting that the ambassador would travel to Kigali on 6 August).
961
See Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: réunion ministérielle du 8
août 1994); Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
Page | 526
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
962
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
963
Memorandum from Jean-Marc de La Sablière (8 Aug. 19940 (Subject: “Rwanda: réunion ministérielle du 8 août
1994).
964
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
965
Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (8 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda”).
966
Annie Thomas, UN Envoy Downplays Harassment Reports, AFP, 6 Aug. 1994.
967
Annie Thomas, UN Envoy Downplays Harassment Reports, AFP, 6 Aug. 1994.
968
See, e.g., Fiche Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (5 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Collaboration
entre anciens officiers des FAR et le FPR) (showing the Kigali authorities had even gone so far as to reach out to
former FAR officers—those who had not participated in the genocidal violence against the Tutsi—to request that they
meet with refugees in Goma and urge them to come home).
969
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
970
Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
971
Hutus Return to French Zone Citing Tutsi Reprisal Attacks, AFP, 6 Aug. 1994.
972
Hutus Return to French Zone Citing Tutsi Reprisal Attacks, AFP, 6 Aug. 1994.
973
Hutus Return to French Zone Citing Tutsi Reprisal Attacks, AFP, 6 Aug. 1994.
974
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
975
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
976
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”); Cable
from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (6 August 1994) (Subject: “French Plans for Withdrawal
from Rwanda”).
977
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
978
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
979
See Memorandum from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (9 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Point de situation du 9 aout soir”).
980
See, e.g., Situation Report from “Gérard” (25 July 1994) (Subject: “TD Kigali 530: Rwanda, Report on the Mission
to Goma: 30 June to 25 July”) (“I was astounded by the flood of ethnic hatred that [RTLM] broadcast to its listeners,
the confounding of the RPF and UNAMIR and the rabble-rousing against the enemy, the Tutsi, who should be gotten
rid of.”); see also Memorandum from French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (15 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”);
Turquoise situation report (16 July 1994) (“The population is apprehensive about the departure of the French in
August, and the prospect of being protected by Africans from UNAMIR is not cause for rejoicing. This could be the
source of new mass movements.”).
981
Raymond Bonner, With French Exit Near, Rwandans Fear the Day, N.Y. TIMES, 9 Aug. 1994.
982
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (13 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Démarche to the French
on Rwanda”).
983
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (13 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Démarche to the French
on Rwanda”).
984
John Balzar, No Middle Ground for Fearful Rwandans, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 12 Aug. 1994.
985
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (13 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Démarche to the French
on Rwanda”).
986
Cable from US Secretary of State to American Embassy in Paris (13 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Démarche to the French
on Rwanda”).
Page | 527
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
987
Raymond Bonner, Fear of More Killings Starts a Second Rwandan Exodus, N.Y. TIMES, 13 Aug. 1994.
988
Raymond Bonner, Fear of More Killings Starts a Second Rwandan Exodus, N.Y. TIMES, 13 Aug. 1994.
989
Raymond Bonner, Fear of More Killings Starts a Second Rwandan Exodus, N.Y. TIMES, 13 Aug. 1994.
990
Draft cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 August 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force”).
991
Raymond Bonner, Fear of More Killings Starts a Second Rwandan Exodus, N.Y. TIMES, 13 Aug. 1994; see Craig
Nelson, Hutus Begin New Exodus as French Troops Pack Their Bags, INDEPENDENT, 16 Aug. 1994.
992
Craig Nelson, Hutus Begin New Exodus as French Troops Pack Their Bags, INDEPENDENT, 16 Aug. 1994.
993
Raymond Bonner, Fear of More Killings Starts a Second Rwandan Exodus, N.Y. TIMES, 13 Aug. 1994.
994
It’s Safe to Return Home, Rwanda Officials Tell Hutus, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 15 Aug. 1994.
995
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Visite du ministre de l’intérieur Sendashonga Seth
(Hutu)”).
996
It’s Safe to Return Home, Rwanda Officials Tell Hutus, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 15 Aug. 1994.
997
It’s Safe to Return Home, Rwanda Officials Tell Hutus, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 15 Aug. 1994.
998
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Visite du ministre de l’intérieur Sendashonga Seth
(Hutu)”).
999
Fax from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (14 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Visite du ministre de l’intérieur Sendashonga Seth
(Hutu)”).
1000
See, e.g., Craig Nelson, Hutus Begin New Exodus as French Troops Pack Their Bags, INDEPENDENT, 16 August
1994, p. 2 (quoting Hogard as saying, “Why should we stay with a government that doesn’t want us?”); Cable from
Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State ¶ 3 (Subject: “French Pullout from Humanitarian Zone Remains on Track”)
(19 Aug. 1994).
1001
See, e.g., Memorandum from Ms. Lauvergeon and Mr. Mary to Hubert Védrine, Secretary General to the President
(28 June 1994) (reproducing a 27 June 1998 interview of Alain Juppé by Europe 1).
1002
Cable from US Defense Intelligence Agency (18 July 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda – Security Council”); Notes on
Memorandum from Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (19 July 1994) (featuring a handwritten note from
Hubert Védrine noting that Prime Minister Balladur “is very concerned to see this operation completed quickly and
with dignity for France’s image”).
1003
Cable from US Embassy in Kigali (16 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Meeting of Charge d’Affaires with UN SRSG; No
Bend in the GOR”).
1004
Cable from US Embassy in Kigali (16 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Meeting of Charge d’Affaires with UN SRSG; No
Bend in the GOR”).
1005
Cable from US Embassy in Kigali (16 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Meeting of Charge d’Affaires with UN SRSG; No
Bend in the GOR”).
1006
MIP Tome III 88.
1007
JEAN-CLAUDE LAFOURCADE & GUILLAUME RIFFAUD, OPÉRATION TURQUOISE, 25-26, 34, 85, 105, 109 (2010);
LAURE DE VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE [TURQUOISE SILENCE], 11-12, 90-91 (2012);
French Too Late to Save the Tutsis, REUTERS, 26 June 1994.
1008
Interview by LFM with General Daniel Schroeder.
1009
Interview by LFM with General Daniel Schroeder.
1010
See Cable from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (17 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu quotidien du 17 aout 1994”);
Majority of French Soldiers Have Left Safety Zones, AFP, 21 August 1994.
1011
Cable from Jean-Claude Lafourcade (17 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Compte rendu quotidien du 17 aout 1994”).
Page | 528
Chapter X
22 June 1994 – 21 August 1994
1012
See Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda. Situation le 18 août 1994”).
1013
See Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda. Situation le 18 août 1994”) (“Contrary to NGO claims, population movements are still limited.” (emphasis
added)); id. at 2 (“The United States, the organizations (H.C.R. and I.C.R.C.) and the NGOs put pressure on us so that
the Turquoise detachment is kept in Rwanda for a few weeks.”).
1014
Situation Report from the Bureau of Civil Affairs at the Turquoise Inter-service Theater Command Post (18 Aug.
1994) (“[A]ll the humanitarian agencies have thus found a clever way to escape criticism for not having anticipated a
massive exodus to Bukavu and for not having taken appropriate measures to avoid this exodus that they consider
inevitable. With a clear conscience, they will be able to argue . . . that such an exodus [was] not attributable to an
absence of NGOs in [the] SHZ but rather [was] caused by the departure of the Turquoise force.”).
1015
See Memorandum from Dominique Pin and Christian Quesnot to François Mitterrand (18 Aug. 1994) (Subject:
“Rwanda. Situation le 18 août 1994”).
1016
ROMÉO DALLAIRE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL 508-509 (2003).
1017
Draft cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 August 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force”).
1018
Draft cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 August 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force”).
1019
Draft cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 August 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force”).
1020
Draft cable from the US Embassy in Kigali to Office of Central African Affairs (19 August 1994) (Subject:
“Introductory Meeting with New UNAMIR Force”).
1021
See Memorandum from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Directorate of African and Malagasy Affairs (23
Aug. 1994); Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (19 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: French Pullout
from Humanitarian Zone Remains on Track”). According to a US cable, a French official (the name is redacted) told
a US State Department official on 17 August 1994 “that a contingent of French troops would remain in Zaire after
[Turquoise’s] withdrawal from Rwanda to monitor the actions of the Hutus and resupply of the francophone African
troops participating in UNAMIR.” The French official reportedly explained “that both the French and Zairian
President Mobutu were concerned that armed Hutus might stage a break-away movement in the Kivu provinces, in
addition to threatening the new Rwandan government.” Cable from US Secretary of State to the American Embassy
in Paris (20 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “[Redacted] Says Troops Will Monitor Rwandan Situation from Zaire After
Withdrawal”).
1022
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (19 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: French Pullout from
Humanitarian Zone Remains on Track”).
1023
Cable from Pamela Harriman to US Secretary of State (19 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda: French Pullout from
Humanitarian Zone Remains on Track”).
1024
Daily situation report from Shaharyar Khan to Koffi Annan 2 (22 Aug. 1994); Keith B. Richburg, French Troops
Withdraw from Rwanda Safe Zone, WASHINGTON POST, 22 Aug. 1994.
1025
Daily situation report from Shaharyar Khan to Koffi Annan 2 (22 Aug. 1994); Zairean Border Guards Fire
Warning Shots, AFP, 21 August 1994.
1026
See Zaire Agrees to Reopen Border as Refugee Panic Grows, AFP, 21 Aug. 1994; Francois-Xavier Harispe, Zaire
Caught in Two Minds on Rwandan Refugees, AFP, 21 Aug. 1994; Michela Wrong, Shots Halt Stampede from Rwanda,
INDEPENDENT, 22 Aug. 1994 (reporting that a 60-vehicle French convoy “was waved through by Zairean paratroops
despite the closure of the border”).
1027
Francois-Xavier Harispe, Zaire Caught in Two Minds on Rwandan Refugees, AFP, 21 Aug. 1994. See also Zaire
Agrees to Reopen Border as Refugee Panic Grows, AFP, 21 Aug. 1994.
1028
Francois-Xavier Harispe, Zaire Struggles with Refugees as France Pulls Out of Rwanda, AFP, 21 Aug. 1994.
Page | 529
EPILOGUE
The departure of the Turquoise troops in late August 1994 marked an end to the French
military presence in Rwanda. Throughout the nearly three decades that have followed, however,
the French government has continued to impede and undermine Rwanda’s efforts to recover from
the Genocide Against the Tutsi by using France’s power to promulgate a false narrative about the
Genocide, bury the truth, and silence alternative views. In short, French officials have engaged in
a cover-up: circulating false and dangerous narratives about the Genocide; conducting a
parliamentary inquiry and then avoiding the inescapable conclusions of the facts it unearthed;
coordinating with a supposedly independent judicial inquiry that produced arrest warrants for RPF
leaders based on scant and even falsified evidence; harboring and protecting some of the most
culpable génocidaires; withholding relevant materials and documents from public scrutiny; and,
most importantly, failing to acknowledge the French government’s own role in the Genocide. All
the while, generations of Rwandan citizens have continued to endure the toll of the Genocide.
After Operation Turquoise Ended, President Mitterrand Refused to Accept Any
Responsibility for the Genocide, Instead Issuing False Statements Blaming the RPF and
Distorting the History of the Genocide.
France claims to be virtuous and denies any responsibility or even any
examination of responsibility. Worse, [France] wants to give advice.1
– Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, journalist
After the French government’s intervention in Rwanda ended in August 1994, President
Mitterrand began rewriting history. Nearing the end of his presidency, and suffering from
advanced prostate cancer,2 Mitterrand was showing an increasing concern for his legacy.3
That fall, in a book published by a sympathetic biographer, Mitterrand acknowledged longswirling rumors about a shameful chapter in his life story: his support, as a young man in Nazioccupied France, for Marshal Philippe Pétain and the collaborationist regime in Vichy.4 Mitterrand
entrusted the biographer, Pierre Péan, to tell the story from Mitterrand’s perspective, without
sensationalism or disapproval.5 “I feel that he wanted to put things in their place,” Péan said.6
Though he had ample opportunity to do so, Mitterrand never apologized for the Vichy
government’s role in the Holocaust.7
Soon after the book’s publication, in September 1994, Mitterrand gave an interview to Le
Figaro. When the reporter asked him to comment on criticism from intellectuals about the French
government’s role in the Genocide, Mitterrand insisted, “[O]ur responsibility is nil.”8
The truth, as Mitterrand well knew, was that for close to four years, the French government
had sent guns, money, and soldiers to help defend a repressive regime that barbarically and
publicly massacred the Tutsi minority. French troops, officials, and diplomats had witnessed and
learned of the commonplace brutalization and dehumanization of the Tutsi—in the media, at
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roadblocks, in arbitrary detentions, in the torture of arrested persons, and in the massacres—with
no change in policy from Paris. French leaders had sought to maintain influence in East Africa and
demonstrate to vital allies throughout the continent that France could be trusted to defend them
against military threats to their power. French presence in Rwanda and its conscious indifference
to Tutsi persecution had created a sense of impunity amongst the perpetrators that found its fullness
in the Genocide. And yet Mitterrand acknowledged no responsibility for any of this.
The biennial Franco-African Summit, held in November 1994 in Biarritz, a city on France’s
southwestern coast, offered yet another look backward—a chance to reexamine Mitterrand’s
Africa policy and the results it had borne in the 13 years since he assumed the French presidency.9
It was at this same summit four years earlier, in La Baule, that Mitterrand had famously announced
his plan for promoting democratic reforms in francophone Africa.10 With his presidency now in
its twilight, Mitterrand had seemingly hoped to frame the gathering in Biarritz as a “triumphant
valediction.”11 Few outside of his administration appeared to see it that way, though. The press
ridiculed the Biarritz summit as a beachside retreat for corrupt African autocrats, such as Zairean
President Mobutu Sese Seko, whose presence exposed the hollowness of Mitterrand’s promises at
La Baule.12 The French government had welcomed Mobutu to the summit, in spite of his history
of corruption and brutality, because of his support for French actions in Rwanda, including his
willingness to allow French troops to set up operating bases in Zaire during Operation Turquoise.13
Tellingly, the French government had not invited the new authorities in Kigali.14 “They are too
controversial, and besides they are going to collapse any minute,” Mitterrand’s Africa advisor,
Bruno Delaye, told a journalist before the summit.15
The French government’s refusal to invite Rwandan officials was symbolic, indicative of
its lingering hostility toward the RPF. Other expressions of the French government’s enmity had
more serious consequences. Rwanda emerged from the Genocide in desperate need of international
assistance.16 “We must start practically from zero,” the country’s new finance minister, Marc
Rugenera, told US officials in September 1994.17 Fleeing members of the IRG had raided the
treasury on their way out of the country, leaving the new authorities in Kigali with nothing.18
Taking on the monumental task of rebuilding the country, the new government was forced to
confront what Vice President Kagame described as an economy in “total bankruptcy,” a civil
service that “has largely been wiped out, an infrastructure that lies in ruins, and a destabilization
campaign by some countries both inside and outside Africa.”19 Rwanda had no functioning police
force, and its hospitals and schools were barely operational.20 Crops were left to rot while millions
starved.21 Surveying the destruction, a writer for the international anti-poverty NGO Oxfam
remarked: “It may now take decades before Rwanda returns to the standard of living of the early
1980s.”22
To jump-start the rebuilding process, the new government in Rwanda needed to pay off the
crushing debts it inherited from the prior administration.23 The French government, however,
resisted pleas for Western countries to help Rwanda clear its arrears.24 When the US government
pressed allies in the fall of 1994 to help Rwanda wipe out its debt to the World Bank, at least two
other countries—Belgium and Canada—heeded the call.25 France, it was noted, “did not offer any
assistance.”26 Its coldness spurred the French legislator Jean-Claude Lefort, a French Communist
Party member who would later serve on the MIP, to accuse France of effectively “boycotting the
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new government.”27 Lefort condemned the French government for “support[ing], until the very
end, the former leaders of this country who have committed and planned an actual Genocide.”28
The French government actively worked to undermine the new Rwandan government by
using France’s power within the European Union to temporarily block an EU aid package for
Rwanda.29 As reported in La Croix, “everyone within the Union [knew] that France [was] using
all the tools at its disposal to delay European aid to the new Rwandan government as long as
possible.”30 French officials reportedly argued “that the RPF government must better demonstrate
its commitment to human rights in deeds as well as words before international aid coffers are
opened,”31 a concern that might have sounded sincere coming from a country that had not
knowingly overlooked the systematic human rights abuses of the previous Rwandan regime. The
French government ultimately softened its position, allowing the EU financing to proceed.
As a general matter, its views toward the Rwandan government remained hostile in the
time immediately following the Genocide.32 President Kagame recalls this hostility as France
“defended those who perpetrated the Genocide” and used its influence to “discourage others from
giving aid [to Rwanda].”33 “France,” he said, “found a way to mobilize those who sought to fight
against Rwanda.”34
Mitterrand, for his part, seemed intent on recasting Rwanda’s new leaders as villains on
par with the génocidaires. In Biarritz, the written version of his prepared remarks for the opening
of the summit referred not to a single genocide in Rwanda, but to “genocides,”35 the implication
being the RPF was engaged in its own form of Genocide, presumably against the Hutus. When a
reporter asked him about this, Mitterrand confirmed the script had said “genocides,” but he
maintained he had used the singular in his spoken remarks. “These are the mysteries of eloquence,”
he said, coyly.36 Mitterrand knew better. “The ‘double genocide gambit’ is a well-known piece of
historical sophistry,” historian Gérard Prunier has written, referring to Mitterrand’s remarks in
Biarritz.37 “To find President Mitterrand, an elder statesman, a man of taste, a literary author and
formerly not without dignity, not embarrassed to be caught passing off such counterfeit intellectual
and moral merchandise is another sad confirmation of the validity of de Gaulle’s saying that
‘getting old is a form of human shipwreck.’”38 To the very end, Mitterrand was promulgating false
attacks on the RPF and the emerging new government.
There is no credible evidence of a double genocide, but the mere pronouncement of it by
the president of France would prove pernicious. Such a false narrative permits the culpable to
create a moral equivalency where there is none. It diminishes the historical import of the Genocide
Against the Tutsi by suggesting that everyone was involved in killing Rwandans of all
ethnicities—and if all are guilty, no one is guilty. And, at its core, it denies the historical truth of
the Genocide. Mitterrand, not so deftly, deflected an acknowledgement of the French
government’s responsibility by suggesting the guilt of others. His perspective would become a
theme echoed at the ICTR trials, with defendants parroting Mitterrand’s false narratives.39
Mitterrand’s speech at Biarritz betrayed no regrets about his government’s actions in
Rwanda. The president had carefully pruned his account of the lead-up to the Genocide, trimming
out the parts where, for three and a half years, the French government, under his leadership,
propped up a murderous regime and its army in Rwanda; where, in April 1994, French forces
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exfiltrated génocidaires from the chaos engulfing Rwanda, leaving countless Tutsi behind to perish
in the Genocide; and where, two months later, the French government sent troops to shield the
genocidal interim government from the RPF forces’ advance. Omitting the foregoing history from
his remarks, Mitterrand then revised history by attempting to take undue credit—not for the first
time—for the Arusha process.40 “We were close to a solution,” he lamented.41 He spoke as though
the French government had been a neutral mediator in that process, when in fact his administration
had leveraged the power of the French military to strengthen the Habyarimana government’s
position at the negotiating table.
It had, by this time, become a habit for Mitterrand to refer to a letter he received from RPF
Chairman Alexis Kanyarengwe—a “very warm letter of thanks,” the president called it—in August
1993, just after the conclusion of the Arusha talks.42 “France in this case has consistently
maintained a position of balance and wisdom,” Mitterrand said at an August 1994 diplomatic
conference at the Élysée, “and I have an extremely warm letter from the chairman of the RPF, Mr.
Kangyareme [sic], who thanked France, in a particularly grateful tone, for what [France] had
accomplished for the settlement of the war there.”43 This was a mischaracterization.
Kanyarengwe’s letter—while containing pleasantries typical of diplomatic correspondence—was
not, at bottom, a thank-you note.44 It was a courteously worded request for France to facilitate the
Arusha Accords’ implementation by hastening the withdrawal of the 300 Noroît troops still
stationed in Rwanda.45
The notion that France had succeeded, ultimately, in winning over some of its detractors
and skeptics at the United Nations was a through line in Mitterrand’s speech in Biarritz. He framed
Operation Turquoise in precisely the same misleading way, insisting that some members of the
international community, after questioning France’s intentions at the outset of the operation in
June 1994, had eventually abandoned their reservations and decided they wanted French troops to
stay in Rwanda longer.46 This, too, appears to be a selective representation of the facts. US and
UN officials had, indeed, lobbied France in August 1994 to agree to a limited extension of its
troops’ mission while waiting for the reinforcement of UNAMIR to be completed.47 These
requests, though, were not a validation of the French government’s decision two months earlier,
in the final days of the Genocide, to send soldiers to “stop the killing” in Rwanda. Circumstances
in and around Rwanda had changed considerably from June to August. The genocidal forces were
no longer in control of the Rwandan government, and a new, very different humanitarian crisis
was taking place. The fear among US and UN officials at that time was that a precipitous departure
of French troops would contribute to the panic among Rwanda’s Hutu population (already stoked
by false rumors of widespread retribution circulated by RTLM and the IRG), spurring more Hutu
to flee to Zaire.48 The question facing the international community was no longer whether
Turquoise, as conceived by France, had been advisable. It was when, and how, to end the operation
without making the crisis immeasurably worse.
Mitterrand’s declaration of success about Rwanda was repudiated by events on the ground.
By declining to arrest génocidaires and facilitating their leaders’ escape to Zaire, Turquoise
contributed to the refugee crisis there. In its erection of the Safe Humanitarian Zone as a bulwark
against RPF westward movement in Rwanda, Turquoise also protected the genocidal interim
government, génocidaires and local Rwandan leaders, who encouraged Rwandans to flee to Zaire
with false messages about reprisal attacks from the RPF that never materialized. The génocidaires,
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fully armed, were able to control the camps in Zaire and kept many refugees hostage, persuading
them and even threatening them if they sought to return.49 When refugees in Zaire were presented
with the opportunity to go home to Rwanda, “they were soon greeted with riflemen—members of
the Hutu Power who had also sought refuge in the camps—knocking on their doors and threatening
them not to go back to Rwanda,” according to Ray Wilkinson, a spokesman for the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees efforts to coordinate over 200 humanitarian agencies in Zaire at the
time.50 The génocidaires held the refugees hostage as “leverage over the resolution of the conflict”
with the new Rwandan government.51 At the most basic level, they served as human shields.
When American and French diplomats convened in Rwanda on 23 August 1994, just as
the French military was exiting, they shared concerns about the refugee crisis’s “potential for
destabilizing the region,” and Jean-Marc de La Sablière, the Quai d’Orsay’s head of African and
Malagasy affairs, remarked that “the problem is compounded by the need to disarm the refugees
on the border who have to date only been relieved of their heavy weapons, not their light arms.”52
The growing presence of armed foreign groups in Zaire became a powder keg lit in two regional
wars—Congo I and Congo II—that followed the Genocide and engulfed the region in a state of
war and instability. A report issued several years later by the OAU observed how Turquoise
contributed to these developments:
The consequences of French policy can hardly be overestimated. The escape of
genocidaire leaders into Zaire led, almost inevitably, to a new, more complex stage
in the Rwandan tragedy, expanding it into a conflict that soon engulfed all of central
Africa. That the entire Great Lakes Region would suffer destabilization was both
tragic and, to a significant extent, foreseeable.53
But in Biarritz and elsewhere in the fall of 1994, France’s president told a different story.
Mitterrand died in his sleep on 8 January 1996.54 The attempt to cover up his government’s
disgraces in Rwanda would, however, long outlive him.
A 1998 Parliamentary Inquiry Whitewashed the French Government’s Role in the
Genocide.
For years, the architects of France’s intervention in Rwanda were unsullied by the fallout
from their policy choices.55 As the Genocide faded from the French public’s consciousness,
veterans of the Mitterrand administration moved on, evading and escaping accountability for what
they had enabled.
Then, in January 1998, a series of articles in the French newspaper Le Figaro renewed
attention to the French government’s role in Rwanda’s civil war and the ensuing Genocide.56 In
this series, journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupéry spotlighted the Mitterrand administration’s
conviction that the RPF’s invasion of Rwanda in 1990 threatened to erode French influence in East
Africa; the Mitterrand administration’s efforts to help the Rwandan government forces defeat the
RPF, despite evidence of the Habyarimana government’s complicity in ethnic killings; and the
Mitterrand administration’s continued collaboration with Rwandan authorities even after the
Genocide began.57 The articles pointed out that other countries—the United States and Belgium,
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in particular—had shown a willingness in the post-Genocide era to acknowledge at least some of
their failures to prevent mass killings in Rwanda.58 Just one month earlier, after nearly a year of
investigatory work, the Belgian Senate finalized a report that faulted the international community
generally, and Belgium, in particular, for failing to stop the Genocide in April 1994.59 In the United
States, both President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (who was UN
ambassador during the Genocide) expressed regrets for the failure to act.
France, as compared to all other foreign powers, bore far more responsibility for the
catastrophic events of 1994, and yet, Saint-Exupéry observed, it had taken no comparable steps.
“France claims to be virtuous and denies any responsibility or even any examination of
responsibility. Worse, [France] wants to give advice,” he wrote.60
French NGOs sought to capitalize on the revived interest in the French government’s
exploits in Rwanda and issued a joint statement calling on the French parliament to launch an
inquiry along the lines of the one the Belgian Senate had just completed.61 “Today, the government
declares it wants to break the authoritarian and neocolonial tradition of France’s Africa policy[.]
By setting up this commission of inquiry, parliamentarians can help to ensure that such
declarations are not reduced to a mere announcement,” the group wrote.62
In the face of this mounting pressure, on 3 March 1998, Paul Quilès, president of the
National Assembly’s defense committee, issued a statement announcing the creation of a “factfinding mission on Rwanda.”63 Quilès—a Socialist, as Mitterrand had been—had served as
Mitterrand’s defense minister from 1985 to 1986.64 His statement was instructive in the way it
defined the mission’s goal. It was not to examine France’s intervention in Rwanda between 1990
and 1994, but “to shed light on the role that various foreign military forces may have played in the
Rwandan crisis.”65 The phrasing was an early indicator that Quilès did not see France’s role as
unique, and it created reason to question whether he had any intention of neutrally assessing—let
alone condemning—the conduct of the French government or President Mitterrand, under whom
he had once served.
Members of the Communist and Green parties were not satisfied with Quilès’ promise of
an “information mission,” and they recognized that such a body would lack the powers necessary
for a genuinely robust investigation—for example, the power to subpoena witnesses or, if
appropriate, to bring criminal charges.66 Doctors Without Borders called the limited approach to
the inquiry “a diversionary maneuver.”67
Despite flaws that were present from its conception, the Parliamentary Information
Mission’s (“MIP”) report is a useful repository of testimony and fact, however incomplete. The
1,800-page report, issued in December 1998, was replete with damning revelations, noting, for
example, that French officials, during the Rwandan civil war, had assigned officers to advise the
FAR’s most senior leaders and to train its troops for combat operations;68 that, in February 1993,
it dispatched officers to supervise and control (albeit “indirectly”) the Rwandan Armed Forces;69
and that it supplied the Rwandan Army with 105mm howitzers and other weapons.70 The report
acknowledged, if only vaguely, that the steady expansion of French cooperation with the
Habyarimana government and the FAR, at a time of “ethnic tensions, massacres and violence,”
had “serious consequences” for Rwanda.71 The significance of such findings, though, was
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everywhere diluted by circumlocution and evasion. At seemingly every juncture, the report’s
authors were at pains to paint French officials’ policy choices as excusable, characterizing even
their most ill-advised decisions as mere “errors in judgments.”72 “The report . . . tr[ied] to
demonstrate that at each stage of the process, Paris had a good reason to make choices that would
later prove to be ill-advised,” a Le Monde reporter, Rémy Ourdan, observed just after the report’s
release in December 1998. In Ourdan’s opinion, Quilès’ invocation of a “comprehensive strategic
mistake” to explain away the French government’s responsibility was “not very convincing.”73
Ultimately, Quilès did not equivocate when it came to the French government’s
responsibility for the Genocide itself, insisting that, the French government “is neither responsible
nor guilty.”74 Quilès’ conclusion as to the French government’s lack of responsibility ignored facts
that, in many instances, could be found in the MIP’s own report.75 The French government, the
report itself acknowledged, had spent years arming, training, and even, at one point, commanding
the Rwandan military in an effort to protect President Habyarimana and his government, in spite
of indications that his government committed and facilitated rampant human rights abuses.76 Its
officers advised FAR commanders and trained members of the Presidential Guard, some of whom
would go on to commit atrocities in the Genocide.77 Its unwavering support for Habyarimana’s
murderous regime disincentivized the Rwandan president to accept a negotiated truce with the
RPF and bought the extremists more time to hatch their plans.78 The message to the extremists
was, as an OAU investigative panel observed in a report released in 2000, “that they could get
away with just about anything.”79
Pierre Brana, one of two rapporteurs appointed to lead the fact-finding mission and the
drafting of its report, would later acknowledge that many of the mission’s members were not
interested in undertaking a good-faith effort to uncover the truth. Brana said the mission consisted
of two blocs—one that earnestly believed it would serve France’s interests to resolve unanswered
questions about its actions in Rwanda, and one that “continued to think that national greatness
thrives best in the shadow of secret-défense.”80 The process favored the proponents of secrecy. An
initial list of interviewees the mission intended to question required the prior approval of the Élysée
and Matignon.81 The MIP ultimately interviewed 88 people—a mix of politicians, diplomats,
military officers, academics, and NGO staff.82
Ourdan, the Le Monde reporter, described the MIP public hearings as “disappointing, even
pathetic.”83 “There were hardly any tough questions for four months,” he wrote in July 1998. The
only exception to that rule, he said, was in the mission’s comparatively tough questioning of
“insolent” academics who, based on their years of research, “presented views that did not conform
to the official French line.”84 Other witnesses—those who adhered to the government line—were
treated with kid gloves. Detecting “conniving smiles” from certain mission members, Ourdan
noted that some witnesses were released after just 30 minutes of questioning, while others—French
government officials—were permitted to sit for questioning as a group, minimizing the risk that
they might contradict one another.85 “Witnesses used the hearings as a platform to assert their
certainties and present their arguments, generally without having to provide tangible evidence,”
Ourdan wrote.86 The mission’s accommodating approach came as a relief to some of the witnesses,
including one unnamed soldier who admitted, with a smile, that he had been surprised by how
incurious the mission members had seemed.87
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While testifying before the MIP in May 1998, former Mitterrand advisors Bruno Delaye
and General Christian Quesnot each acknowledged that they could not say for certain just who was
responsible for shooting down President Habyarimana’s plane on 6 April 1994.88 Both men
nevertheless used the occasion of their hearings to advance the theory that the RPF was to blame
for the attack—the same narrative that RTLM promoted on its airwaves, inciting the Genocide
Against the Tutsi, in April 1994,89 and the same narrative that génocidaires had peddled in the
years afterwards. Delaye was comparatively subtle. Acknowledging that he “had no evidence” to
support his suppositions, Delaye “recalled that in the hours that followed [the crash], the rumor
was that the RPF was the perpetrator of the attack.”90 Quesnot, meanwhile, did not hesitate to
indulge in speculation about the cause of the crash (stating that “[i]f the extremists had wanted to
get rid of President Habyarimana, they could have done so on land at another time without killing
one of their own”), even as he conceded that, in pointing the finger at the RPF, he was merely
“expressing a personal feeling.”91
The MIP’s finished product was, at once, both massive and incomplete. Critics were
baffled by the mission’s failure to question Paul Barril,92 the French mercenary suspected of
training IRG-aligned forces during the Genocide and of contracting to supply the IRG with
weapons and ammunition in violation of the UN arms embargo. Barril’s connections to the IRG
were no secret; they had, in fact, figured into the January 1998 Le Figaro series that precipitated
the MIP’s launch.93 Quilès, though, had no interest in questioning Barril. “Paul Barril? But he’s a
clown!” he replied when asked, in November 1998, whether the mission would be questioning
him.94 While this may be true, he appeared to be involved in matters important to the MIP’s
inquiry. Quilès would later claim that he did, ultimately, reach out to Barril on 2 December 1998—
less than two weeks before the report’s completion—to summon him for an interview, but he let
the matter drop when Barril said he was out of the country and could not attend.95 “They never
wanted to see me,” Barril later said.96
Quilès incorrectly suggested the mission’s report was the final word on the French
government’s exploits in Rwanda. Addressing the press upon the report’s release, he delivered a
short and simple verdict: “France is exonerated.”97 “The sentence was repeated on radio and
television,” Saint-Exupéry would later recall. “It was intentional: everything had been done to
ensure that the press did not have time to read the report.”98 Quilès’ summation obscured the
inconvenient facts his team had been charged with unearthing, and, most certainly, the report had
not “exonerated” the French government.
More recently, following the presentation of a report by the Research commission on the
French Archives Related to Rwanda and the Genocide Against the Tutsi (known as the “Duclert
Commission” after the Commission’s President, Professor Vincent Duclert) there were misleading
media headlines reminiscent of Quilès’ exculpatory pronouncements. This may be due to language
in the Duclert Commission’s Conclusion that does not reflect the underlying report. For example,
the BBC’s headline pronounced: “France was ‘blind’ to Rwanda genocide, French report says.”99
The Commission’s ten-page Conclusion may have invited such headlines by suggesting the French
government was “blind” to the violence in Rwanda and the coming Genocide, despite what the
underlying 1,200-page Duclert report found to the contrary. The French government was not blind.
The Commission’s report acknowledges evidence of the French government’s unqualified support
of the Rwandan government, despite French officials’ knowledge of massacre upon massacre of
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Tutsi, their daily dehumanization, and the hardening of extremism in Rwanda facilitated by French
support of the Rwandan government.
In light of the Duclert report’s underlying factual findings, the Commission’s conclusion
about the French government’s responsibility is unclear. The Commission’s discussion of
responsibility starts with a strong statement pronouncing that responsibility to be “serious” and
“overwhelming,” but ultimately equivocates and comes to no fixed conclusion, devolving into a
series of abstract discussions of “political,” “institutional,” “intellectual,” “ethical,” “cognitive,”
and “moral” responsibilities without any reference to who was responsible for what. It stops short
of explaining what the French government was responsible for having done, when that
responsibility is clear from the evidence. As our investigation has concluded, the French
government bears significant responsibility for enabling a foreseeable genocide. For the last 27
years, the French government has, on a continual basis, trivialized and downplayed that
responsibility.
A French Judicial Investigation Smeared Rwandan Political Leaders and Gave Credence
to the Claims of Genocide Deniers.
Although the MIP did not, in the end, take a position on the lingering question of who
brought down President Habyarimana’s plane,100 France started an inquiry in 1998 into the plane
crash that would proceed unprofessionally for years before making headlines across the globe in
2006, parroting the génocidaire narrative that the RPF shot down the plane and resulting in arrest
warrants for senior RPF officials.101 This investigation was formally discredited in 2020 when the
Paris Court of Appeals dismissed the case,102 but not before being used by Genocide deniers as
support for their claims and by génocidaires in support of their defenses before the ICTR.
The case’s origins merit suspicion, tracing to a July 1994 complaint filed by Hélène
Clamagirand, a French attorney representing President Habyarimana’s widow, Agathe Kanziga
Habyarimana.103 In preparing the case, Clamagirand received an assist from one of her clients:
Paul Barril,104 the same French mercenary who, two months earlier, had struck an agreement to
supply the IRG with weapons and ammunition during the Genocide, and whom the Quilès
commission refused to interview.105 Barril had been airing sensational claims that summer,
insisting he had obtained physical evidence of the RPF’s involvement in the attack, including both
the plane’s “black box” and the two missile launchers used to shoot the plane down.106 The
evidence, however, did not materialize.107
French prosecutors rejected Clamagirand’s complaint on technical grounds, noting that the
Habyarimanas were not French nationals.108 Undeterred, Clamagirand effectively revived the
claim in 1997, this time on behalf of a woman whose father, a French national, had co-piloted the
presidential plane and perished in the crash.109 (Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana later joined the case,
as did family members of the plane’s other passengers and crew.110) French magistrate Judge JeanLouis Bruguière took up the case, launching his investigation in March 1998 and continuing at its
helm until his departure from the court in 2007.111
Under Bruguière’s direction, the inquiry was unprofessional and careless. Bruguière
ignored critical evidence, neglected to call essential witnesses, distorted witness statements, and
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disregarded testimony that was contrary to his desired outcome.112 Unlike some of his successors,
Bruguière did not travel to Rwanda and collected no material evidence.113 And, quite tellingly, he
hired as an interpreter Fabien Singaye, a former intelligence officer in the Rwandan embassy in
Switzerland with strong ties to the Habyarimana regime114 and also the son-in-law of the accused
financer of the Genocide, Felicien Kabuga.115
In November 2006, Bruguière issued international arrest warrants naming eight senior
Rwandan officials (and a ninth person, who did not exist116) in connection with Habyarimana’s
assassination.117 Bruguière did not issue a warrant for President Kagame’s arrest (explaining that,
as a head of state, he was immune from prosecution in French courts), but was unequivocal in
asserting that Kagame was chiefly responsible for the attack.118
The French government took pains to distance itself from Bruguière’s actions and publicly
deemed them “a judicial matter.”119 In January 2007, after the Rwandan government announced,
in response to the judge’s accusations, that it would cut diplomatic ties with France, a Quai d’Orsay
spokesman said, “Judge Bruguière . . . did this on his own authority and in total independence.”120
This was false. A US cable, published by Wikileaks, reveals that a French Foreign Ministry official
confided to a US diplomat in January 2007 that the French government “had given Bruguière the
green light to issue his report.”121 The Foreign Ministry official “said that France had wanted to
reciprocate for Rwanda’s taking steps to investigate France’s alleged involvement in the 1994
Genocide and its aftermath.”122 (The official was referring to the Mucyo Commission.) Within a
week of the Foreign Ministry official’s statement to the US diplomat, Judge Bruguière confirmed
to a US embassy official in Paris that he had “consulted” with President Jacques Chirac and other
French government officials before issuing the arrest warrants “because he was convinced of the
need to coordinate timing with the government.”123 A cable documenting the embassy official’s
conversation with Bruguière noted that the judge “did not hide his personal desire to see Kagame’s
government isolated. He warned that closer US ties with Rwanda would be a mistake.”124
These leaked US cables suggest that Bruguière’s unsubstantiated arrest warrants were not
actually the result of an independent inquiry by an impartial judicial body, but rather a coordinated
effort with a government that has shown a consistent desire to obscure the truth about the Genocide
and its own responsibility for its role. Bruguière appears to have been doing the business of the
French government, in the guise of an impartial judicial proceeding. The notion that a sitting judge
would be having ex parte conversations with the government is in violation of the most basic
ethical tenets governing the role of judges. It is wrong for the judge; it is wrong for the government;
and it also shows that the French government has not acknowledged or disclosed communications
between Bruguière and the Élysée. Until the French government is more forthcoming about this
poorly-conducted investigation—reconciling its public statements with the statements made in
private to US diplomats—the Bruguière inquiry will remain yet another shrouded piece of history
suggesting French wrongdoing.
The judges who took over the case from Bruguière after he left the bench in 2007
reexamined the evidence and began exposing its weaknesses. In 2012, they determined that the
missiles that brought down Habyarimana’s plane were fired from the FAR military barracks at
Kanombe.125 The investigation nevertheless dragged on for several more years before the
investigating judges finally dropped the probe in 2018.126 A Paris appellate court in July 2020
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upheld the decision to close the case,127 and that decision is now under consideration by the Cour
de Cassation (France’s court of final appeal for civil and criminal matters).
Although the investigation was ultimately discredited, its existence gave ammunition to
those seeking to deflect from their responsibility for the Genocide. Colonel Théoneste Bagosora,
often described as the “architect” of the Genocide, would try to use the Bruguière investigation to
elevate the importance of the plane crash as a defense to the accusation that he and his codefendants in the “Military I” trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) had
planned the killing spree that began after the presidential plane went down—that, in fact, no one
had planned it.128 It was the defense’s claim, rather, that the mass killings of Tutsi must have
happened spontaneously, because the event that triggered them—the downing of the president’s
plane—was not the extremists’ doing.129 “[I]t is common knowledge today,” Bagosora testified on
24 October 2005, his first day on the witness stand, “that it is General Paul Kagame, current
president in Rwanda, who is responsible for that attack.”130 The defense was partially successful,
because the Court found that the prosecution had not met its burden to prove conspiracy to commit
genocide beyond a reasonable doubt. It nonetheless found Bagosora guilty of committing
genocide, crimes against humanity, and other war crimes.131 Bagosora is currently serving a 35year sentence based on multiple convictions for his command role in the brutal slayings of UN
peacekeepers, Rwandan opposition leaders, and an untold number of civilians in the early days of
the Genocide.132 But when Bruguière’s arrest warrants were issued, counsel for the Military I codefendants celebrated his order by declaring at a press conference just a few days later that it
confirmed what they had been trying to prove at trial.133
The collapse of Bruguière’s investigation did not erase the damage it had already wrought.
By 2006, fourteen years before the investigation closed for a lack of evidence, it had already tarred
the RPF as villains and, in so doing, worked to retroactively justify the Mitterrand administration’s
use of the French military between 1990 and 1994 to block the RPF from seizing power in Kigali.
Judge Bruguière—a member of the French judiciary, with the power and financing of the French
state behind his requests for interviews and issuance of arrest warrants—acted for and on behalf
of the French government as he conducted an unprofessional investigation that lent credibility to
Genocide deniers. His investigation helped legitimize revisionist history and helped credit
génocidaire mythology that what happened in Rwanda was simply an unpremeditated,
uncoordinated eruption of violence, and not what history demands it be called: a genocide.
Génocidaires Have Enjoyed Decades of Sanctuary and Freedom in France, Despite
Concerted Efforts by Private Citizens and the Rwandan Government to Bring Them to
Justice.
In addition to giving voice to the false narratives of génocidaires, the French government,
even now, provides safe haven to suspected génocidaires. There may be more than 100 suspected
génocidaires living freely in France.134 The French office responsible for asylum, l’Office français
de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (OFPRA), has too often granted them asylum without taking
seriously into account information about their connection to the Genocide, effectively leaving the
suspected génocidaires free to live and work in France.135 In parallel, the French government has
failed to prosecute all but a handful of the suspected génocidaires known to be hiding within its
borders. The claims filed against those génocidaires by the families of the victims and many human
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rights NGOs have languished on the desks of French judges, sometimes for as many as twenty
years.136 The pattern of these outcomes is clear: the French government does not care, close to
three decades after the Genocide, to bring accountability to those responsible for the massacres of
Tutsi.
The Collectif des parties civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR) a nonprofit founded by Alain and
Dafroza Gauthier, works to bring “before French justice those suspected of having participated in
the Genocide Against the Tutsi and who have found an often too accommodating reception on
French soil.”137 The Gauthiers have devoted their lives and, for the first few years after founding
the CPCR in 2001, their personal finances, to ferreting out génocidaires—speaking with witnesses,
consulting archives and proceedings from the Rwandan Gacaca courts (local Rwandan tribunals
that tried, convicted and sentenced Rwandans accused of committing crimes during the Genocide),
and presenting evidence to prosecutors.138 Thirty complaints, emanating from their work, have led
to the opening of judicial inquiries.139 However, out of those inquiries, the judges have pronounced
a decision of “non-lieu” (decided to abandon judicial action under procedure) in four cases and
have only brought seven cases to the Cour d’Assise (French criminal trial court).140 Of the cases
that the CPCR is currently pursuing within French courts, more than two-thirds are over a decade
old.141 In Alain Gauthier’s words, “French justice can be characterized by delays that are
incomprehensible and unacceptable for the victims.”142
The CPCR’s experience in their fight for justice illuminates the French judiciary’s
systematic inability or unwillingness to prosecute accused génocidaires in a timely fashion. Before
the creation of the crimes against humanity division in 2012 in the Tribunal de Grande Instance de
Paris (merged into the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris in 2020)143 cases of alleged génocidaires were
assigned to judges without the means to pursue them, causing one judge to say, “There is no need
for instructions [to freeze a case]: it’s only a matter of not providing the means to conduct the
investigation.”144 As Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer for one civil society organization involved in
the ongoing cases against génocidaires, told Mediapart in 2019, “The simple cases were never
followed up on: the prosecutors either did not follow up or opened preliminary inquiries that were
not taken seriously at all.”145
For example, the case against Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, a Catholic priest accused
of “complicity in torture and inhumane or degrading treatment” of Tutsi seeking refuge in his
church during the Genocide,146 began in 1995, when a group of Genocide survivors, their families,
and civil society organizations filed a complaint in French court against him.147 Nine years later,
the judicial process against Munyeshyaka had not moved forward, prompting the European Court
of Human Rights to condemn France for violating the victims’ rights to have their case heard
“within a reasonable amount of time.”148 The European court’s decision did not speed up the
investigation of the case. It was not until October 2019 that France’s highest court ended the
proceedings, accepting the prosecutor’s advice to dismiss the charges against Munyeshyaka.149
Ultimately, after 18 years, Munyeshyaka never faced his day in court, despite the fact that the
ICTR, in 2005, indicted Munyeshyaka and, in 2007, referred his case to France with the
understanding that he would be tried.150 This has engendered great pain for the survivors. “It is to
the great loss of the families of the victims and the associations that have fought for justice that it
seems he will never be judged in France,” concludes Alain Gauthier.151
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Bectarte said the French government’s delays in genocide prosecutions were, for many
years, attributable to a “lack of political will.”152 This view is endorsed by others, who have pressed
the Ministry of Justice for more resources to be allotted to the cases, including the creation of a
unit dedicated to Rwanda within the crimes against humanity division.153 A Mediapart article
reported that, prior to 2009, there were just two investigative magistrates in all of France charged
with managing the entire docket of cases relating to the Genocide.154 “You are on duty, you are
already drowning in [cases of] robberies, police violence, domestic violence, drug traffickers, and
then you are told: ‘Here are the Rwandan files.’ And there, in front of you, there is literally a wall
of paper,” one of the magistrates recalled.155
The 2012 creation of the new division within the Paris district court did not resolve the
problem; just three Genocide suspects have been tried in France since then. (All three were
convicted.156) No other defendants have yet gone to trial. French leaders, past and present, have
vowed in recent years to clear the blockages. In April 2019, as the 25th anniversary of the Genocide
approached, President Emmanuel Macron announced his administration would provide more
resources for genocide prosecutions, so that suspects “could be tried in a reasonable amount of
time.”157 “It is inappropriate to speak about ‘reasonable’ delay, when you know that the delays
have been unreasonable for so long,” says Alain Gauthier.158 Even with the latest effort shown by
the judges, who opened twelve new cases against suspected génocidaires in 2019 without external
prompting,159 resources remain poor, cases brought by the CPCR remain unresolved, and yet more
suspected génocidaires still have not had cases brought against them.
Among those génocidaires who are the subject of complaints, Laurent Serubuga, member
of the Akazu, head of the état-major of the FAR until 1992, and known for his positions on the
extermination of the Tutsi,160 is still remembered by his French advisor, Col. René Galinié, as an
anti-Tutsi extremist who, as early as 1990, was contemplating genocide.161 He arrived in France
in 1998.162 In 2001, the Strasbourg Public Prosecutor’s Office dismissed a complaint against
Serubuga brought by organizations representing Rwandan victims.163 The next year, the National
Court for Asylum (Cour Nationale du Droit d’Asile, known as the French Refugee Appeals Board
until 2007)164 denied him asylum, because he was suspected of international human rights
crimes.165 It was only in 2013 that French authorities arrested him, after Rwanda issued an
international arrest warrant for Serubuga alleging genocide and crimes against humanity.166 On 26
February 2014, the Cour de Cassation decided that he could not be extradited to face genocide
charges, because genocide was not a crime specifically recognized in the Rwandan penal code
until after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi.167
By contrast, courts in Denmark and the Netherlands have explicitly rejected this rationale.
These courts approved the extradition of genocide suspects to Rwanda, noting that Rwanda
became a signatory to the Convention on Genocide in 1975 and that genocide was punishable
under customary international law prior to 1994.168 However, the French government has denied
all extraditions of accused génocidaires to Rwanda.169
In some instances, the reasoning of the French Court for denying extradition was not even
made public—for example, in the case of Vénuste Nyombayire, who was “indicted for the
massacre of Tutsi orphans in Gikongoro, in southwestern Rwanda” and for whom Rwanda issued
an international arrest warrant for in 2011.170 Nyombayire remains at liberty in France.171 To date,
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French Courts have not approved any Rwandan extradition requests. France is in a distinct
minority, even in Europe, where Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands have all
approved such requests.172 (The European Court of Human Rights upheld the Swedish decision to
extradite.)173 “We have sent 42 indictments to France, for people we want to see either extradited
or tried on the spot,” said Rwandan Minister of Justice Johnston Busingye in January 2019174)
“Paris’ efforts to ensure that people who played a role in the genocide are brought to justice are
weak compared to countries that were not close to Rwanda at the time, such as the Netherlands or
Germany, which have done their best.”175
Because of its horrific, menacing, and destructive nature, genocide is referred to as the
“crime of crimes.”176 France is a signatory to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Articles I and II of the Convention stipulate that genocide
requires an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,”
and that the signatories commit to undertake to prevent and punish it.177 Courts around the world,
including those in Rwanda and the ICTR, have done so with respect to the Genocide Against the
Tutsi. Despite France’s public commitment as a signatory, it has chosen to protect and not
prosecute génocidaires.
Others with ties to the Genocide appear to have been able to live their lives in France for
years, or even decades, without attracting any notice from the French government—a situation
recently brought to light in a series of pieces by the investigative journalist Théo Englebert. In July
2020, Englebert reported that he, personally, had located Major General Aloys Ntiwiragabo, the
FAR’s head of military intelligence during the Genocide, living in the suburbs of Orleans.178 ICTR
prosecutors had, in the past, named Ntiwiragabo among the suspected planners and perpetrators of
the Genocide but it abandoned its investigation in 2004 after the United Nations decided to wind
down the ICTR’s operation.179 Prior to that decision, however, in 2001, the ICTR actively sought
his whereabouts, but he remained out of reach despite attempting to apply for a visa twice at French
consulates.180 That same year, in Kinshasa, Ntiwiragabo provided testimony as a witness in Judge
Bruguière’s investigation,181 and, after having done so, appears to have resettled in France,
published a book there, and filed an application for asylum with the French government.182
Following Englebert’s exposure of Ntiwiragabo’s whereabouts, Rwanda issued a warrant for his
arrest.183
Ntiwiragabo is not the only suspected génocidaire to evade justice while exploiting the
French immigration system. Many with links to the Genocide have apparently enjoyed “strange .
. . delays” within OFPRA.184 These individuals include:
Sosthène Munyemana, who was sentenced in absentia in a Rwandan Gacaca proceeding to
life imprisonment and is the subject of a complaint in France by FIDH, Survie, CPCR, and
others alleging genocide, complicity in genocide, and crimes against humanity. It took 14
years until the National Court for Asylum rejected his application as a result of suspicion
of international human rights crimes;185
Thaddée Maniragaba, a “former member of the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic
(CDR, the most radical Hutu Power party), right-hand man of one of the main génocidaires,
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Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, and minority shareholder of RTLM since 1992.” A decision on
his application, which was ultimately denied, was delayed for six years;186 and
Stanislas Mbonampeka, who was “ex-minister of justice,” and Faustin Semasaka, “former
deputy prefect in Kabaya, a hotspot for arms trafficking,” both of whom had six-year waits
while OFPRA finished its investigation.187
By contrast, the average processing time for other asylum seekers in 2018 and the first half
of 2019 was around five months.188 The distinction was not accidental. As Michel Raimbaud,
former director of OFPRA from 2000 to 2003, described, “There was a filing cabinet in the OFPRA
director’s office with sensitive cases, some of which were confidential and about which it was
deemed preferable not to make a decision.”189 Placing these applicants in legal limbo avoided the
need to make decisions on people with ties to the Genocide while still providing them safe harbor.
After three or five years, depending on the case, it is possible for applicants to obtain a worker’s
residence permit. For those whose children attend school, it is also possible to obtain a “private
and family life” residence permit after five years of residence in France.190 Indeed, even when, as
in Thadée Maniragaba’s case, OFPRA denies an application for asylum because of suspected
crimes against humanity, little occurs. Until recently, OFPRA did not apprise judicial authorities
of their refusals to grant asylum, so it was difficult for prosecutors to investigate applicants denied
asylum for suspected international human rights crimes.191 Thus, in the years since his application
was rejected, a span of more than a decade, Maniragaba reportedly continued to live in France.192
Perhaps the most notorious Rwandan “refugee” in France is Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana,
the former first lady of Rwanda, who sat at the center of the Akazu. That Agathe and other
Habyarimana family members were whisked out of Kigali on 9 April 1994 by French soldiers on
the orders of President Mitterrand himself may have been understandable in the fog of war—she
was the widow of the recently assassinated head of state (although, as discussed above, the
circumstances of her rescue and its prioritization as innocent civilians perished merit criticism).193
When President Mitterrand gave these instructions, he could not have known that, on the morning
of 7 April, just hours after President Habyarimana’s plane had been shot down, the daughters of
Habyarimana’s physician, Emmanuel Akingeneye (who was also killed aboard the plane) had,
according to one source, heard Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana dictate over the telephone the names
of people to be killed, including that of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, assassinated a few
hours later by the Presidential Guard.194
Within two months, though, Mitterrand had a good sense of the woman whom he had saved
and flown to Paris195 and who had received 200,000 French francs from the French Ministry of
Cooperation in relocation expenses.196 “She is possessed by the devil,” President Mitterrand told
a delegation from Médecins Sans Frontières in June 1994 (as noted in Chapter 9). “If she could,
she would continue to call out for massacres from French radios. She is very difficult to control.”197
Agathe left France in September 1994 and returned illegally—but without repercussions for her—
a few years later.198 She still lives in her family villa in Courcouronnes, a southern suburb of
Paris.199
In 2004, Agathe applied to OFPRA and then to the National Court for Asylum, and finally
to the Council of State (Conseil d’État), the highest court in France, to obtain asylum.200 She
presented herself as a simple housewife, explaining that “she prepared meals for the whole family,
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took care of gardening and animal husbandry; that she did not listen to the radio or read
newspapers; that she never spoke about politics with her late husband; that everything that has
been said about her is a pure lie.”201
Agathe’s plea must have been too much even for French authorities, as her application was
rejected at every stage. The National Court for Asylum found that she was “at the heart of the
regime” that was responsible for “planning of massacres of Tutsis from October 1990 onwards,
and therefore among those responsible for planning the Rwandan genocide.”202 She “exercised de
facto authority between 1973 and 1994,” and then, according to the court, “maintain[ed] special
links with the interim government and then with the Rwandan government-in-exile.”203 The court
also found that Agathe played a central role in the “first circle of power” of the regime, the Akazu,
also described as “Madame’s clan,” which coordinated “various political, economic, military and
media circles” and was the “centerpiece of this system of repression,” “organized as an entity adept
at state terror.”204 And she played a “predominant role” in the “launch and then control” of the
extremist newspaper Kangura and the hate station RTLM.205
Despite the denial of her applications for asylum, the French government has not taken
action to remove or deport Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana from France. While in France, she has
also withstood legal action initiated against her. In February 2007, the Gauthiers’ organization,
CPCR, filed a complaint against Agathe in the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) of Evry for the
crimes of genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity.206 The complaint is still under
“investigation” more than 13 years later.207 In September 2020, Agathe urged the investigating
magistrate to close the probe, arguing the investigation has been unreasonably prolonged.208 The
judge refused.209
There was a fleeting moment, in 2010, when, just five days after then-French President
Nicolas Sarkozy returned from a visit to Kigali, French authorities placed Agathe under arrest on
an international warrant issued in 2009 by Rwanda. The authorities released her the same day.210
A French court rejected her extradition to Rwanda in 2011 (for reasons that, again, remain
unknown, as the decision has not been made public).211 In 2013, Agathe appealed to the European
Court of Human Rights to declare that France’s refusal to grant her a residency permit violated the
European Convention on Human Rights. The Court quickly denied her petition.212
Agathe has yet to face prosecution in any court. She remains outspoken and defiant, telling
a Belgian reporter as recently as 2017 that she knew nothing about the “so-called genocide” and
insisting that the killing of Tutsi had been justified because of their (supposed) clandestine support
for the RPF.213 In a promising development, Professor Duclert, in an interview soon after the
issuance of his Commission’s report, noted that he believed President Macron would reopen the
file of Agathe Habyarimana, saying, “It is true that I think that the President of the Republic,
Emmanuel Macron, will reopen the case of Mrs. Habyarimana. For thirty years she has had an
extremely ambiguous status in France, protected . . . [J]ustice must be done. At least the
documentation on her should be established.”214
Another positive sign that French authorities may be more committed to devoting attention
and resources to fighting impunity was the May 2020 arrest of Félicien Kabuga by French
authorities.215 Félicien Kabuga, once one of Rwanda’s wealthiest men, had been at large for years,
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having been indicted in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on allegations that
he financed the Interahamwe militia, founded and exercised control over RTLM hate radio, and
transported and distributed a large number of machetes right before to the Genocide began.216 The
Cour de cassation approved his extradition to international custody, and Kabuga is now in custody
in The Hague awaiting trial.217 In the meantime, Agathe Habyarimana and many other accused
génocidaires continue to live in tranquility in France.
The French Government Continues to Withhold Critical Documents Relating to its Role in
the Genocide.
We may also hypothesize that a certain political mindset that was prevalent
at the highest level of State may have hindered the production of substantive
reports on the internal organization of the presidential party in Rwanda,
which would have documented the preparation of the genocide.
– Conclusion of the Duclert Commission218
The announcement of new resources for genocide prosecutions was part of a package of
initiatives President Macron unveiled in April 2019, in the days leading up to the 25th anniversary
of the Genocide.219 President Macron declared his intention to mark 7 April as a “national day of
remembrance.”220 And, more substantively, he announced plans to appoint a commission of
researchers to examine “the role that France played in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994,” vowing to
provide the commission with “access to presidential, diplomatic, military and intelligence
archives.”221 At the time, President Macron stated that the Duclert Commission will be able to
“consult all the French archives relating to the pre-genocide period and the genocide itself.”222
Regrettably, despite efforts by the Commission to gain access to documents it deemed
important, the French government has continued to conceal information about the Genocide and
France’s role, just as it has done for nearly thirty years. Given that context, it is not surprising that
the Commission was denied full access to the French government’s archives.
In the Conclusion to its report, released on 27 March 2021, the Commission found that it
“was impossible to access several sets of documents which are nonetheless preserved in archival
collections,” and then made the more pointed observation: “We may also hypothesize that a certain
political mindset that was prevalent at the highest level of State may have hindered the production
of substantive reports on the internal organization of the presidential party in Rwanda, which
would have documented the preparation of the genocide.”223
This last statement is fraught with possibilities. It suggests that the French government may
be holding onto documents that not only shed light on its role, but also documents showing that
the Rwandan government and other extremists were planning and preparing for the Genocide. For
too long, génocidaires have tried to hide behind the myth that the Genocide was not premeditated,
but rather was a spontaneous mass reaction to the chaos created by the shootdown of President
Habyarimana’s plane. The Commission’s hypothesis suggests there are “substantive reports”
being withheld.224 These reports may detail the “preparation of the genocide”225 and establish when
the Habyarimana government was engaged in planning that apocalyptic event. They may speak to
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the French government’s knowledge about this central matter, including when and how it may
have learned of the “preparation of the genocide.” Such documentation would allow for a studied
review of who in France had this information and when. It may also establish why it was not made
public, including any decisions that may have been made to withhold “the reports” as a response
to discovery requests from the ICTR. The Commission’s hypothesis speaks to real documents that
are central to this inquiry, but, as best we can tell, the French government continues to withhold
them.
The “substantive reports,”226 noted in the Commission’s hypothesis, are but one example
of critical documents being withheld. At another point in its conclusion, the Duclert Commission
acknowledges the “limits” imposed on its inquiry.227 While the Commission appears to have made
significant efforts to locate documents, it also appears that the French government, contrary to
President Macron’s directive, has withheld important information. The Duclert Commission noted
that “the Bureau of the National Assembly refused to allow [the Commission] to consult the
archives of the 1998 Parliamentary Information Mission (MIP),” and that “the slowness of the
investigation into certain requests from the Commission also prevented it from accessing sensitive
files” within the archives of the prime minister’s military cabinet.228
Still other archives were either missing or never collected at all. President Mitterrand’s
military advisors in the état-major particulier (“EMP”)—Lanxade, Quesnot, and Huchon, among
them—left few traces of their work. This is unsurprising, because amongst the few EMP directives
the Commission found in the archives of the recipients are some that were required to be
“destroyed after reading.”229 No doubt, other relevant and material documentation continues to be
withheld by elements within the French government.
The French government has failed, previously, to deliver on promises of transparency. In
2015, President Macron’s predecessor, President François Hollande, vowed to inaugurate a new
era of openness, announcing that France had declassified Élysée records relating to Rwanda and
the Genocide.230 “Nothing prohibits the consultation of these archives,” the president’s office
declared at the time of the decision.231 Activists and academics called the decision long overdue.
“It’s a good step, but if this had been done 10 years ago we would have said it was courageous,”
author and sociologist André Guichaoua remarked.232
President Hollande’s announcement did not have the impact some hoped it would. Just 83
documents were, in fact, declassified, and most of those documents had already been disclosed
through other means.233 “I have already seen, a long time ago, some of the documents that the
Élysée today announces triumphantly as declassified,” the author Jean-François Dupaquier said
shortly after the announcement.234 “Let’s just say they are of little interest, which is perhaps why
they have been ‘declassified.’”235
Researchers soon found that even those documents that had been newly declassified were
still, in many cases, inaccessible, because the keeper of Mitterrand’s presidential archives retained
authority to deny requests for access to those documents for almost any reason.236 Within a year
of the declassification, one researcher found that all but two of the 83 documents were not
viewable.237 “There is obviously a lot of arbitrariness and certainly a major willingness by those
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close to François Mitterrand to close off this topic. That seems to suggest that there is a lot to hide,”
author François Graner commented in 2016.238
Graner waged a five-year battle for access to the declassified files. After some early
setbacks, France’s top administrative court ruled in June 2020 that the government could not deny
him access to the files. “Protection of state secrets must be balanced against the interests of
informing the public about historic events,” the court, known as the Council of State, ruled.239
Graner’s fight concerned only a small tranche of Rwandan files. Researchers suspected
that many more documents remain classified and undisclosed.240 The archives where such files
might be housed are diffuse, and the barriers to access vary widely.241 By law, some documents
could remain classified for decades.242 Graner has found, in the course of his research, that the
ostensible reasons for marking documents as classified are not always so convincing. In a 2016
blog post, he reproduced a document, a one-paragraph summary of a 1993 Restricted Council
meeting, which an archivist had mistakenly made available, but which was officially “classified.”
“The . . . lesson of this paragraph,” Graner wrote, “is that it does not contain anything that justifies
secrecy. [Its public release] is only opposed here to protect government officials from the curiosity
of their citizens, eager to know how [the government] decides [matters] on their behalf.”243
Graner’s words apply to this investigation, as well. The Government of Rwanda, in
furtherance of this investigation, filed three detailed and specific requests with the Government of
France, which are attached to this report, seeking relevant and material evidence that speaks to the
role of French in connection with the Genocide.244 Other than to acknowledge receipt of the
requests on 20 December 2019, 10 July 2020, and 27 January 2021, the French government has
provided no response.245
The French government’s silence in the face of Rwanda’s document requests is consistent
with a decades-long effort to prevent a full accounting of the French government’s role in
Rwanda’s history. For example, during the course of this investigation, eyewitnesses and victims
spoke of French soldiers participating in the denigration and dehumanization of Tutsi women,
including allegations of rape. Accordingly, the Rwandan government specifically requested “all
documents reporting French soldiers involved in rape or prostitution or allegations of such
conduct.”246 The French government ignored this request although, presumably, it has reports,
witness statements, and investigative data that speak to the issue, in light of an ongoing French
judicial inquiry into similar accusations. There is no reasonable national defense concern now, a
quarter of a century later, that would justify concealment of such records. The same can be said
about numerous other investigative matters, each detailed with specificity. For example:
documents regarding communications between France or French companies, including
but not limited to Télédiffusion de France, and RTLM or Eclipse-Rwanda regarding the
creation of a Rwandan television station [from document request number one, receipt
acknowledged 20 December 2019];
documents regarding France’s knowledge and training of the Interahamwe and/or the
Impuzamugambi [from document request number two, receipt acknowledged 10 July
2020];
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documents related to French presence at checkpoints manned by the FAR and Rwandan
Gendarmerie [from document request number three, receipt acknowledged 27 January
2021];
documents related to France’s failure to intervene to end genocidal broadcasts from RTLM
[from document request number two, receipt acknowledged 10 July 2020]; and
documents regarding alleged French orders to rearm FAR combatants and génocidaires in
1994 [from document request number two, receipt acknowledged 10 July 2020].
If no unreleased documents exist concerning these issues and others in the Rwandan
government’s document requests—unlikely, but perhaps possible—then the French government
should state as such. If there are such documents, then the French government should release them.
The continuing failure to release information appropriately allows the invocation of the wellestablished judicial rule that withholding such evidence rightly permits the inference that the
information would be harmful to the party withholding. The continuing history of hiding
information, relying on bureaucratic obstacles, and testing the resolve of those who seek the truth,
while hoping the controversy will pass, is fundamentally unfair to victims of the Genocide and an
affront to history.247
For Rwandans, the Toll of the Genocide Continues.
Don’t pretend any more that you aren’t involved.
– Emmanuel Gasana, Genocide survivor248
Why does a full accounting of the French government’s responsibility remain pressing,
even more than a quarter century after the Genocide? “What happened in the early ‘90s and even
before, in the lead-up to the genocide, is something France will have to come to terms with,”
Louise Mushikiwabo, then Rwanda’s foreign minister, said in 2017. “Rwanda is not going away.
We’re not going anywhere.”249
One of the reasons Rwanda has commissioned this inquiry is that the Genocide, perhaps
faint in the memory of many of the French officials who made the most consequential decisions
affecting its outcome, remains a visceral, daily reality for most Rwandans. Their ordeals defy
language and demonstrate, yet again, that a genocide has no half-life. It will impair its survivors
and their descendants for generations. That is the ultimate cost of what happened in Rwanda. Any
assessment of the role and responsibility of the French government must acknowledge not only
French actions, but the suffering enabled by those actions.
During the Genocide, sons and daughters watched as their mothers were raped. Helpless
parents witnessed their children being hacked to pieces and thrown alive into pits dug by earlier
victims. Entire extended families were obliterated. Innocent human beings, from infants to elders,
were dismembered in charnel houses whose walls were covered with blood. Three out of four
Rwandans lost a close family member in the Genocide.250 This horror resulted directly from the
policies, programs, and practices that dehumanized the Tutsi.
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Epilogue
This dehumanization was on full display for the four years leading to the 100 days of the
Genocide. French soldiers and officials were aware of what was happening to the Tutsi. That
awareness must be part of any evaluation of the French government’s responsibility and guilt. Any
inquiry regarding responsibility, of necessity, must ask and answer: what was the dehumanization
of Tutsi that was allowed to grow and fester, and what finally happened because of this
dehumanization?
Before the war, Emmanuel Gasana did not know his ethnicity: “My family never used to
discuss ethnic groups. . . . I only came to realize about my ethnic group when I was in Primary
Three, when the teacher called pupils of one ethnic group to stand up. Hutu pupils would stand
proudly, but when it was the Tutsis’ turn, other kids would yell at you and humiliate you.”251 On
the second day of Primary Three, he tried to avoid this feeling by standing up with the Hutu
children in class.252 “But then the teacher shouted at me and ordered me to sit down at once,”
Gasana recalled. “I felt so ashamed.”253
The morning after Habyarimana’s assassination, Gasana’s mother came home and told him
and his siblings that “we, the Tutsis, are soon going to be killed.”254 In the chaos that followed,
they were separated.255 Gasana, who was 15, hid under a neighbor’s bed.256 The mayor encouraged
hiding Tutsi to seek shelter at a local church, “but once they were all in the church, he called the
police and soldiers,” who “started shooting people and throwing grenades.”257
“That day, I saw a girl from my school. She was covered in blood, her legs had been blown
off by a grenade, and she couldn't walk, so she just pulled her body along the ground till she
reached” the house where Gasana was hiding.258 “I saw her and I heard her crying out for help, but
as soon as the lnterahamwe saw her, they just put her in a blanket and threw her into a deep pit
nearby. She was still alive.”259
A 2015 study of orphaned children found that 98% had seen people massacred, killed, or
attacked.260 Another found that one out of six had had to hide under dead bodies to survive.261 Nine
out of 10 believed they would die themselves.262 Gasana at one point survived by pretending to be
one of the assailants—he and a friend got across a roadway by carrying a corpse: “All the way, I
saw the most horrible scenes of my life. . . . When we got to the other side, I saw a man who was
originally from my Grandma’s sector. He was standing on a pile of corpses, holding a big, nailed
club. He was searching the victims’ pockets, stripping them of anything he thought was valuable.
. . . In the time we crossed the street, he had clubbed three people to death.”263
At some point, Gasana’s mother, who had survived by hiding with a part-Hutu family, “got
terribly ill. Towards the end of May, her health was getting worse.”264 Soon after, the people
sheltering her fled the RPF advance, leaving her behind: “My Mum couldn’t walk by then; she
was very weak. So they took her and put her in the banana plantation. She stayed there in the cold,
in the rain; she was starving and ill and had no treatment. . . . She got weaker and weaker until
dogs started coming around her, pulling her clothes till they ate her. . . . That’s how she died.”265
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After the Genocide, Gasana became the head of his household, responsible for his siblings.
“It was hard, but I struggled on. . . . Later on, I tried to focus on my future by doing further studies
at university, but I couldn’t make it with all the responsibilities I had on my shoulders.”266
In 2001, some 250,000 Rwandans were living in households headed by orphans.267 For an
entire generation, school had to become an afterthought. “Children lost their parents, some had to
stop school due to financial problems, others dropped out of school due to lack of parental
guidance,” a survivor named Viateur Karamage said in an interview.268 Often, there was nowhere
to go: more than half of all Rwandan schools and colleges were destroyed or pillaged, leaving only
one third of the country’s schools operational in October 1994,269 not to mention the teachers who
were killed.
Emmanuel Gasana, who gave up school to take care of his siblings, eventually became a
guide at the Kigali Memorial Center, which freed him to speak about his experiences. “Before . . .
genocide was a taboo subject for me. I wasn’t able to stand where people were discussing it.”270
His hopes were “with God and all those who have it within their power—the Government and
teachers—to promote unity and reconciliation.”271 He also had hopes, not to say an admonition,
for the international community: “Don’t pretend any more that you aren’t involved.”272
Throughout Rwanda, survivors still struggle with the decades of trauma inflicted by the
Genocide. “The most difficult aspect of being a survivor is remembering what happened to you,”
a survivor named Yves Kamuronsi told an interviewer.273 “Sometimes you remember so many bad
things that it could destroy your life and stop you from doing anything. You could become a very
wicked person because of the things you saw or went through. . . . It may change the way you look
at people and can even stop you from loving anyone. . . . You may be woken by nightmares about
people with machetes . . . or you may remember a child you saw being killed . . . It affects
[survivors] for the rest of their lives.”274
A 2018 study commissioned by this firm speaks to the continuing impact endured by
survivors and their children. Since 2001, Dr. Yael Danieli has sought to help Rwandan survivors
and their children. Her 2018 report identified the continuing impact and effects of the Genocide
on the survivors, based on her studies and findings. Her report is attached. A few extracts make
the point:
[T]o this day, many victim/survivors are (still) reeling from the multidimensional
effects of their victimization traumata, their immeasurable losses, their sense of
living shattered lives—including their own and their children’s sense of identity
and continuity. Many continue to suffer from and to seek treatment for the injuries
and persistent physical problems they sustained and their impact on their
functioning (“machete,” broken back, severe unhealable head injuries, ‘permanent’
headache and eye problem, severed chest and psychosomatic pains (headaches and
muscular pains, high blood pressure)). Additionally, they suffer trouble sleeping,
nightmares, waking up awash with fear, feeling wounded, “getting scared over
nothing, [unable to] explain the cause,” inability to concentrate and maintain social
attention, among other psychosocial sequelae—with their detrimental effects on
their schooling, work, economic status and social relationships.
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Epilogue
...
Many find it too difficult to speak of their experiences and ponder their
unimaginable, immense losses. Their minds recoil against accepting their losses.
“Whole families were wiped out. . . . There is no one left on our hill, all were killed.”
Incomplete mourning, and resulting depression, prevail.275
“Up to now some survivors still say, ‘I wish I had died,’” a survivor named Pierre Kavubi
explained, “because those who did wrong are better off than those they hurt. Sometimes they ask
us to convict them in Gacaca courts . . . but when you go there and point out someone who attacked
you with a machete, they say you are a liar. . . . And on your way back home, you might be
ambushed and beaten. For survivors, the genocide still seems to go on—in our hurt and injuries.”276
And yet, Kavubi expressed the same sentiments as Emmanuel Gasana and Yves
Kamuronsi: “I think we should all ask ourselves these questions: When I was born, did I choose
to be in this ethnic group? . . . No ethnic group is above another . . . no group should be hated. If
people were free of this ignorance, nobody could convince them to kill someone just because he's
short or tall! Or hurt a kid just because he was born in that family. Instead, people should focus on
the future and help one another to build a united country.”277
For Rwandans who survived, the loss is just as raw nearly three decades later. Chantal
Ingabire was a young college student in Kigali from 1990 to the Genocide. Her recollections are
profiled in an earlier chapter where she speaks of how French soldiers would mistreat her and her
friends at roadblocks and throughout the city. She talks powerfully about how she lost family and
friends. Additionally, she reflected: “If I were to speak to the French government today, I would
say ‘shame on you, you knew how the Habyarimana government was mistreating and abusing
Tutsi every day, you allowed your soldiers to treat us as second-class citizens, and you supported
the Habyarimana government even as they were massacring us. Shame on you.’”278
The consequences of the French government’s Rwanda policy for more than a quarter
century are, for the Genocide’s victims and survivors, unequivocal: lifelong pain and suffering.
Remembrance of their unspeakable loss and tragedy, while necessary, is not enough. It is much
more important to confront and acknowledge responsibility in relation to one of the darkest events
of the twentieth century. The government of France bears responsibility for enabling a foreseeable
genocide. The world is still waiting for the French government’s full acceptance of responsibility.
Page | 552
Notes to Epilogue
1
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: un génocide sans importance [France-Rwanda: A Senseless Genocide],
LE FIGARO, 12 Jan. 1998.
2
Craig R. Whitney, Paris Journal: The Secret Mitterrand Couldn’t Take with Him, N.Y. TIMES, 17 Jan. 1996.
3
Alan Riding, Paris Journal: Mitterrand’s “Mistakes”: Vichy Past Is Unveiled, N.Y. TIMES, 9 Sept. 1994.
4
David Crary, Revelations of Mitterrand’s Vichy Ties Embarrass Socialists, ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7 Sept. 1994.
5
Alan Riding, Paris Journal: Mitterrand’s “Mistakes”: Vichy Past Is Unveiled, N.Y. TIMES, 9 Sept. 1994; see also
RONALD TIERSKY, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND: A VERY FRENCH PRESIDENT 343 (2000) (“Mitterrand surely wanted to
cut his losses and influence Péan’s interpretations. And since there were in fact no treasonous skeletons in Mitterrand’s
World War II closet, better to get the whole story out while he could still fight for his own version of events rather
than rely on historians when he was gone.”); PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE 554-55 (2013). Mitterrand did not
use any of his remaining days to apologize for Vichy France. The following year, French President Jacques Chirac
would do so.
6
Alan Riding, Paris Journal: Mitterrand’s “Mistakes”: Vichy Past Is Unveiled, N.Y. TIMES, 9 Sept. 1994.
7
PHILIP SHORT, A TASTE FOR INTRIGUE 110 (2013) (“For the rest of his life, like de Gaulle, [Mitterrand] rejected any
suggestion that France should be held responsible for the misdeeds of the Vichy regime.”).
8
Transcript of interview of President François Mitterrand, LE FIGARO, 9 Sept. 1994
9
Ronald Tiersky, The Mitterrand Legacy and the Future of French Security Policy, JOINT FORCE QUARTERLY 53,
Aug. 1995.
10
François Mitterrand, Opening Speech to the 16th Conference of Heads of States of France and Africa in La Baule,
France (June 1990).
11
William Drozdiak, African Leaders Blast Mitterrand at Summit, THE WASHINGTON POST, 9 Nov. 1994.
12
Howard W. French, At French-African Conference, Dictators Got the Attention, N.Y. TIMES, 10 Nov. 1994.
13
William Drozdiak, African Leaders Blast Mitterrand at Summit, THE WASHINGTON POST, 9 Nov. 1994.
14
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 337 (1997).
15
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 316-17 (1997); Note from Bruno Delaye to President François Mitterrand
(24 Oct. 1994). General Christian Quesnot, the president’s top military advisor, was especially hostile to the idea of
inviting President Pasteur Bizimungu to the summit. Ultimately, the decision rested with Mitterrand, who delivered
his judgment, as he so often did, with a single handwritten word: “No.”
16
Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy Kigali (26 Oct. 1994) (Subject: “Official – Informal”) (“The
economic situation is as difficult as the political one. . . . For the foreseeable future, Rwanda’s economy will depend
heavily on foreign humanitarian, economic, and technical assistance.”). US Department of State officials estimated in
September 1994 that a “basic restoration” of Rwanda’s government operations would cost more than $2 billion.
17
Cable from Warren Christopher to US Embassy Kigali (6 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “A/S Moose Meets with Rwandan
Finance Minister”).
18
Cable from Warren Christopher to US Embassy Kigali (6 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “A/S Moose Meets with Rwandan
Finance Minister”). Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu told reporters that officials from the ousted interim
government absconded with all of the country’s reserves in banknotes—about 15 billion Rwandan francs (roughly
$117.8 million). “For us, there is nothing left,” he said. Rwanda: Kigali envisage de frapper une nouvelle monnaie
[Kigali Plans to Mint a New Currency], LE MONDE, 7 Sept. 1994.
19
Speech by H.E. Major General Paul Kagame, Vice President and Minister of Defence, the Republic of Rwanda, 1
Sept. 1994.
20
See Richard Dowden, Walking Back to Catastrophe?, INDEPENDENT, 12 Sept. 1994; Memorandum from Carol
Lancaster and George E. Moose to the US National Security Adviser, 12 Sept. 1994 (Subject: “Rwanda: An Action
Page | 553
Epilogue
Plan for Recovery”); Children Scheduled to Return to Primary School in Late September, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
8 Sept. 1994.
21
See Cable from US Embassy Paris to US Secretary of State (12 Sept. 1994) (Subject: “Africa in the French Press –
September 3-9, 1994”) (referring to a World Food Programme report indicating “that half the population, or about 5
million people, are starving”); Memorandum from Timothy E. Wirth to US Secretary of State, Sept. 1994 (Subject:
“Rwanda and Burundi”) (“Vast sections of this intensely cultivated country, with huts every few yards, are eerily
empty, because so many people have left. Crops sit in so many fields, and the rainy season is underway.”).
22
GUY VASSALL-ADAMS, RWANDA: AN AGENDA FOR INTERNATIONAL ACTION 53 (1994).
23
See Memorandum from George E. Moose, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, to Dr. Davis (7 Oct.
1994) (Subject: “FY 95 Africa Regional ESF Request”).
24
See Cable from US Department of State (28 Oct. 1994), Subject: “Rwanda Weekly Report”; Memorandum from
George E. Moose, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs to Dr. Davis (7 Oct. 1994) (“There remains a
reluctance among donors to commit funds to Rwandan arrears before seeing what tangible steps the new government
will take to support its rhetoric.”).
25
See US Department of State memorandum (undated) (Subject: “Assistance to the Rwandan Government:
Multilateral and Bilateral Aid Efforts”). Rwanda owed $4 million to the World Bank, and the debt was projected to
grow to $7.5 million by early 1995. See Memorandum from Arlene Render to George E. Moose, through Prudence
Bushnell (3 Oct. 1994) (Subject: “Your Meeting with Rwandan President Bizimungu”). This debt was of particular
importance to Rwanda. It needed to be paid off before the World Bank would release $250 million to Rwanda in
project assistance and economic recovery credits. See Cable from US Secretary of State to US Embassy Brussels et
al. (18 Oct. 1994) (Subject: “Demarche: International Assistance to Clear Rwandan World Bank Arrears”);
Memorandum from George E. Moose, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, to Dr. Davis (7 Oct. 1994)
(Subject: “FY 95 Africa Regional ESF Request”).
26
Cable from US Department of State (28 Oct. 1994), Subject: “Rwanda Weekly Report”.
27
Duclert Commission Report 714 (quoting ADIPLO, 15SUP/2360, cabinet du ministre, lettre de Jean-Claude Lefort
à Alain Juppé, 7 Oct. 1994).
28
Duclert Commission Report 713-714 (quoting ADIPLO, 15SUP/2360, cabinet du ministre, lettre de Jean-Claude
Lefort à Alain Juppé, 7 Oct. 1994).
29
See Guy Penne, Débats: La France et le Rwanda [Discussions: France and Rwanda], LE MONDE, 11 Nov. 1994
(noting that France had vetoed a European Union grant project intended for Rwanda’s benefit); Maria Malagardis,
Paris freine l’aide à Kigali Paris Slows Down Aid to Kigali, LA CROIX, 26 Nov. 1994; see also AGIR ICI & SURVIE,
LES DOSSIERS NOIRS DE LA POLITIQUE AFRICAINE DE LA FRANCE [THE DARK RECORD OF FRANCE’S AFRICA POLICY]
(1995).
30
Maria Malagardis, Paris freine l’aide à Kigali Paris Slows Down Aid to Kigali, LA CROIX, 26 Nov. 1994.
31
US Department of State memorandum (28 Nov. 1994) (Subject: “Rwanda”).
32
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
33
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
34
Interview by LFM with Paul Kagame.
35
Speech from François Mitterrand, French President of the Republic, 4 (8 Nov. 1994) (emphasis added).
36
Joint Press Conference by Mr. François Mitterrand, President of the Republic, and Mr. Omar Bongo, President of
the Republic of Gabon (9 Nov. 1994).
37
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 339 (1997).
38
GÉRARD PRUNIER, THE RWANDA CRISIS 340 (1997).
39
See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Transcript of trial proceedings 2-4 (Int’l
Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 25 Sept. 2006) (testimony of Major Aloys Ntabakuze, in which he declined to acknowledge
the existence of a genocide against the Tutsi and asserted: “[T]here were Tutsis who killed also Hutus, and Hutus who
killed Tutsis. And there were Tutsis who killed other Tutsis as well. . . . Tutsis killed Hutus in large numbers”).
Page | 554
Epilogue
40
Speech from François Mitterrand, French President of the Republic, 4 (8 Nov. 1994); see also Transcript of
interview of President François Mitterrand, LE FIGARO, 9 Sept. 1994, 4 (“It was France, on the contrary, that
facilitated negotiations between the two ethnic groups.”).
41
Speech from François Mitterrand, French President of the Republic 4 (8 Nov. 1994).
42
Transcript of interview of President François Mitterrand, LE FIGARO, 9 Sept. 1994, 4; see also Speech from François
Mitterrand, French President of the Republic 4 (8 Nov. 1994); François Mitterrand, French President of the Republic,
Ambassadors’ Conference: Statement by the President of the Republic, 4 (31 Aug. 1994).
43
François Mitterrand, French President of the Republic, Ambassadors’ Conference: Statement by the President of
the Republic 4 (31 Aug. 1994).
44
Letter from Col. Alexis Kanyarengwe, President of the RPF, to François Mitterrand, French President of the
Republic (28 Aug. 1993). The letter did open with an expression of “most sincere” thanks, but not, as Mitterrand
claimed, for “what [France] had accomplished for the settlement of the war.” It merely thanked Mitterrand “for the
role France played as an observer at our negotiations” (emphasis added).
45
Letter from Col. Alexis Kanyarengwe, President of the RPF, to François Mitterrand, French President of the
Republic (28 Aug. 1993). Specifically, the letter stated: “[W]e believe in the necessity of the quick deployment of a
neutral international force and the departure of French troops, as planned for in the [Arusha] accord, to allow the
establishment of the broad-based transitional government which will lead the country until the elections. Excellency,
France and the Rwandan Patriotic Front have not always shared the same point of view about the French government’s
position in this conflict. However, we remain convinced that France’s total support for the implementation of the
Arusha Accord will allow the Rwandan people to actualize its hopes for a state of law, for democracy, and for
development.”
46
Transcript of speech from François Mitterrand, French President of the Republic, 5 (8 Nov. 1994).
47
Report from Pol-Mil A. Marley (cleared by Joyce Leader) (16 Aug. 1994) (Subject: “Meeting of Charge d’Affaires
with UN SRSG; No Bend in the GoR”).
48
Cable from Warren Christopher to US Embassy in Paris (13 Aug. 1994).
49
Fiche 19264/N, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (19 Aug. 1994).
50
Interview by LFM with Ray Wilkinson.
51
Interview by LFM with Ray Wilkinson.
52
Cable from the US Embassy in Paris to the Secretary of State DC (25 Aug. 1994).
53
ORGANIZATION FOR AFRICAN UNITY, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE 127 (2000).
54
RONALD TIERSKY, FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND: A VERY FRENCH PRESIDENT 336 (2000).
55
Michel Sitbon, Un génocide sur la conscience [A Genocide on the Conscience], L’ESPRIT FRAPPEUR 1 (Nov. 1998)
(“It is clear that, for the last four years, journalists and politicians have done everything to avoid this guilt that is
difficult to understand.”).
56
See Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: un génocide sans importance [France-Rwanda: A Meaningless
Genocide], LE FIGARO, 12 Jan. 1998; Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: le syndrome de Fachoda [FranceRwanda: The Fachoda Syndrome], LE FIGARO, 13 Jan. 1998; Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda : des silences
d’État [France-Rwanda: Silences of the State], LE FIGARO, 14 Jan. 1998; Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda:
le temps de l’hypocrisie [France-Rwanda: The Time of Hypocrisy], LE FIGARO, 15 Jan. 1998.
57
See Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: des silences d’État [France-Rwanda: Silences of the State], LE
FIGARO, 14 Jan. 1998; William Plaff, Rwanda Tragedy Continues to Unfold, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 20 Jan. 1998.
58
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: un génocide sans importance [France-Rwanda: A Meaningless
Genocide], LE FIGARO, 12 Jan. 1998.
59
Senate of Belgium, Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Rwanda, 546-563, 6 Dec. 1997; see
also Veronique Kisel, Rwanda: militaires et politiques sous le feu [Rwanda: Military and Politicians under Fire], LE
SOIR, 1-2, 8 Dec. 1997.
60
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: un genocide sans importance [France-Rwanda: A Meaningless
Genocide], LE FIGARO, 12 Jan. 1998.
Page | 555
Epilogue
61
William Bourdon et el., Pour une commission d’enquête parlementaire sur le rôle de la France entre 1990 et 1994.
Au Rwanda, quelle France? [For a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Role of France between 1990 and
1994. In Rwanda, France Who?], LIBERATION, 3 Mar. 1998; see FRANÇOIS-XAVIER VERSCHAVE, NOIR SILENCE: QUI
ARRETERA LA FRANÇAFRIQUE? 82 (2000).
62
William Bourdon et el., Pour une commission d’enquête parlementaire sur le rôle de la France entre 1990 et 1994.
Au Rwanda, quelle France? [For a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Role of France between 1990 and
1994. In Rwanda, France Who?], LIBÉRATION, 3 Mar. 1998.
63
Création d’une “mission d’information sur le Rwanda” de l’Assemblée nationale [Creation of an “Information
Mission on Rwanda” in the National Assembly], AFP, 3 Mar. 1998.
64
La France et le Rwanda, LE MONDE, 17 Dec. 1998.
65
Création d’une “mission d’information sur le Rwanda” de l’Assemblée nationale [Creation of an “Information
Mission on Rwanda” in the National Assembly], AFP, 3 Mar. 1998.
66
Craig R. Whitney, France Limits Legislative Inquiry on Rwanda Role, N.Y. TIMES, 6 Mar. 1998.
67
Craig R. Whitney, France Limits Legislative Inquiry on Rwanda Role, N.Y. TIMES, 6 Mar. 1998.
68
MIP Tome I 137-38, 145, 156-57.
69
MIP Tome I 165.
70
MIP Tome I 177-87.
71
MIP Tome I 37.
72
MIP Tome I 37.
73
Rémy Ourdan, Décalage entre un récit sévère et une analyse frileuse [Discrepancy between a Harsh Narrative and
a Chilly Analysis], LE MONDE, 17 Dec. 1998.
74
ORGANIZATION OF THE AFRICAN UNION, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE ¶ 12.7 (2000); MIP Tome I, 368
(“France in no way incited, encouraged, aided or supported those who orchestrated the genocide and who triggered it
in the days following the attack [of President Habyarimana’s plane].”).
75
ORGANIZATION OF THE AFRICAN UNION, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE ¶ 12.8, 79 (2000).
76
MIP Tome I 146-147 (DAMI missions), 155 (on training of Presidential Guard) 156, 156 & 356 (on Gilbert Canovas
advising to FAR Chief of Staff), 159-160 (on Jean-Jacques Maurin advising the FAR Chief of Staff).
77
ORGANIZATION OF THE AFRICAN UNION, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE ¶ 12.24, 82 (2000).
78
See MIP Tome I 198 (“France believed that strengthening its military aid to the Rwandan government was the only
way to escape the rationale for war while forcing the RPF to sit at the negotiating table. Unfortunately, and this is the
flaw in this reasoning, the Rwandan Government’s desire for peace was assumed. The situation was more complex,
and France found itself assisting the Government prepare for the war it desired.”).
79
ORGANIZATION OF THE AFRICAN UNION, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE ¶ 9.4, 54 (2000).
80
ORGANIZATION OF THE AFRICAN UNION, RWANDA: THE PREVENTABLE GENOCIDE ¶ 12.24, 82 (2000).
81
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER VERSCHAVE, NOIR SILENCE: QUI ARRETERA LA FRANÇAFRIQUE?, 84 (2000); See LAURE DE
VULPIAN & THIERRY PRUNGNAUD, SILENCE TURQUOISE 284 (2012). Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, also a Socialist,
set the rules for the hearings.
82
See MIP Tome I 15; Rémy Ourdan, Le parlement peine à éclaircir le rôle de la France au Rwanda [Parliament
Barely Clarified the Role of France in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 10 July 1998.
83
Rémy Ourdan, Le parlement peine à éclaircir le rôle de la France au Rwanda [Parliament Barely Clarified the
Role of France in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 10 July 1998.
84
Rémy Ourdan, Le parlement peine à éclaircir le rôle de la France au Rwanda [Parliament Barely Clarified the
Role of France in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 10 July 1998.
85
Rémy Ourdan, Le parlement peine à éclaircir le rôle de la France au Rwanda [Parliament Barely Clarified the
Role of France in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 10 July 1998.
Page | 556
Epilogue
86
Rémy Ourdan, Le parlement peine à éclaircir le rôle de la France au Rwanda [Parliament Barely Clarified the
Role of France in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 10 July 1998.
87
Rémy Ourdan, Le parlement peine à éclaircir le rôle de la France au Rwanda [Parliament Barely Clarified the
Role of France in Rwanda], LE MONDE, 10 July 1998.
88
MIP Audition of Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1 334-335 (19 May 1998) (“Mr. Bruno Delaye indicated he did not
have any information enabling him to express an opinion on the matter.”); MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome
III, Vol. 1 343 (19 May 1998) (opining that the assassination stood to benefit the RPF more than it did “the other
protagonists,” but acknowledging that, “for lack of an investigation, it was not a question of certainty”).
89
Allan Thompson, Introduction 2, in THE MEDIA AND THE RWANDA GENOCIDE (Allan Thompson ed. 2007).
90
See MIP Audition of Bruno Delaye, Tome III, Vol. 1 334 (19 May 1998).
91
MIP Audition of Christian Quesnot, Tome III, Vol. 1 343 (19 May 1998). Quesnot’s “personal feeling” was that the
RPF had more to gain from Habyarimana’s death than Hutu extremists did. He also speculated that the extremists
would not have shot down the plane because some of their own partisans were on board the flight along with
Habyarimana. “If the extremists had wanted to get rid of President Habyarimana, they could have done so on the
ground at another time without killing one of their own,” Quesnot said.
92
GABRIEL PERIES & DAVID SERVENAY, UNE GUERRE NOIRE [A DARK WAR] 255 (2007).
93
Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, France-Rwanda: des silences d’État [France-Rwanda: Silences of the State], LE FIGARO,
14 Jan. 1998.
94
BENOIT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA]179 (2014).
95
BENOIT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 181 n.7 (2014).
96
BENOIT COLLOMBAT & DAVID SERVENAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE NAME
OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA]181 (2014).
97
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE: LA FRANCE AU RWANDA [UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE IN RWANDA]
228 (2004).
98
PATRICK DE SAINT-EXUPERY, L’INAVOUABLE [UNMENTIONABLE: FRANCE IN RWANDA] 228 (2004).
99
France was “Blind” to Rwanda Genocide, French Report Says, BBC (26 Mar. 2021).
100
MIP Tome I 224-62.
101
Issuance of International Arrest Warrants, 46-48, 17 Nov. 2006.
102
French Court Confirms Dismissal of Habyarimana Plane Shooting Probe, RADIO FRANCE INTERNATIONALE, 3
July 2020.
103
See Raphaël de Benito, Barril de Poudre, SURVIE (1 Feb. 2012); Letter from Hélène Clamagirand to M. de la
Baume, 29 July 1994.
104
see JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES
POLITICIANS, SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 428 (2014).
FRANÇAIS AU
RWANDA [FRENCH
105
Assistance Contract between the Prime Minister of Interim Rwandan Government and Captain Barril (28 May
1994).
106
PHILIPPE BREWAEYS, RWANDA 1994 NOIRS ET BLANCS MENTEURS [RWANDA 1994, BLACK AND WHITE LIES] 52
(2013) (“[I]n December 1995, during a search of the home of Séraphin Rwabukumba, brother of Agathe Habyarimana,
the Belgian judicial police discovered the transcript of an interview with Barril given on Radio Africa No. 1: “I have
about 80 kilos of electronic equipment from the plane; all the recordings from the airport control tower; all the airport
logbooks; the two missile launchers that were fired: 80 radio and video testimonies. (The person responsible for the
genocide is the person responsible for the attack on the presidential plane. . . . According to my investigation, the
person responsible for the attack is none other than the RPF.”).
107
PHILIPPE BREWAEYS, RWANDA 1994 NOIRS ET BLANCS MENTEURS [RWANDA 1994, BLACK AND WHITE LIES] 55
(2013) (“This is the man who entered the Bruguière case in September 1999 after refusing to meet with both the
Page | 557
Epilogue
Belgian judiciary and the ICTR. The judge and the spy were on the same wavelength: the RPF did it. Jean-Louis
Bruguière would have had at least one good reason to be wary. He was in charge of the 1982 investigation into the
attack on Rue des Rosiers. He can hardly forget the mess of the Irish of Vincennes while he was following the trail of
Palestinian terrorism. And what remains of the ‘evidence’ held by Barril? With the exception of the recordings from
the control tower, which were only handed over to the courts a year and a half later, nothing. No satellite photos, no
black box, no 80 kilos of electronic equipment and, above all, no missile launcher.”).
108
See JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPAQUIER, POLITIQUES, MILITAIRES ET MERCENAIRES FRANÇAIS AU RWANDA [FRENCH
POLITICIANS, SOLDIERS AND MERCENARIES IN RWANDA] 428 (2014); Raphaël de Benito, Barril de Poudre
[Powderkeg], SURVIE (1 Feb. 2012).
109
Raphaël de Benito, Barril de Poudre [Powderkeg], SURVIE (1 Feb. 2012).
110
Rwanda Genocide: Habyarimana Plane Shooting Probe Dropped, BBC, 26 Dec. 2018.
111
French Court Confirms Dismissal of Habyarimana Plane Shooting Probe, RADIO FRANCE INTERNATIONALE, 3
July 2020; Jon Boyle, Top French Anti-Terror Judge Seeks Political Career, REUTERS, 7 Jun. 2007.
112
Rwanda Government’s Reaction to Judge Bruguiere’s Indictment Saga 18 (26 Jan. 2007).
113
Rwanda Government’s Reaction to Judge Bruguiere’s Indictment Saga 4 (26 Jan. 2007).
114
BENOIT COLLOMBAT AND DAVID SEVERNAY, AU NOM DE LA FRANCE: GUERRES SECRETES AU RWANDA [IN THE
NAME OF FRANCE: SECRET WARS IN RWANDA] 67 (2014) (“In 1988, Fabien Singaye was appointed (as deputy
secretary) to the Rwandan Embassy in Switzerland. He was in constant contact with President Habyarimana's private
secretary, Élie Sagatwa (Agathe Habyarimana’s first cousin). From Switzerland, Fabien Singaye monitored the
opponents of the regime and tirelessly alerted Kigali of their actions.”).
115
Rwanda/France – Newspaper: Kabuga’s Relative Worked for French Judge, JUSTICEINFO.NET, 8 Apr. 2009 (citing
article in LE SOIR),
116
Indictment from Jean-Louis Bruguiére, First Vice-President of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, Issuance
of International Arrest Warrants, 46-48 (17 Nov. 2006). The indictment named a ninth person, Corporal Eric
Hakizamana, who supposedly worked in the RPF’s “Directorate of Military Intelligence” and was a member of “the
attack team.” Id. at 17, 48. There is no record of this person’s existence.
117
Indictment from Jean-Louis Bruguiére, First Vice-President of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, Issuance
of International Arrest Warrants, 46-48 (17 Nov. 2006). Events in Rwanda may have impacted the timing of these
arrest warrants. Two years prior, the Rwandan Parliament had passed a statute authorizing an investigation into the
role of the French government in the Genocide Against the Tutsi, chaired by Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the former Rwandan
Minister of Justice. It became known as the Mucyo Commission. The work of the Mucyo Commission would not
begin, however, until April 2006. When it did commence, the French government did not cooperate. In its report,
released two years later, the Mucyo Commission stated, “In France, the Commission’s request for cooperation with
the official authorities was turned down.” Mucyo Report 2-3.
118
Indictment from Jean-Louis Bruguiére, First Vice-President of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, Issuance
of International Arrest Warrants, 10 & 46 (17 Nov. 2006).
119
Thierry Lévêque, Rwanda’s Kagame Should Face Court: French Judge, REUTERS, (21 Nov. 2006).
120
Arthur Asiimwe, Rwanda Cuts Diplomatic Ties with France, REUTERS, 20 Jan. 2007.
121
Cable from Craig R. Stapleton to US Secretary of State ¶ 5 (18 Jan. 2007) (Subject: “Rwanda: Effect of Bruguiere
Report on USG, Status of Mrs. Habyarimana”).
122
Cable from Craig R. Stapleton to US Secretary of State ¶ 5 (18 Jan. 2007) (Subject: “Rwanda: Effect of Bruguiere
Report on USG, Status of Mrs. Habyarimana”).
123
Cable from Craig R. Stapleton to US Secretary of State, ¶ 6 (26 Jan. 2007) (Subject: “C/T Judge on France, Rwanda,
Pakistan, and His Political Future”).
124
Cable from Craig R. Stapleton to US Secretary of State, ¶ 6 (26 Jan. 2007) (Subject: “C/T Judge on France, Rwanda,
Pakistan, and His Political Future”).
125
See Pierre Boisselet, Rwanda – Attentant contre Habyarimana: l’expertise française disculpe les proches de
Kagamé [Rwanda – Attack against Habyarimana: French Expertise Exonerates Kagame’s Close Relations], JEUNE
Page | 558
Epilogue
AFRIQUE, 10 Jan. 2012; Thierry Lévêque, French Probe Exonerates Rwanda Leader in Genocide, REUTERS, 10 Jan.
2012.
126
Angela Charlton, France Drops Probe of Air Crash that Led to Rwandan Genocide, ASSOCIATED PRESS, 26 Dec.
2018.
127
French Court Confirms Dismissal of Habyarimana Plane Shooting Probe, RADIO FRANCE INTERNATIONALE, 3
July 2020.
128
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 653 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda, 18 Dec. 2008).
129
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Judgement and Sentence, ¶ 653 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda, 18 Dec. 2008).
130
Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Transcript of trial, 3 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 24 Oct. 2005). Judge Bruguière’s investigatory report had leaked before Bagosora took the witness stand.
Bagosora touted the report in his testimony, suggesting it proved that he was not to blame for the attack on the
president’s plane—the RPF was. See Prosecutor v. Théoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Transcript of
trial 42-43 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 2 Nov. 2005).
131
Théoneste Bagosora et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 742 (Int’l Crim. Trib. for
Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
132
Théoneste Bagosora et al. v. Prosecutor, Case No. ICTR-98-41-A, Appeal Judgement, ¶ 741 (Int’l Crim. Trib. For
Rwanda 14 Dec. 2011).
133
Press release, Association des Avocats de la Defense, ICTR Defence Lawyers: “U.N. Tribunal is Obligated to
Bring Rwanda President Paul KAGAME to Justice” (21 Nov. 2006).
134
Interview by Maria Malagardis with Alain Gauthier, Rwanda: «Il y aurait une centaine de génocidaires supposés
en France» [Rwanda: “There Would Be a Hundred Suspected Génocidaires in France”], LIBÉRATION, 24 July 2020;
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
135
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier. See also Théo Englebert, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, pilier presume du genocide
des Tutsis, se terre en France [Aloys Ntiwiragabo, Presumed Pillar of the Tutsi Genocide, Hides in France],
MEDIAPART, 24 July 2020.
136
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier. Tableau récapitulatif des plaints [Summary Table of Complaints],
COLLECTIF PARTIES CIVILES RWANDA, http://www.collectifpartiescivilesrwanda.fr/tableau-des-plaintes-du-cpcr/ (last
visited 15 Jan. 2021).
137
About Us, COLLECTIF PARTIES CIVILES RWANDA, http://www.collectifpartiescivilesrwanda.fr/qui-sommes-nous-2/
(last visited 15 Jan. 2021); see Marc Bouchage, Félicien Kabuga arrêté en France, terre prisée des presumes
génocidaires rwandais, [Félicien Kabuga Arrested in France, Precious Land of the Presumed Rwandan Génocidaires]
EURONEWS/AFP, 17 May 2020.
138
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
139
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
140
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier. Of the seven cases, three have resulted in convictions, and four are still
awaiting trial.
141
Tableau récapitulatif des plaints [Summary Table of Complaints], COLLECTIF PARTIES CIVILES RWANDA,
http://www.collectifpartiescivilesrwanda.fr/tableau-des-plaintes-du-cpcr/ (last visited 15 Jan. 2021).
142
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
143
Création du tribunal judiciaire au 1er
http://www.avocatparis.org/creation-tribunal-judiciaire
janvier
2020,
AVOCATS
BARREAU
-
PARIS
144
Justine Brabant, Tutsi Genocide: The Years of Failure of the French Justice System, MEDIAPART.FR, 12 May 2019.
145
Justine Brabant, Tutsi Genocide: The Years of Failure of the French Justice System, MEDIAPART.FR, 12 May 2019.
146
Laurent Larcher, Rwanda, non-lieu validé pour le père Wenceslas Munyeshyaka [Case Dropped against Rwandan
Catholic Priest Accused of Genocide], LA CROIX, 17 Nov. 2019.
Page | 559
Epilogue
147
Tableau récapitulatif des plaints [Summary Table of Complaints], COLLECTIF PARTIES CIVILES RWANDA,
http://www.collectifpartiescivilesrwanda.fr/tableau-des-plaintes-du-cpcr/ (last visited 15 Jan. 2021); see also Non lieu
dans l’affaire Wenceslas Munyeshyaka – Les victimes méritent un procès! [Dismissal of the Wenceslas Munyeshyaka
case – The Victims Deserve a Trial!], FIDH (6 Oct. 2015).
148
see also Non lieu dans l’affaire Wenceslas Munyeshyaka – Les victimes méritent un procès! [Dismissal of the
Wenceslas Munyeshyaka Case – The Victims Deserve a Trial!], FIDH (6 Oct. 2015); Mutimura v. France, European
Court of Human Rights, No. 46621/99 (Strasbourg, 8 Jun. 2004) (finding France had violated Articles 6 and 13 of the
European Convention on Human Rights).
149
Laurent Larcher, Rwanda, non-lieu validé pour le père Wenceslas Munyeshyaka [Case Dropped against Rwandan
Catholic Priest Accused of Genocide], LA CROIX, 17 Nov. 2019.
150
Prosecutor v. Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, Case No. ICTR-2005-87-I. Decision on the Prosecutor’s Request for The
Referral of Wenceslas Munyeshyaka’s Indictment to France (20 Nov. 2007) (“The Chamber . . . orders the case of
The Prosecutor v. Wenceslas Munyeshyaka be referred to the French authorities, so that those authorities may
forthwith assign the case to the appropriate French court.”).
151
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
Justine Brabant, Génocide des Tutsis: les années de faillite de la justice française Tutsi Genocide: The Years of
Failure of the French Justice System, MEDIAPART, 12 May 2019.
152
153
See Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
Justine Brabant, Génocide des Tutsis: les années de faillite de la justice française Tutsi Genocide: The Years of
Failure of the French Justice System, MEDIAPART, 12 May 2019.
154
Justine Brabant, Génocide des Tutsis: les années de faillite de la justice française Tutsi Genocide: The Years of
Failure of the French Justice System, MEDIAPART, 12 May 2019.
155
156
See France Upholds Landmark Rwandan Genocide Conviction, AFP, 24 May 2018. In 2014—20 years after the
Genocide—Pascal Simbikangwa, the former head of the Rwandan Central Intelligence Service, became the first
génocidaire prosecuted in a French court, resulting in a conviction and a sentence of 25 years. Two Rwandan Mayors
Jailed for Life Over 1994 Massacre, THE GUARDIAN, 6 July 2016. Two other génocidaires, the former bourgmestres
Octavien Ngenzi and Tito Barahira, were sentenced in 2016 to life in prison for Genocide and crimes against humanity.
James Karuhanga, Génocidaire Claude Muhayimana’s Trial in France Pushed to February, THE NEW TIMES, 30 Sept.
2020. One other suspect, Claude Muhayimana, was slated to face trial in February 2021 but has had his trial date
postponed. See James Karuhanga, Anger as France Delays Trial of Genocide Suspect Muhayimana, NEW TIMES, 19
Jan. 2021.
157
Macron Seeks to Shine Light on Rwanda Genocide, FRANCE 24, 5 Apr. 2019.
158
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
159
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
160
MIP Audition of Georges Martres, Tome III, Vol. 1, 119; MIP Tome I, 139. In an 18 November 1990 cable, Col.
Galinié wrote, “Thus, the FAR whose cohesion is more asserted today than ever, thanks to the ties created by the
offensives carried out against the adversary, see their political and popular influence considerably increased, to the
point that their leaders like Colonel Serubuga appear threatening. ”; see also JEAN VARRET, GÉNÉRAL, J’EN AI PRIS
POUR MON GRADE [MY WAR STORIES] 156 (2018) (“Colonel Serubuga, whom I met at each of my missions in his
country, was more diplomatic in his remarks, but I could read between the lines that genocide was one of the solutions
being considered.”).
161
Colonel René Galinié in an interview to Mediapart in reaction to the Duclert report, stated, “Colonel Pierre-Célestin
Rwagafilita, at the head of the Gendarmerie, was a bloodthirsty brute who dreamt only of exterminating the Tutsis.
His counterpart, Colonel Laurent Serubuga, at the head of the Army, was more intelligent, but just as determined.”
Jean-François Dupaquier and Théo Englebert, Il a alerté sur le génocide des Tutsis et a été sanctionné: le colonel
Galinié témoigne [He Warned about the Tutsi Genocide and Was Punished: Colonel Galinié Testifies], MEDIAPART,
1 Apr. 2021.
Page | 560
Epilogue
162
Mathieu Olivier, Un tribunal français refuse d’extrader Laurent Serubuga, ex-chef d’état-major adjoint de l’armée
rwandaise [French Court Refuses to Extradite Laurent Serubuga, Former Deputy Head of the Rwandan Army], JEUNE
AFRIQUE, 12 Sep. 2013.
163
FIDH, Rwanda. La répression des présumés génocidaires rwandais devant les juridictions françaises: état des
lieux [Rwanda. The Prosecution of Alleged Rwandan Génocidaires in French Courts: State of Play] 2 (6 Apr. 2004).
164
Histoire de la Cour nationale du droit d’asile [History of the National Court for Asylum], COUR NATIONALE DU
DROIT D’ASILE, http://www.cnda.fr/La-CNDA/Histoire-de-la-Cour-nationale-du-droit-d-asile (last visited 14 Apr.
2021).
165
Jacques Morel, Le rôle de Laurent Serubuga dans le génocide des Tutsi [The Role of Laurent Serubuga in the
Genocide Against the Tutsi] 20-21 (3 Mar. 2019) (citing CNDA, 9 avril 2008, 552782, K. Cf. Cour nationale du droit
d’asile, Contentieux des réfugiés, Jurisprudence du Conseil d’État et de la Cour nationale du droit d’asile, Année 2008,
p. 80.). The National Court for Asylum case cited by Morel regarding “an MDR member from Nyabikenke” referred
to the asylum applicant serving as a professor and prefect in a school controlled by Serubuga and Théoneste Bagosora.
In denying the application for asylum, the court stated that massacres of Tutsi between October 1990 and June 1994
took place under the authority of Serubuga and Bagosora. It also stated that Serubuga had been denied asylum under
Article 1F of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the article that refuses refugee states to people
suspected of crimes against humanity and other international and serious non-political crimes.
166
France 3 Hauts-de-France, Un Rwandais soupçonné d’avoir participé au génocide des Tutsis arrêté à Cambrai [A
Rwandan Suspected of Having Particpated in the Genocide of the Tutsi, Arrested in Cambrai], 16 July 2013.
167
La Cour de Cassation, Chambre Criminelle, No G 13-86.631 FS-P+B+I, 26 Feb. 2014.
168
The Director of Public Prosecutions v. T, Case No. 105/2013, Ordre of the Supreme Court of Denmark, 6 (Supreme
court of Denmark, 6 Nov. 2013) (“In accordance with generally recognised international standards the principle that
no one should be punished with retroactive effect will not prevent punishment of a person for genocide or a crime
against humanity according to subsequent legislation if it was a crime according to the recognised general principles
of civilised nations already at the time it was committed, see Article 7(2) of the European Human Rights
Convention.”); In re Extradition of Jean Baptiste Mugimba, No. UTL-I-2012058615, § 6.6, The Hague District Court,
Extradition Section (Netherlands, 11 July 2014) (citing Šimšić v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Application No. 51552/10,
Decision, ¶ 23, (European Court of Human Rights 10 Apr. 2012); Maktouf and Damjanović v. Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Application Nos. 2312/08 and 34179/08, Judgement, ¶ 55, (European Court of Human Rights 18 July
2013); INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE, RESERVATIONS TO THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND
PUNISHMENT OF GENOCIDE, ADVISORY OPINION, 28 MAY 1951, 23 (1951); Prosecutor v. Kayishema and Ruzindana,
Case No. ICTR-95-1-T, Judgement, ¶ 88, (Int’l Crim. Trib. for Rwanda 21 May 1999 ); Prosecutor v. Jelisić, Case
No. IT-95-10-T, Judgement, ¶ 60, (Int’l Crim. Trib for Former Yugoslavia 14 Dec. 1999) .
169
Romain Gras, Rwanda-Johnston Busingye: «Juger ou extrader des génocidaires n’est pas une faveur faite au
Rwanda mais une obligation» [Rwanda-Johnston Busingye: “Trying or Extraditing Génocidaires Is Not a Favour to
Rwanda But an Obligation”], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 24 Jan. 2019. According to Rwandan Minister of Justice Johnston
Busingye, the Rwandan government has sent 42 indictments to France requesting that accused génocidaires be
extradited to Rwanda or prosecuted in France. No extraditions have followed. “France was very close to the Rwandan
regime in 1994,” Busingye has said. “But the efforts made by Paris to ensure that the people who had a role during
the Genocide are brought to justice are weak, compared to the countries which were not close to Rwanda at the time.”
Id.; see also Elisée Mpirwa, Rwanda Slams France over Employment of Genocide Convict in Public Hospital, THE
NEW TIMES, 6 Feb. 2018.
170
Théo Englebert, Génocidaires rwandais en France: les raisons des errements de l’administration, [Rwandan
Génocidaires in France: The Reasons for the Errors of the Administration], MEDIAPART, 15 May 2019. French
authorities indicted Nyombayire in 2013 and completed their investigation of him in 2018. See also Vénuste
Nyombayire, COLLECTIF PARTIES CIVILES RWANDA, http://www.collectifpartiescivilesrwanda.fr/venuste-nyombayire
(last visited 18 Jan. 2021).
171
After Kabuga’s Arrest, What Other Genocide Fugitives Roam Freely in France?, THE NEW TIMES, 23 May 2020.
172
Ahorugeze v. Sweden, Application No. 37075/09, Judgement, ¶ 127 (European Court of Human Rights (Fifth
Section) 27 Oct. 2011).
Page | 561
Epilogue
173
NCIS Norway v. Charles Bandora, No. 11-050224ENE-OTIR/01, Oslo District Court (11 July 2011); The Director
of Public Prosecutions v. T, Case No. 105/2013, Ordre of the Supreme Court of Denmark, 6 (Supreme court of
Denmark, 6 Nov. 2013); Decision by Hague Court of Appeal, Case No. 200.182.281 (Netherlands, 5 July 2016).
174
Communication from Rwanda’s Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit.
175
Romain Gras, Rwanda-Johnston Busingye: «Juger ou extrader des génocidaires n’est pas une faveur faite au
Rwanda mais une obligation» [Rwanda-Johnston Busingye: “Trying or Extraditing Génocidaires Is Not a Favour to
Rwanda But an Obligation”], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 24 Jan. 2019.
176
PROSECUTOR V. LAURENT SEMANZA, CASE NO. MICT-13-36, DECISION/OPPOSITION TO APPLICATION FOR EARLY
RELEASE, 728 (INT’L RESIDUAL MECHANISM FOR CRIMINAL TRIBUNALS 29 AUG. 2018). DAVID J. LUBAN, JULIE R.
O’SULLIVAN, DAVID P. STEWART, NEHA JAIN, INTERNATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW 965 (3RD ED.
2019).
177
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, art. I-II, 11 Dec. 1948.
178
Théo Englebert, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, pilier presume du genocide des Tutsis, se terre en France [Aloys Ntiwiragabo,
Presumed Pillar of the Tutsi Genocide, Hides in France], MEDIAPART, 24 July 2020.
179
James Karuhanga, French Paper Reveals More about Genocide Fugitive Aloys Ntiwiragabo’s Support Network,
THE NEW TIMES, 10 Aug. 2020.
180
Théo Englebert, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, pilier presume du genocide des Tutsis, se terre en France [Aloys Ntiwiragabo,
Presumed Pillar of the Tutsi Genocide, Hides in France], MEDIAPART, 24 July 2020.
181
Théo Englebert, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, pilier presume du genocide des Tutsis, se terre en France [Aloys Ntiwiragabo,
Presumed Pillar of the Tutsi Genocide, Hides in France], MEDIAPART, 24 July 2020.
182
Théo Englebert, Aloys Ntiwiragabo, pilier presume du genocide des Tutsis, se terre en France [Aloys Ntiwiragabo,
Presumed Pillar of the Tutsi Genocide, Hides in France], MEDIAPART, 24 July 2020.
183
Rwanda Issues Arrest Warrant for Genocide Suspect in France: Prosecutor, Radio France International, 26 Aug.
2020.
184
Théo Englebert, Réfugiés rwandais: le dévoiement du droit d’asile [Rwandan Refugees: The Misuse of the Right
of Asylum], MEDIAPART, 22 Aug. 2020.
185
Théo Englebert, Réfugiés rwandais: le dévoiement du droit d’asile [Rwandan Refugees: The Misuse of the Right
of Asylum], MEDIAPART, 22 Aug. 2020; see also Sosthene Munyemana, TRIAL INTERNATIONAL, 25 Apr. 2016 (“In
January 2008 the French National Court for Asylum dismissed the asylum application of Munyemana. The French
Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless persons (OFPRA) stated that the application was not sincere and
aimed at hiding a truth. Furthermore, there were reasonable grounds for considering that the applicant had committed
genocide and crimes against humanity. Therefore, pursuant to Art 1(F)(a) of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the
Status of Refugee, he was excluded from such protection.”); Communication from Rwanda’s Genocide Fugitive
Tracking Unit (regarding Sosthène Munyemana being convicted at a Gacaca proceeding).
186
Théo Englebert, Génocidaires rwandais en France: les raisons des errements de l’administration [Rwandan
Génocidaires in France: the Reasons for the Errors of the Administration], MEDIAPART, 15 May 2019.
187
Théo Englebert, Réfugiés rwandais: le dévoiement du droit d’asile [Rwandan Refugees: The Misuse of the Right
of Asylum], MEDIAPART, 22 Aug. 2020.
188
Projet de loi de finances pour 2020: Asile, immigration, intégration et nationalité [Budget Bill 2020: Asylum,
Immigration, Integration and Nationality], MON SENAT, (last visited 11 Apr. 2021) https://www.senat.fr/rap/a19-1462/a19-146-25.html.
189
Théo Englebert, Réfugiés rwandais: le dévoiement du droit d’asile [Rwandan Refugees: The Misuse of the Right
of Asylum], MEDIAPART, 22 Aug. 2020.
190
Théo Englebert, Réfugiés rwandais: le dévoiement du droit d’asile [Rwandan Refugees: The Misuse of the Right
of Asylum], MEDIAPART, 22 Aug. 2020.
191
Interview by LFM with Alain Gauthier.
192
Théo Englebert, Génocidaires rwandais en France: les raisons des errements de l’administration [Rwandan
Génocidaires in France: The Reasons for the Errors of the Administration], MEDIAPART, 15 May 2019.
Page | 562
Epilogue
193
Situation report from Bruno Delaye (7 Apr. 1994) (Subject: “Attentat contre les President du Rwanda et du
Burundi.”); Alain Frilet and Sylvie Coma, Paris, terre dasile de luxe pour dignitaires hutus [Paris, Land of Luxury
Asylum for Hutu Dignitaries], LIBERATION, 18 May 1994.
194
Maria Malagardis, Quinze jours dans la vie de “Madame” [Fifteen Days in the Life of “Madame”], XXI (April,
May, June 2010).
195
Alain Frilet and Sylvie Coma, Paris, terre d’asile de luxe pour dignitaires hutus [Paris, Land of Luxury Asylum
for Hutu Dignitaries], LIBERATION, 18 May 1994.
196
Maria Malagardis, Quinze jours dans la vie de “Madame” [Fifteen Days in the Life of “Madame”], XXI (April,
May, June 2010).
197
MIP Audition of Jean-Herve Bradol, Tome III, Vol. 1, 395 (2 June 1998); see also LAURENT LARCHER, RWANDA:
655 (2019).; MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES, GENOCIDE DES RWANDAIS TUTSIS
47 (2014).
ILS PARLENT [RWANDA: SPEAKING UP]
198
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], Mme Agathe Kanziga veuve Habyarimana, Decision 564776, 3 (15
Feb. 2007).
199
Interview by LFM of Alain Gauthier.
200
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], asylum application for Agathe Kanziga, No. 564776, 25 Jan. 2007 –
15 Feb. 2007; Conseil d’État, 10th and 9th subsections combined, No. 311793, 16 October 2009.
201
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], asylum application for Agathe Kanziga, No. 564776, 25 Jan. 2007 –
15 Feb. 2007.
202
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], asylum application for Agathe Kanziga, No. 564776, 25 Jan. 2007 –
15 Feb. 2007.
203
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], asylum application for Agathe Kanziga, No. 564776, 25 Jan. 2007 –
15 Feb. 2007.
204
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], asylum application for Agathe Kanziga, No. 564776, 25 Jan. 2007 –
15 Feb. 2007.
205
Decision of the Commission de Recours des Réfugiés 2e division [French Refugee Appeal Board 2nd division,
currently known as National Court for Asylum], asylum application for Agathe Kanziga, No. 564776, 25 25 Jan. 2007
– 15 Feb. 2007.
206
Collective des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda, Complaint against Agathe Habyarimana Kanziga (13 Feb. 2007);
See Collective des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda, Table for complaint against Agathe Habyarimana Kanziga (13 Feb.
2007). As noted in the Gauthier’s filing, the complaint came at a significant financial cost of 6,000 euro—a cost that
should no doubt be borne by the French State.
207
Christope Ayad, La veuve, le génocide, et la France [The Widow, the Genocide, and France], LIBERATION, 15 Feb.
2007; Collective des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda, Complaint against Agathe Habyarimana Kanziga (13 Feb. 2007).
208
Rwandan Ex-Leader’s Widow Asks France to Close Case against Her, AFP/YAHOO NEWS, 16 Nov. 2020. Her
request was refused. Agathe’s lawyer said she plans to appeal the decision.
209
Supporting document from Alain Gauthier, 1 Apr. 2021.
210
Maria Malagardis, Quinze jours dans la vie de “Madame” [Fifteen Days in the Life of “Madame”], XXI (April,
May, June 2010); Anjam Sundaram, On Visit to Rwanda, Sarkozy Admits That France Made ‘Grave Errors’ in the
1994 Genocide, N.Y. TIMES, 25 Feb. 2010.
211
See Collective des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda, Table for complaint against Agathe Habyarimana Kanziga (13
Feb. 2007).
Page | 563
Epilogue
212
Dépourvue de titre de séjour en France, Agathe Habyarimana saisit la CEDH [Deprived of a Residence Permit in
France, Agathe Habyarimana Appeals to the ECHR], JEUNE AFRIQUE, 15 Jan. 2014,; Imperialisme, France, Terre
d’accueil . . . pour extrémistes hutus [France, a Welcoming Land . . . for Hutu Extremists], AGONE, 10 June 2020,
https://agone.org/blog/extremistes-hutus#note-wdf-8.
213
Ex-First Lady Agathe Habyarimama Says “Totally Ignorant” of Genocide, RTLM Radio, KT PRESS, 29 Apr. 2017.
214
Guillaume Erner, Génocide des Tutsi: le rapport de la commission des historiens sur le Rwanda, avec Vincent
Duclert [Genocide of the Tutsis: Report from the Commission of Historians on Rwanda, with Vincent Duclert],
FRANCE CULTURE: L’INVITÉ DES MATINS, 29 Mar. 2021 (interview of Vincent Duclert),
https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/linvitee-des-matins/genocide-des-tutsis-le-rapport-de-la-commission-deshistoriens-sur-le-rwanda-avec-vincent-duclert.
215
Using a pneumatic jack to force open the door to his small flat in Asnières, a residential area in Paris less than four
miles across the Seine River from the Élysée, French gendarmes on 16 May 2020 rushed in and discovered Kabuga’s
eldest son, who reportedly pointed to the bedroom where his father was sleeping. See Florence Morice, Rwandan
Genocide: The 25-Year Search for Félicien Kabuga, RFI (6 June 2020). When confronted, Kabuga acted as if he could
not understand the Kinyarwanda interpreter accompanying the gendarmes and insisted in Kiswahili (the language
spoken more broadly in Africa’s Great Lakes region) that he was Antoine Tounga from the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC). Id. The gendarmes recognized the alias and knew he was lying. Two hours later, a DNA test left no
doubt as to Kabuga’s identity. Id.
216
Prosecutor v. Félicien Kabuga, Case No. ICTR-98-448-I, Amended Indictment, ¶¶ 9, 16, 44 & 46 (Int’l Crim. Trib.
for Rwanda 13 Apr. 2011).
217
Elaine Ganley, French High Court OKs Extradition of Rwanda Genocide Suspect, ASSOCIATED PRESS, 30 Sept.
2020; Rwandan Genocide Suspect in Detention in The Hague, REUTERS, 26 Oct. 2020.
218
Duclert Commission Report 981.
219
Rwanda to Mark 25th Anniversary of Genocide, as France Examines Own Role, FRANCE 24, 7 Apr. 2019.
220
Aurelien Breeden, Macron Wants France to Commemorate Rwanda Genocide, N.Y. TIMES, 7 Apr. 2019.
221
Marine Pennetier, Macron Appoints Researchers to Evaluate Role of France in Rwandan Genocide, REUTERS, 5
Apr. 2019.
222
Duclert Commission Report 5 (emphasis added).
223
Duclert Commission Report 981.
224
Duclert Commission Report 981.
225
Duclert Commission Report 981.
226
Duclert Commission Report 981.
227
Duclert Commission Report 981.
228
Duclert Commission Report 33.
229
Duclert Commission Report 753.
230
Decision by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, French Presidency, 7 Apr. 2015; See France’s Hollande to Declassify Rwanda
Genocide Documents: Source, REUTERS, 7 Apr. 2015; Génocide Rwandais: l’Élysée déclassifie les documents de la
présidence française [Rwandan Genocide: The Élysée Declassifies Documents of the French Presidency], L’OBS, 7
Apr. 2015.
231
Génocide Rwandan: l’Élysée déclassifie les documents de la présidence française [Rwandan Genocide: The Élysée
Declassifies Documents of the French Presidency], L’OBS, 7 Apr. 2015.
232
Fabien Jannic-Cherbonnel, French Rwanda Genocide Documents Not Complete, Activists Warn, RFI, 8 Apr. 2015.
233
Génocide des Tutsi: le silence du quinquennat Hollande [Genocide of the Tutsi: Hollonde’s Five Years of Silence],
SURVIE, 7 Apr. 2017.
234
Rwanda: La prétendue déclassification des archives de l’Élysée n’est qu’une grossière operation de désinformation
[Rwanda: The Alleged Declassification of the Élysée Archives Is Only a Crude Disinformation Operation] COURRIER
INT’L, 15 Apr. 2015.
Page | 564
Epilogue
235
Rwanda: La prétendue declassification des archives de l’Élysée n’est qu’une grossière operation de désinformation
[Rwanda: The Alleged Declassification of the Élysée Archives Is Only a Crude Disinformation Operation], COURRIER
INT’L, 15 Apr. 2015.
236
See Béatrice Bouniol, Rwanda, à quand l’ouverture réelle des archives? [Rwanda, When Will the Archives Be
Truly Opened?], LA CROIX, 24 June 2018; Benoît Collombat, Génocide rwandais: les archives de l’Élysée toujours
inaccessibles [Rwandan Genocide: The Élysée Archives Remain Inaccessible], FRANCE INTER, 6 Apr. 2016.
237
Benoît Collombat, Génocide rwandais: les archives de l’Élysée toujours inaccessibles [Rwandan Genocide: The
Élysée Archives Remain Inaccessible], FRANCE INTER, 6 Apr. 2016.
238
Benoît Collombat, Génocide rwandais: les archives de l’Élysée toujours inaccessibles [Rwandan Genocide: The
Élysée Archives Remain Inaccessible], FRANCE INTER, 6 Apr. 2016 (internal quotation marks omitted).
239
Decision of the French Conseil d’État (12 June 2020); French Court Allows Access to Rwandan Genocide Archives,
AL JAZEERA, 12 June 2020.
240
François Graner, Une déclassification sans réelle portée [A Declassification Without Real Scope], SURVIE, 1 May
2015.
241
François Graner, Une déclassification sans réelle portée [A Declassification Without Real Scope], SURVIE, 1 May
2015.
242
François Graner, Une déclassification sans réelle portée [A Declassification Without Real Scope], SURVIE, 1 May
2015.
243
François Graner, “Ouvrons les archives!” . . . mais ensuite? [Open the Archives! . . . and Then?], SURVIE, 4 Apr.
2016.
244
Request for documents from the Government of Rwanda to the Government of France (receipt acknowledged 20
December 2019); Request for documents from the Government of Rwanda to the Government of France (receipt
acknowledged 10 July 2020); Request for documents from the Government of Rwanda to the Government of France
(receipt acknowledged 27 January 2021).
245
Acknowledgement of receipt of request for documents from the Government of Rwanda to the Government of
France (20 December 2019); Acknowledgement of receipt of request for documents from the Government of Rwanda
to the Government of France (10 July 2020); Acknowledgement of receipt of request for documents from the
Government of Rwanda to the Government of France (27 January 2021).
246
Request for documents from the Government of Rwanda to the Government of France (receipt acknowledged 27
January 2021).
247
Pierre Lepidi and Piotr Smolar, Rwanda: la commission Duclert conclut à une faillite militaire et politique de la
France de 1990 à 1994 [Rwanda: The Duclert Commission Concludes That France Was a Military and Political
Failure from 1990 to 1994], LE MONDE, 26 Mar. 2021; Laure Broulard and Pierre Lepidi, À Kigali, un pas dans la
bonne direction par rapport à la position de déni [In Kigali, a Step in the Right Direction from a Position of Denial],
LE MONDE, 30 Mar. 2021.
248
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 40 (2006).
249
Jina Moore, Rwanda Accuses France of Complicity in 1994 Genocide, NY TIMES, 13 Dec. 2017.
250
Phuong N Pham, Harvey M Weinstein, Timothy Longman, Trauma and PTSD Symptoms in Rwanda: Implications
for Attitudes toward Justice and Reconciliation, JAMA (4 Aug. 2004).
251
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 35 (2006).
252
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 35 (2006).
253
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 35 (2006).
254
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 36 (2006).
255
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 36 (2006).
256
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 36 (2006).
257
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 36 (2006).
Page | 565
Epilogue
258
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 36 (2006).
259
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 36 (2006).
260
Lauren Ng, Naphtal Ahishakiye, Donald Miller, Beth Meyerowitz, Life after Genocide: Mental Health, Education,
and Social Support of Orphaned Survivors, INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGY (4 Apr. 2015).
261
Atle Dyregrov, Leila Gupta, Rolf Gjestad, Eugenie Mukanoheli, Trauma Exposure and Psychological Reactions
to Genocide among Rwandan Children, JOURNAL OF TRAUMATIC STRESS (30 June 2005).
262
Atle Dyregrov, Leila Gupta, Rolf Gjestad, Eugenie Mukanoheli, Trauma Exposure and Psychological Reactions
to Genocide among Rwandan Children, JOURNAL OF TRAUMATIC STRESS (30 June 2005).
263
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 37 (2006).
264
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 38 (2006).
265
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 39 (2006).
266
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 40 (2006).
267
Veale, A.; Quigley, P.; Ndibeshy, T.; Nyirimihigo, C. 2001. (Trocaire), Struggling to survive: Orphan and
community dependent children in Rwanda. Kigali: MINALOC/UNICEF/Trocaire/CareInternational.
268
Interview by LFM with Viateur Karamage.
269
ANNA OBURA, NEVER AGAIN: EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION IN RWANDA 47 (2003).
270
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 40 (2006).
271
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 40 (2006).
272
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 40 (2006).
273
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 58 (2006).
274
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 58 (2006).
275
Report from Yael Danieli, Grp. Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children 2-3 (30 May 2018).
276
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 70 (2006).
277
WENDY WHITWORTH, WE SURVIVED: GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 71 (2006).
278
Interview by LFM with Chantal Ingabire.
Page | 566
CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS
It is our conclusion that the French government bears significant responsibility for enabling
a foreseeable genocide. For many years, the French government supported the corrupt and
murderous regime of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana. French officials armed, advised,
trained, equipped, and protected the Rwandan government, heedless of the Habyarimana regime’s
commitment to the dehumanization and, ultimately, the destruction and death of Tutsi in Rwanda.
French officials did so to advance France’s own interests, in particular the reinforcement and
expansion of France’s power and influence in Africa. And they did so despite constant and everincreasing evidence that a genocide was foreseeable.
President François Mitterrand was chiefly responsible for the French government’s
reckless enabling of the Rwandan government during the critical period of 1990 to 1994. He and
his administration knew that the government in Rwanda was orchestrating, fomenting and
exploiting violence against the Tutsi minority for its own ends. As the French government backed
the Rwandan government in its war against the Rwandan Patriotic Front (“RPF”), the Élysée
received a drumbeat of information about the Rwandan government’s anti-Tutsi pogroms. More
than once, French officials recommended that France distance itself from the Rwandan
government. Mitterrand, however, remained committed to his policy to support the Rwandan
government diplomatically and to bolster the Rwandan military with an array of weapons and
munitions, including mortars, rockets, attack helicopters, and artillery. French military officers
advised Rwandan military leaders and trained Rwandan soldiers, while French soldiers shored up
the Rwandan army’s defense of Kigali. This support afforded extremists time to plan and
ultimately execute a genocide. When, in 1994, the Genocide Against the Tutsi commenced, the
French government continued its opposition to the RPF, the one force fighting to end the mass
murder.
The French government would not accept an RPF victory, as it risked unraveling the trust
that francophone African leaders placed in France to protect them from threats to their own power.
As a result, Mitterrand’s support for Habyarimana did not waver even as his government detained,
tortured, murdered, and otherwise persecuted innocent people simply because of their ethnic
identification. Dependent on—and highly responsive to—France, Habyarimana and his allies
rightly understood the French government’s unqualified aid to mean they could continue to
terrorize and slaughter Tutsi with impunity without risking France’s military assistance, financial
support, and political backing. In short, French geopolitical interests mattered more than Rwandan
lives.
When the Genocide arrived, senior French officials, starting with President Mitterrand,
claimed that no one could have seen it coming. But the Genocide was amply foreshadowed. French
officials on the ground in Rwanda had been reporting to Paris for nearly four years on massacres
targeting Tutsi. Some Rwandan extremist military leaders even confided in French officials an
intention to exterminate the Tutsi. Years later, high-ranking French officials would acknowledge
that the Genocide was foreseeable as early as October 1990, if not in the exact form that it took.
Mitterrand himself understood the risk and accepted it.
Page | 567
Conclusions and Findings
Days after the Genocide began, French troops arrived in Kigali to evacuate French
nationals and others sheltering in the French embassy, including some of the extremists responsible
for the massacres. These French troops became instant eyewitnesses to the killing, carried out in
part by French-trained units, such as the Presidential Guard and the para-commando battalion. Yet,
as bodies littered church pews and piled up along roads, several of Mitterrand’s closest advisors
continued to view the advance of the RPF’s military as a greater threat to Rwanda than those
committing the Genocide. After years of tolerating the massacre of Tutsi as an acceptable cost of
war, the French government responded to the outbreak of genocide by watering down United
Nations resolutions intended to shame and bring to justice those responsible; viewing the
massacres as casualties of an ongoing civil war between opposing armies rather than a genocide
targeting a civilian population based on ethnicity; and advocating for a cease-fire and the
resumption of a failed peace process, as if negotiation was a sufficient response to genocide.
After two and a half months of killings and domestic political pressure to act, the French
government pushed through a UN Security Council authorization for Operation Turquoise as a
strictly humanitarian intervention. The mission was initiated after the annihilation of Tutsi was
nearly complete and timed to allow Mitterrand to redeploy French troops to Rwanda as the RPF
was about to seize control of Kigali. Particularly at the beginning of Turquoise, there were several
French military officers on the ground, who, outside of the Turquoise humanitarian mandate,
continued to treat the FAR as their partners and sought to prevent the RPF from consolidating
control of the country. Even though some of those French officers were eventually sidelined,
Turquoise—while saving some lives—was ultimately unable to fulfill its stated humanitarian
mission.
When the RPF took control of Kigali and was poised to wrest control of the rest of Rwanda
from the génocidaires, French officials hastily placed one-fifth of the country under France’s
protection, a so-called “Safe Humanitarian Zone” where génocidaires would find refuge. The
French government decided not to arrest, detain, or systematically disarm the génocidaires in the
Safe Humanitarian Zone. Instead, it allowed extremists safe passage to Zaire, where they rearmed
to conduct raids across the border in Rwanda; terrorized civilians in refugee camps; and created a
second humanitarian disaster. In the end, Turquoise contributed to the destabilization of the region
and saved few lives, relative to those lost in the Genocide.
Over the last quarter century, the French government has been engaged in a cover-up, as it
seeks to bury its past in Rwanda. After the French media and a Rwandan commission published
reports critical of France’s role in Rwandan affairs and, in particular, the Genocide, the French
government responded with deeply flawed investigations, one of which relied on génocidaires as
witnesses. As international and Rwandan national courts sought to bring génocidaires to justice,
the French government has allowed scores of cases to remain unresolved for decades. Since the
Genocide, France has been providing safe harbor to numerous individuals suspected of
involvement in genocide crimes, including Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana (the former first lady).
The French government’s concealment of its documents, showing what Mitterrand’s
government said, knew, and did over 25 years ago, has been a central element of this cover-up. In
this investigation alone, the Government of Rwanda has submitted three detailed requests for
Page | 568
Conclusions and Findings
documents received by the French government on 20 December 2019, 10 July 2020, and 27
January 2021 respectively. The French government has ignored all three. Its refusal to disclose
these and related documents only raises more questions about the extent of the Mitterrand
administration’s involvement in the Genocide. Recent disclosures of documents in connection with
the Duclert Commission’s report, however, may signal a move toward transparency.
The individuals convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, foreign
courts, Rwandan national courts, and traditional Gacaca tribunals bear the ultimate responsibility
for committing the Genocide, and we found no evidence that French officials or personnel
participated directly in the killing of Tutsi during that period. However, only the French
government was unwavering in its support for its Rwandan allies even when their genocidal
intentions became clear, and only the French government was an indispensable collaborator in
building the institutions that would become instruments of the Genocide. No other foreign
government both knew the dangers posed by Rwandan extremists and enabled those extremists as
they prepared to bring about the deaths of more than one million victims of the 1994 Genocide
Against the Tutsi—persons killed because they were Tutsi, resembled Tutsi, were related to Tutsi,
protected Tutsi, or opposed the extremist politics that sought to divide the nation. The French
government’s role was singular. And still, it has not yet acknowledged that role or atoned for it.
These conclusions, in addition to the findings below, receive detailed discussion and
corroboration in the Report:
A. Pre-1990: France Supported Rwanda Economically and Militarily as the Rwandan
Government Engaged in Systemic Discrimination and Violence against the Tutsi.
1. By the end of 1960, France had negotiated independence with 17 of the 20 African
countries it had colonized. In order to maintain its post-colonial geopolitical reach, the
French government entered into cooperation agreements with its former African colonies.
These agreements preserved France’s interests through economic and military aid.
2. Beginning in the early 1960s, the French government honored its military cooperation
agreements by dispatching troops to help suppress uprisings in several of its former
colonies in Africa.
3. When Rwanda gained independence from Belgium in July 1962, the French government
saw an opportunity to expand its reach—viewing Rwanda as a kind of frontier post on the
border with “Anglo-Saxon” East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania) that could help
spread French influence in the region.
4. In December 1962, the French government entered into civil cooperation agreements with
the Rwandan government, headed by newly elected President Grégoire Kayibanda.
5. Kayibanda had risen to power in the wake of anti-Tutsi violence that drove thousands of
Tutsi into exile in 1959. In the years that followed his 1961 election as Rwanda’s president,
he oversaw anti-Tutsi pogroms that forced tens of thousands of Tutsi, as well as Hutu, to
settle elsewhere in Rwanda or take refuge outside the country.
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Conclusions and Findings
6. By the end of 1964, the UN registered over 300,000 Rwandans living in refugee camps on
Rwanda’s borders—in Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zaire.
7. The French government’s civil cooperation with Rwanda continued, despite the French
press reports of continued attacks on Tutsi sponsored by the Kayibanda regime.
8. President Juvénal Habyarimana, who took power from Kayibanda in a 1973 coup, presided
over a discriminatory regime that forced Tutsi inside Rwanda to live as second-class
citizens and denied them equal access to educational, economic, civil service, and military
opportunities.
9. In July 1975, France and the Habyarimana government entered into a military cooperation
agreement. This agreement authorized the French military to train a new Rwandan
Gendarmerie (its national police force). In the following year, the French government
began supplying Rwanda with military trainers, weaponry, supplies, and vehicles, as well
as military training courses in France.
10. François Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981 on a Socialist Party platform
pledging an end to France’s military support of corrupt and undemocratic African regimes.
11. Rwandan refugees were eager to escape statelessness and mistreatment in other countries
(most notably Uganda in 1982). During the 1980s, they urged President Habyarimana to
permit their resettlement in Rwanda and sought France’s diplomatic assistance. In
response, Habyarimana took an increasingly hard line on the issue, and President
Mitterrand was sympathetic to his position.
12. In 1983, France and Rwanda amended their military cooperation agreement to eliminate
the restriction on assisting the Rwandan Gendarmerie with “the preparation and execution
of operations of war.”
13. In a 1986 public statement, the central committee of the MRND – Rwanda’s sole political
party—rejected the refugees’ call for collective repatriation. This pronouncement became
a watershed moment, enshrining in the platform of Rwanda’s only political party that the
refugees would not be welcomed home.
14. In December 1987, Rwandan refugees, who had spent almost 30 years in various countries
around the world without access to their home country, organized under the leadership of
the Rwandan Patriotic Front (“RPF”), which advocated repatriation as well as
democratization and liberalization of the Rwandan government.
15. The RPF, which counted Rwandans serving in the Ugandan army amongst its members,
raised a clandestine army to prepare for what they referred to as “the Z option”—the use
of military force in order to achieve RPF political goals, when diplomacy could not achieve
them.
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Conclusions and Findings
B. October 1990: The Rwandan Civil War Began, and the French Government Came to the
Aid of the Habyarimana Regime, While Ignoring Its Human Rights Abuses.
16. When the RPF army implemented the Z option and crossed into Rwanda on 1 October
1990, Habyarimana promptly requested and received French military assistance. By 5
October, 300 French troops were on the ground in Rwanda, a deployment known as
Operation Noroît.
17. The Noroît troops joined French military cooperants, who were already in Rwanda training
the Gendarmerie and three elite units in the FAR: the para-commando battalion, the
aviation squadron, and the reconnaissance battalion.
18. During the month of October 1990, French military cooperants advised the Rwandan army
at the highest levels, trained elite fighting units, and offered advice on battlefield tactics.
The French Noroît forces based in Kigali freed up FAR forces to go to the front. The French
government also supplied the FAR with weapons and ammunition.
19. In the estimation of the head of the Rwandan army, its elite units, “backed by France, gave
Rwanda the October [1990] victory.”
20. On 15 October 1990, President Mitterrand stated in a press conference that Noroît’s sole
mission was the evacuation of French and foreign nationals from Rwanda. Noroît troops
would stay for over three years, and French officials would only later publicly acknowledge
that those troops were also intended to deter the RPF.
21. French officials also deployed Operation Noroît to pursue geopolitical aims: to shore up
French influence in Rwanda and to reassure francophone African partners that the French
government would provide military support in the event of external aggression.
22. To project the appearance of honoring a policy not to intervene in African domestic
conflicts, the French government encouraged the Rwandan government to mischaracterize
the RPF as a group of “foreign aggressors” from Uganda.
23. French officials also mischaracterized the RPF as a Tutsi movement intent on undemocratically dominating the Hutu majority in Rwanda.
24. Reports that the Rwandan government perpetrated serious human rights abuses and antiTutsi massacres during the early stages of the conflict did not dissuade the French
government from supporting Habyarimana and the FAR.
25. Mitterrand refused recommendations from his military advisors for a partial withdrawal of
Noroît forces. As early as 11 October 1990, Mitterrand’s chief military advisor urged a
drawdown of troops, so as “not to appear too implicated in supporting Rwandan forces
should serious acts of violence against the population be brought to light in current
operations.”
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Conclusions and Findings
C. 1991 – 1992: The French Government Increased Its Support as the Habyarimana Regime
Dehumanized and Massacred the Tutsi.
26. On 23 January 1991, the RPF military attacked the northwestern Rwandan city of
Ruhengeri. Two days later, in retaliation, Habyarimana’s regime slaughtered more than
500 Bagogwe Tutsi civilians in the area.
27. In late March 1991, the French government deployed 30 military personnel in a group
called the Détachement d’assistance militaire d’instruction (DAMI). The DAMI worked
directly with FAR troops near the combat zone, advised high-ranking officers on tactical
matters, helped battalion commanders reorganize their units, and trained soldiers to use
heavy weapons and explosives.
28. In a 4 April 1991 report, the head of France’s military cooperation mission in Rwanda
unsuccessfully urged Paris to confine the DAMI to a four-month deployment and to end
Operation Noroît. He expressed his concern that any additional French military assistance
would empower opponents of reform in Rwanda. Both the DAMI trainers and Noroît forces
remained in Rwanda.
29. In the summer of 1991, the French government began sponsoring peace negotiations to
stop the fighting between the RPF and the Habyarimana government. During these talks,
French officials claimed neutrality at the negotiating table, while continuing to support
Habyarimana and the FAR.
30. French negotiators excluded the RPF from initial peace negotiations in favor of dealing
with Uganda, as the French government continued to incorrectly view the RPF as a proxy
for Uganda.
31. French officials encouraged the Habyarimana government to democratize, while accepting
continued repression, intimidation, and physical attacks on Tutsi.
32. In March 1992, state-run radio broadcasts incited militias to murder Tutsi civilians and
political opponents of Habyarimana’s government in Bugesera, a region just over 40
kilometers south of Kigali. This would later be referred to as the “dress rehearsal” for the
Genocide.
33. France’s Ambassador to Rwanda advised Paris that the state-run radio had incited antiTutsi violence in Bugesera just five days after it occurred. Multiple foreign governments
and civil society groups condemned the violence linked to the false and incendiary
broadcasts. Later that month, the French government nevertheless welcomed Ferdinand
Nahimana, the director of the state broadcasting agency, to Paris and pledged to increase
French investment in Rwandan state media.
34. Following the Bugesera massacres, French military assistance continued, including
training the Rwandan Presidential Guard, which would play a leading role in the Genocide.
French military assistance to the FAR was so overwhelming that it contributed, at least
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Conclusions and Findings
indirectly, to the FAR’s training of the civilian militias that would do much of the killing
during the Genocide. There is also evidence that the French DAMI took part in the training
of civilian militias.
35. In June 1992, the RPF army launched an offensive in the northern Rwandan city of
Byumba. In response, France deployed additional troops to Rwanda and provided
munitions, including a battery of 105mm artillery. According to former RPF soldiers and
ex-FAR, the French military played a direct role in the use of the 105mm cannons in the
field, either directing their use or firing the guns themselves.
36. On 1 August 1992, a ceasefire agreement between the RPF and the Rwandan government
went into effect. This agreement produced a powerful anti-Tutsi backlash, including the
rise of the extremist political party Coalition pour la défense de la république (CDR) and
the expansion of party-controlled militias—particularly, the MRND’s Interahamwe militia.
37. In the fall of 1992, the French government continued to supply the FAR with munitions.
France’s support for Habyarimana’s murderous regime disincentivized extremists from
accepting a truce with the RPF and bought them more time to plan a genocide.
D. January – March 1993: Ignoring a Devastating Human Rights Report Exposing the
Rwandan Government, the French Government Reached the Pinnacle of Its Intervention in
the War against the RPF.
38. In January 1993, a consortium of international human rights groups conducted a factfinding mission in Rwanda and briefed French officials on evidence of governmentsponsored violence against Tutsi. French Ambassador Georges Martres informed Paris that
the mission’s report would “only add horror to the horror we already know.”
39. The immediate resumption of anti-Tutsi violence following the international investigative
team’s departure from Rwanda was widely reported in the French media. France, on 5
February 1993, joined other countries in presenting Habyarimana with a formal démarche
urging the Rwandan government to stop the violence.
40. The RPF viewed massacres of Tutsi as a breach of the ceasefire. When, on 8 February
1993, the RPF army attacked government forces in Ruhengeri, the French government did
not consider the massacres to be, in the words of the spokesperson for its Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, “a justification for the resumption of fighting.”
41. In support of the FAR, on 8 February 1993, the French government immediately dispatched
to Rwanda additional Noroît soldiers and more munitions.
42. In addition to the Noroît troops and arms, the French government sent special forces to
Rwanda on 22 February 1993 for a secret mission dubbed Operation Chimère. The
mission’s commander later wrote in his memoir that he effectively controlled the FAR’s
war effort during the course of the operation through the beginning of March 1993.
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Conclusions and Findings
E. March 1993 – 5 April 1994: With the FAR Losing on the Battlefield in Rwanda, President
Mitterrand Decided to Withdraw Most French Troops. French Support Continued As
Extremist Violence Spread in Opposition to the Arusha Peace Accords.
43. At checkpoints, Noroît troops examined identity cards for ethnicity. Per operational orders,
the French soldiers were expected to turn over “suspects,” that is, persons suspected of
collaboration with the RPF, to the Rwandan Gendarmerie. This process contributed to the
discrimination and harassment of Tutsi.
44. As the RPF gained an upper hand on the FAR in early 1993, Mitterrand sought to distance
the French military from an increasingly losing cause in Rwanda, while avoiding the
appearance of abandoning an ally. He decided that a UN multinational intervention would
allow him to do both, and he supported considerations underway at the United Nations to
send international forces to Rwanda.
45. In mid-1993, French diplomats worked to convince the United Nations to send observers
to the Rwandan-Ugandan border in order to prevent supplies of arms and ammunition from
reaching the RPF. Available documents do not reflect any similar suggestion by French
officials to monitor munitions to the Rwandan government.
46. In the summer of 1993, French-led training of Rwandan troops increased, in anticipation
of France’s approaching departure.
47. On 4 August 1993, President Habyarimana and RPF Chairman Alexis Kanyarengwe signed
the Arusha peace agreement. Under the agreement, a UN-led international force was to be
deployed, at which time France was expected to withdraw its remaining troops, except for
the military cooperants specifically exempted from this provision of the peace agreement.
48. On 13 December 1993, the withdrawal of the Noroît troops concluded. The French
government left roughly 25 soldiers in Rwanda who continued to advise and assist the
FAR, which was arming and training the Interahamwe, the extremist militia that had
already participated in massacres of Tutsi (e.g., Bugesera) and would slaughter Tutsi during
the Genocide.
49. Just prior to Noroît’s withdrawal, French officials authorized a French arms company to
ship additional munitions to the FAR. The United Nations impounded the munitions when
they arrived in Kigali, in January 1994.
50. From the time the Noroît troops arrived in October 1990 until their withdrawal, French
officials, on a day-to-day basis, were aware of efforts to dehumanize Tutsi. They watched
and observed the rise of political violence, the proliferation of hate speech in extremist
media, and the everyday indignities visited upon Tutsi. They witnessed and learned of Tutsi
being abused at roadblocks and being arrested and tortured by the Rwandan gendarmerie.
They also witnessed and learned of Tutsi women being subjected to sexual harassment and
assault. Through its words, actions and indifference, the French government sanctioned
and enabled these horrors.
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Conclusions and Findings
F. 6 April – Mid-June 1994: The French Government Continued to Oppose the RPF, Which
Was Fighting to End the Genocide.
51. Extremists had planned and prepared for the Genocide Against the Tutsi. In 2016, a French
court would find that a “concerted plan can be inferred from the speed with which the
massacres were carried out, as early as the day after the attack on President Juvénal
Habyarimana’s plane, the existence of roadblocks throughout Rwanda, including in Kigali,
the development of media propaganda calling for inter-ethnic hatred, the distribution of
arms and the scale of the massacres, all of which necessarily fall within the competence of
a collective organization.”
52. By noon on 7 April, militias and extremist elements within the FAR had massacred Tutsi
and non-Tutsi moderate political figures who had been designated to serve in the broadbased transitional government, as called for in the Arusha Accords. These killings occurred
both in Kigali and throughout the country.
53. The targeted elimination of politicians and the assassination of Belgian UN peacekeepers
paved the way for a coup d’état, ushering in an interim government made up of extremists.
French officials were satisfied with the composition of the new government.
54. Within hours of President Habyarimana’s death, French military cooperants living in the
nearby FAR base visited the crash site accompanied by Aloys Ntabakuze, head of the elite
para-commando unit. (The Presidential Guard denied UN peacekeepers access to the crash
site.) Ntabakuze would later be convicted for his command role in the slaughter of over
1,000 (possibly as many as 4,000) Tutsi men, women, and children who had taken shelter
at the École Technique Officielle de Kigali.
55. During the first days of the Genocide, French-trained units—particularly the paracommando unit, the reconnaissance battalion, and the Presidential Guard – would play a
leading role in assassinating moderate Rwandan politicians and massacring Tutsi civilians.
56. French cooperants who had remained in Rwanda and officials at the French Embassy in
Kigali bore witness to the killings, immediately after the Genocide began.
57. The French government responded to the start of the Genocide with Operation Amaryllis,
a mission to evacuate French and other foreign nationals. It also evacuated notorious
figures in the Genocide, including Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana (the former first lady and
the individual at the center of the Akazu, a powerful network of anti-Tutsi extremists) and
Ferdinand Nahimana, the director of RTLM.
58. Amaryllis soldiers witnessed the brutal slaughter of Tutsi civilians, but under orders
refrained from saving lives.
59. In late April 1994, the French government welcomed senior officials of the genocidal
interim Rwandan government to Paris. The officials were in France to request arms and
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Conclusions and Findings
ammunition. The United States and Belgium refused an audience with the same interim
government officials.
60. As the Genocide continued in full view of the international community, France obstructed
UN efforts to acknowledge and condemn the complicity of the interim government.
61. President Mitterrand and several senior French officials favored the perpetrators of the
Genocide rather than those fighting to stop it—framing the massacres before the
international community as the continuation of a war between opposing armies, instead of
the Genocide that it was; advocating for a cease-fire and the resumption of a failed peace
process, as if negotiation was the antidote to extermination; failing to use France’s
influence to stop the hate media broadcasts or otherwise effectively pressure the interim
government and the FAR to put an end to the killing; and watering down UN resolutions
intended to shame the interim government.
62. As the Genocide took thousands of lives each day in full view of the international
community, France obstructed UN efforts to acknowledge and condemn the complicity of
the interim government.
G. 22 June 1994 – August 1994: Conflicting Considerations Prevented Operation Turquoise
from Fully Achieving Its Humanitarian Mission.
63. In June 1994, pressure from the news media, NGOs, and horrified French citizens forced
the French government to consider taking action with respect to the Genocide.
64. After operating in Rwanda as a co-belligerent for the preceding three years, the French
government sought UN authorization for a humanitarian military intervention in Rwanda.
65. On 22 June 1994, the UN authorized the French government to launch a “humanitarian
mission” in Rwanda, despite skepticism that the RPF and various members of the UN
Security Council had expressed about the French government’s true intentions and
motives.
66. The ensuing operation, known as Operation Turquoise, was not solely humanitarian in
nature. Internal communications and actions of Mitterrand and other senior French officials
responsible for Turquoise establish that one of the Élysée’s aims was to forestall an RPF
victory over the FAR.
67. When the French troops arrived in Rwanda, RTLM broadcast that the French military was
coming to save Rwanda from the RPF. The FAR (and other sympathizers) greeted the
Turquoise units as would-be saviors.
68. Despite the strictly humanitarian nature of the UN mandate for Operation Turquoise,
Mitterrand and some of his advisors continued to seek ways to prevent the RPF from
consolidating its control over the country, as did some of the Turquoise officers who had
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Conclusions and Findings
previously served in Rwanda and still viewed the FAR as partners. Some of those French
officers were eventually sidelined.
69. On 27 June 1994, French soldiers confronted evidence of ongoing massacres in Bisesero.
There, starved and terrified Tutsi came out of hiding places to beg the French to save them
from ongoing killings. Notwithstanding their humanitarian mission, the French soldiers left
and reported what they saw up the chain of command. Their superiors did not order them
to return for three days. In those three days, more Tutsi were killed.
70. There is evidence that, during Turquoise, French military leaders considered the use of air
power against the RPF.
71. On 4 July 1994, the French government established the Safe Humanitarian Zone (“SHZ”),
an area in western Rwanda roughly comprising one-fifth of the country. In an effort to
impede the westward movement of the RPF army, the French government placed this area
under the protection of French forces and declared it off-limits to the RPF military, even
to save Tutsi lives.
72. French troops lacked the manpower and resources to provide adequate care for the refugees
inside the SHZ.
73. The RPF army secured Kigali on 4 July 1994, and génocidaires were in retreat. The SHZ
provided safe harbor to génocidaires fleeing the RPF advance. French officials did not
arrest or systematically disarm genocidaires and helped interim government officials move
through the SHZ and into Zaire.
74. French officials did not take swift action to shut down or jam RTLM or Radio Rwanda
broadcasts. Immediately before they left Rwanda, interim government officials used radio
broadcasts to encourage people to flee en masse to Zaire.
75. In Zaire, the ex-FAR began regrouping and planning attacks in Rwanda. French officers
stationed in Zaire met with ex-FAR about this effort.
76. Overall, Turquoise was a failed mission. It saved lives but, ultimately, proved incapable of
effectively serving its humanitarian purpose. It allowed FAR, militias, and génocidaires to
escape, thereby exacerbating a second humanitarian catastrophe in Zaire and contributing
to the destabilization of the region.
H. The Genocide Against the Tutsi Was Foreseeable to the French Government.
77. As the RPF military came closer to ending the Genocide, President Mitterrand denied
France’s responsibility for the Genocide and claimed that he could not have foreseen it.
This was false.
78. In the four years preceding the Genocide, no State worked more closely with the
Habyarimana government than did France.
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Conclusions and Findings
79. Beginning in October 1990, French officials in Rwanda informed Mitterrand and his top
aides in Paris that the Rwandan government was massacring Tutsi as reprisals for RPF
attacks.
80. Soon after the arrival of French troops, French officials became aware of the
dehumanization, vilification, and killing of Tutsi. As former French Ambassador to
Rwanda Georges Martres would later reflect, “The genocide was foreseeable as early as
then [October 1990], even if we couldn’t imagine its magnitude and atrociousness.”
81. On 24 October 1990, the defense attaché at the French embassy in Rwanda, Colonel René
Galinié, warned of “the physical elimination of the Tutsi within the country, 500,000 to
700,000 people.”
82. While the French government continued to support the Habyarimana government during
its civil war with the RPF, the French government knew that Habyarimana’s government
sponsored massacres as reprisals for RPF attacks and for other political purposes, in
Kibilira and Mutara (Oct. 1990), Bigogwe (Jan. 1991), Bugesera (Mar. 1992), Kibuye
(Aug. 1992), and Gisenyi-Ruhengeri (Jan. 1993).
83. In January 1993, a consortium of international human rights groups reported to French
officials in Rwanda and Paris on its fact-finding mission in Rwanda. It detailed
government-run death squads and anti-Tutsi massacres.
84. The French Ministry of Defense disregarded an internal warning from April 1993 to leave
Rwanda to avoid being further implicated in the anti-Tutsi massacres and systemic
discrimination.
85. Beginning in October 1990, hundreds of French officials—military and civilian—deployed
in Rwanda were privy to the hate media outlets (printed and broadcast in French), the use
of ethnic IDs, the use of roadblocks to harass Tutsi, the sexual assault of Tutsi women, the
torture inflicted on Tutsi by the Gendarmerie, and the growing violence of the militias and
the military.
86. The French government knew the CDR and other extremists had designs to murder the
Tutsi.
87. In January 1994, three months before the start of the Genocide, the French government
received a warning from an informant, relayed through the United Nations, that the
Interahamwe planned to slaughter Tutsi en masse.
88. Despite the information available to French officials that foreshadowed the Genocide, the
French government did not alter its policy in Rwanda.
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Conclusions and Findings
I. Since the Genocide, the French Government Has Covered up Its Role, Distorted the Truth,
and Protected Génocidaires.
89. French officials, starting with President Mitterrand, have disclaimed any responsibility for
the Genocide. During a September 1994 interview, Mitterrand insisted that “our
responsibility is nil.”
90. The 1998 French Parliamentary Mission of inquiry into French actions in Rwanda (“MIP”)
had critical flaws. To this day, critical documents and testimony from key MIP witnesses
remain secret.
91. In an interview, the head of the MIP, Paul Quilès, cleared France of responsibility despite
evidence to the contrary. One of the MIP’s two rapporteurs would later acknowledge that
many of the mission’s members were not interested in undertaking a good-faith effort to
uncover the truth.
92. French officials have attempted to shift blame for the start of the Genocide to the RPF.
They have also promulgated a false narrative that the Genocide Against the Tutsi occurred
in parallel to a second genocide allegedly perpetrated against Hutu by the RPF (the “double
genocide” theory).
93. In 2006, French Magistrate Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière issued an indictment and arrest
warrants for eight senior RPF officials and blamed them for bringing down President
Habyarimana’s plane. A French appellate court later found that Bruguière’s investigation
was largely based on unverifiable or contradictory statements. While all charges in the case
against the RPF officials would ultimately be dismissed, the investigation spanned many
years and provided a distraction from the French government’s role in the Genocide.
94. Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana, the former first lady of Rwanda, has been allowed to remain
in France despite the National Court of Asylum’s rejection of her asylum application and
its finding that she was “at the heart of the regime” and was responsible for “planning of
massacres of Tutsis from October 1990 onwards, and therefore among those responsible
for planning the [Genocide Against the Tutsi].”
95. French officials have made little effort to bring suspected génocidaires to justice, and many
Rwandan génocidaires continue to live freely in France. To date, just three génocidaires
have been tried in France (and all three were convicted). The arrest of Félicien Kabuga in
May 2020 is a positive sign that French authorities may be more committed to devoting
attention and resources to fighting impunity.
96. The French government continues to cover up its role in the Genocide by withholding
critical documents. In this investigation, the Rwandan government has made three detailed
and specific requests for documents received by the French government on 20 December
2019, 10 July 2020, and 27 January 2021 respectively. Other than acknowledging receipt,
the French government has not responded to those requests.
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Conclusions and Findings
97. Recent disclosures of documents in connection with the Duclert Commission report
suggest a move toward transparency.
J. Today: The Consequences of the Genocide Endure.
98. The French government’s responsibility must be measured in the context of the toll on
human life that its words and actions enabled in Rwanda.
99. Rwandans, especially survivors of the Genocide, continue to suffer the physical and
emotional wounds of violence and loss.
Page | 580
Dramatis Personae
Ancel, Guillaume (Capt.) – French officer of the 68th artillery regiment. He was assigned to the
2nd REI Foreign Infantry Regiment (French Foreign Legion) during Operation Turquoise.
Bagosora, Théoneste – Cabinet Director for the Rwandan Ministry of Defense (1992 – 1994);
convicted by the ICTR of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Balladur, Édouard – Prime Minister of France (March 1993 – May 1995).
Barayagwiza, Jean-Bosco – Influential figure in the CDR, an extremist anti-Tutsi political party;
Director General of Political Affairs in the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of
the Executive Committee for Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) (1993 – 1994);
convicted by the ICTR of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Barril, Paul – French mercenary active in Rwanda, including in 1994; former officer in the French
National Gendarmerie.
Belliard, Jean-Christophe – First Secretary of the French Embassy in Tanzania; French observer
at the Arusha negotiations.
Bérégovoy, Pierre – Prime Minister of France (Apr. 1992 – Mar. 1993).
Bicamumpaka, Jérôme – Minister of Foreign Affairs in the interim Rwandan government (1994).
Bizimana, Augustin – Rwandan Minister of Defense (1993 – 1994); IRG Minister of Defense;
indicted by the ICTR but never tried. His remains were identified in Congo-Brazzaville in 2020.
Bizimungu, Augustin (Maj. Gen.) – Appointed Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army in April
1994. He was convicted by the ICTR for crimes committed during the Genocide.
Bizimungu, Casimir – Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs (1989 – 1992), then Minister of
Health in the interim Rwandan government (1994).
Bizimungu, Pasteur – President of Rwanda (1994 – 2000); previously served as RPF
Commissioner of Information and Documentation.
Boivineau, Catherine – Deputy Director for East and Central Africa at the African and Malagasy
Affairs Directorate of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1991 – 1993).
Booh-Booh, Jacques-Roger – Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Rwanda
and Head of Mission for UNAMIR (1993 –1994).
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros – Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992 – 1996).
Bruguière, Jean-Louis – French magistrate who led an investigation into the 6 April 1994 attack
on President Habyarimana’s plane.
Bucyana, Martin – President of the extremist CDR party from its founding in 1992 until his
assassination on 22 February 1994.
Bunel, William – Senior counselor at the French embassy in Kigali (1991 –1995).
Page | 581
Canovas, Gilbert (Lt. Col.) – Deputy of operations for the French Military Assistance Mission
(1990) and Deputy Defense Attaché, charged with advising the General Staff of the FAR (1990 –
1991); Head of the liaison detachment of Operation Turquoise (1994).
Carbonare, Jean – President of Survie, a French NGO, from 1988 to 1994; headed a commission
of inquiry sent to Rwanda in January 1993 by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH)
to investigate human rights violations.
Chevènement, Jean-Pierre – French Minister of Defense (1988 – 1991).
Chollet, Gilles (Lt. Col.) – Commander of DAMI Panda (1991 – 1992).
Conesa, Pierre – Deputy Director at the Delegation for Strategic Affairs in the French Ministry
of Defense (1992 – 1995).
Cussac, Bernard (Col.) – Defense Attaché at the French Embassy in Kigali and Head of the
Military Assistance Mission (1991 – 1994); commander of Noroît (1991 – 1993).
Dallaire, Roméo (Gen.) – Commander of UNAMIR (1993 – 1994).
Damy, Alain (Lt. Col.) – French officer in charge of advising the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan
Gendarmerie (Aug. 1992 – Apr. 1994).
Debarge, Marcel – French Minister of Cooperation and Development (1992 – 1993).
Delaye, Bruno – Head of the Élysée Africa Cell (1992 – 1995).
Delort, Dominique (Col.) – Advisor for African Affairs to the Chief of Staff of the French Army
(1991); commander of French military operations in Rwanda (1993).
Denard, Bob – French mercenary; previously served in the French navy.
Dijoud, Paul – Director of African and Malagasy Affairs in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(1991 – 1992).
Dumas, Roland – French Minister of Foreign Affairs (1988 – 1993).
Duval, Jean-Rémy (Lt. Col.) – French special forces officer during Operation Turquoise (1994).
Flaten, Robert – US Ambassador to Rwanda (1990 – 1993).
Galinié, René (Col.) – Defense Attaché at the Embassy of France in Kigali and Head of Military
Assistance Mission to Rwanda (1988 – 1991); commander of Noroît (1990 – 1991).
Gasana, Anastase – Member of the MDR opposition party; Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs
(July 1993 – Apr. 1994).
Gasana, James – Rwandan Minister of Defense (1992 – 1993).
Gatabazi, Félicien – President of the PSD opposition political party; served as Rwanda’s Minister
of Public Works and Energy from April 1992 until his assassination in February 1994.
Gérard, Yannick – Ambassador of France to Uganda (Aug. 1990 – Aug. 1993); France’s
emissary to the IRG during Operation Turquoise.
Page | 582
Germanos, Raymond (Gen.) – Deputy Chief of Operations to Admiral Lanxade, the French Chief
of Defense Staff (as of 1 May 1994).
Gillier, Marin (Cdr.) – Head of the French marine commandos during Operation Turquoise
(1994).
Habyarimana, Agathe Kanziga – First lady of Rwanda (1973 – 1994), who sat at the center of
the Akazu.
Habyarimana, Juvénal – President of Rwanda (1973 – 1994).
Hogard, Jacques (Lt. Col.) – Leader of the southern detachment of Operation Turquoise (1994).
Huchon, Jean-Pierre (Col., Gen.) – Head of the French Military Cooperation Mission (Apr. 1993
– 1995); deputy to the chief military advisor to the President of France (1989 – 1993);
Jehanne, Philippe – Defense advisor to French Minister of Cooperation Michel Roussin.
Joubert, Étienne (Lt. Col.) – DAMI Panda commander (Dec. 1992 – May 1993); intelligence
and operations officer in the 1st Marine Infantry Paratroopers Regiment (RPIMa) detachment
during Operation Turquoise (1994).
Joxe, Pierre – French Minister of Defense (Jan. 1991 – Mar. 1993).
Juppé, Alain – French Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mar. 1993 – May 1995).
Kabarebe, James – Private secretary and aide-de-camp to the RPF military’s Chairman of High
Command, Paul Kagame.
Kabiligi, Gratien (Brig. Gen.) – Commander of Military Operations in Byumba Sector (1993)
and chief of military operations of the FAR during the Genocide.
Kabuga, Félicien – Rwandan businessman; financier of Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles
Collines (RTLM) and chairman of RTLM’s steering committee; arrested in May 2020 in
connection with indictment for genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and
other offenses.
Kagame, Paul – Chairman of High Command of the RPF military; Minister of Defense and Vice
President of Rwanda (1994 – 2000); President of Rwanda (2000 – present).
Kambanda, Jean – Member of the MDR opposition political party; served as Prime Minister in
the interim Rwandan government (Apr. – July 1994); pled guilty at the ICTR to genocide,
conspiracy to commit genocide, and other crimes.
Kanyarengwe, Alexis – Chairman of the RPF (1990 – 1998); previously Rwandan Interior
Minister (1973 – 1980).
Karake, Emmanuel Karenzi – RPA officer and commander (1990 – 1994).
Kayibanda, Grégoire – President of Rwanda (1962 – 1973); leader of the Party of the Movement
and of Hutu Emancipation (“Parmehutu”).
Kayonga, Charles – Commander of the 3rd battalion in the RPA (1993 – 1994).
Page | 583
La Sablière, Jean-Marc de – Director of African and Malagasy Affairs in the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (1992 – 1996).
Lafourcade, Jean-Claude (Gen.) – Commander of Operation Turquoise (1994).
Lanxade, Jacques (Adm.) – Chief Military Advisor to President Mitterrand (1989 – 1991,
succeded by General Christian Quesnot); Chief of Defense Staff (1991 – 1995).
Léotard, François – French Minister of Defense and Minister of State (1993 – 1995).
Marlaud, Jean-Michel – French Ambassador to Rwanda (1993 – 1994).
Martres, Georges – French Ambassador to Rwanda (1989 – 1993, succeeded by Jean-Michel
Marlaud).
Maurin, Jean-Jacques (Lt. Col.) – Deputy to the Defense Attaché at the French embassy in
Rwanda; advisor to the Chief of Staff of the FAR; head of the DMAT Terre (Military Department
of Technical Assistance).
Mazimhaka, Patrick – RPF Vice Chairman (1993 – 1998).
Mérimée, Jean-Bernard – France’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1991 –
1995).
Mfizi, Christophe – Director of l’Office Rwandais d’Information (ORINFOR), the Rwandan
government’s media and propaganda ministry (1976 – 1990).
Mitterrand, François – President of France (1981 – 1995).
Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe – Son of President Mitterrand, Chief Adviser for African Affairs
at the Élysée (1986 – 1992).
Mobutu Sese Seko – President of Zaire (1965 – 1997).
Mugenzi, Justin – President of the Parti Libéral opposition political party; Minister of Commerce,
Industry, and Crafts in both the 1993-1994 coalition government and the 1994 interim Rwandan
government.
Mugesera, Leon – Vice-President of the MRND for Gisenyi prefecture.
Murenzi, Evariste – FAR officer.
Museveni, Yoweri – President of Uganda (1986 – present).
Musoni, Protais – RPF Vice-Chairperson and General Coordinator (as of 1989); RPF Secretary
General (1987 – 1989).
Nabias, Jean-Louis (Lt. Col.) – Commander of DAMI Panda (1992).
Nahimana, Ferdinand – Director of l’Office Rwandais d’Information (ORINFOR, the
broadcasting arm of the Rwandan government) and editorial director of Radio Rwanda (1990
– 1994); founder of Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM); convicted by the ICTR
on charges of inciting genocide and other genocide-related crimes.
Ndindiliyimana, Augustin (Col.) – Chief of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie (1992 – 1994).
Page | 584
Ngeze, Hassan – Journalist who founded the extremist publication Kangura in 1990; convicted
by the ICTR for inciting genocide, among other offenses.
Ngirumpatse, Mathieu – Rwandan Minister of Justice (1991 – 1992); elected National Secretary
of the MRND in 1992; served as national party chairman and chairman of the MRND Executive
Bureau from 1993 to 1994; alleged founder of the Interahamwe.
Ngulinzira, Boniface – Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs (1992 – 1993); member of the MDR.
Nsabimana, Déogratias (Col.) – Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army (1992 – 1994); killed in the
attack on President Habyarimana’s plane on 6 April 1994.
Nsanzimana, Sylvestre – Prime Minister of Rwanda (1991 – 1992).
Nsengiyaremye, Dismas – Prime Minister of Rwanda (1992 – 1993); member of the MDR.
Nsengiyumva, Anatole (Col.) – Chief of Military Intelligence of the FAR (1976 – 1981, 1984 –
June 1993) and Commander of Gisenyi operational sector (1993 – 1994); found guilty of genocide,
crimes against humanity, and other crimes by the ICTR.
Ntabakuze, Aloys (Maj.) – Commander of the FAR para-commando battalion (1992 – 1994);
convicted by the ICTR of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other offenses.
Ntahobari, Sébastien (Col.) – Military Attaché to the Rwandan embassy in Paris during the
Genocide.
Ntiwiragabo, Aloys (Maj. Gen.) – Head of Military Intelligence of the FAR during the Genocide.
Opaleye, Ekundayo (Maj. Gen.) – Commander of the OAU Neutral Military Observer Group.
Pin, Dominique – Deputy Chief of the Élysée Africa Cell (1992 – 1995).
Pinho, José de – Warrant Officer; French technical advisor to the FAR para-commando
battalion’s CRAP platoon, an elite intelligence-gathering unit (1993 – Apr. 1994); served in
Operation Noroit (1993).
Poncet, Henri (Col.) – Commander of Operation Amaryllis (9 – 14 Apr. 1994).
Prungnaud, Thierry – Chief Warrant Officer of the French Gendarmerie; member of the GIGN
deployed to Rwanda between January and May 1992 to train members of the Rwandan Presidential
Guard; returned to Rwanda during Operation Turquoise (1994).
Quesnot, Christian (Gen.) – Succeeded Admiral Jacques Lanxade as Chief Military Advisor to
the President of France (1991 – 1995).
Quilès, Paul – President of the French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda in 1998.
Refalo, Christian (Capt., Maj.) – Officer in the French Military Assistance Mission advising the
FAR’s para-commando and recce battalions (1989 – 1992, succeeded by Cdr. Grégoire de Saint
Quentin).
Robardey, Michel (Lt. Col.) – French Technical Advisor to the Rwandan judicial police (1990 –
1993).
Page | 585
Rosier, Jacques (Col.) – Commander of 1st Marine Infantry Paratroopers Regiment (RPIMa) in
French Army (1990 – 1992); Commander of Noroît and DAMI (1992); Commander of the
Turquoise Special Operations Command (1994).
Roussin, Michel – French Minister of Cooperation (1993 – 1994).
Ruelle, Jacques (Lt. Col.) – Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie (1989 –
1992).
Ruhigira, Enoch – President Habyarimana’s Cabinet Director.
Rutaremara, Tito – RPF Secretary General (1987 – 1993); coordinator of the military and
political wings of the RPF.
Rwagafilita, Pierre-Célestin (Col.) – Cousin of Agathe Habyarimana; Deputy Chief of Staff of
the Rwandan National Gendarmerie and then Chief of Staff of the National Gendarmerie (until
June 1992).
Rwarakabije, Paul (Maj.) – Operational commander of the Rwandan Gendarmerie during the
Genocide; later served as commander of the rebel FDLR army exiled in the Democratic Republic
of Congo before surrendering to the Rwandan Army in 2003 and being reintegrated into the
Rwandan Defense Forces in 2004.
Rwigema, Fred (Cdr.) – Founding member and leader of the RPF; killed in action on 2 October
1990.
Sagatwa, Elie (Col.) – Relative of Agathe Habyarimana and head of the military cabinet for the
Rwandan presidential office at the time of the attack on President Habyarimana’s plane on 6 April
1994, in which he was killed.
Saint-Exupéry, Patrick de – French journalist.
Saint Quentin, Grégoire de (Cdr.) – Technical Advisor to the commander of the FAR’s paracommando battalion (1992 – 1994).
Sartre, Patrice (Col.) – Commander of the northern group of Operation Turquoise (1994).
Serubuga, Laurent (Col.) – Deputy Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army and then Chief of Staff
of the Rwandan Army (until June 1992, reinstated in 1994).
Sindikubwabo, Théodore – President of the interim Rwandan government during the Genocide
(1994); previously president of the Conseil national de développement (CND, the Rwandan
parliament) (1988 – 1994).
Swinnen, Johan – Belgian Ambassador to Rwanda (1990 – 1994).
Tauzin, Didier (Col.) – Commander of the 1st Marine Infantry Paratroopers Regiment (RPIMa)
in the French Army (1992 – 1994); arrived in Kigali with special forces of a RAPAS company on
22 February 1993; head of Opération Chimère (1993); participated in Operation Turquoise (1994).
Thomann, Jean-Claude (Col.) – Commander of Operation Noroît (1990).
Twagiramungu, Faustin – President of the MDR opposition political party; was designated to be
Prime Minister of Rwanda under the Arusha Accords; sworn in as Prime Minister on 19 July 1994.
Page | 586
Uwilingiyimana, Agathe – Member of the MDR opposition political party; served as Rwanda’s
Minister of Education (1992 – 1993) and as Prime Minister of Rwanda (1993 – 1994); was
assassinated by Rwandan Presidential Guard soldiers at the start of the Genocide.
Varret, Jean (Gen.) –Head of the French Military Cooperation Mission (Oct. 1990 – Apr. 1993).
Védrine, Hubert – Secretary-General of the Élysée (1991 – 1995).
Zigiranyirazo, Protais – Elder brother of Agathe Habyarimana and member of the Akazu.
Page | 587
GLOSSARY
AFP: Agence France-Presse
Akazu: “small house;” refers to the close group of corrupt leaders, of which Agathe
Habyarimana’s family formed the backbone, who controlled nearly every major aspect of
Rwandan society during much of President Habyarimana’s “Second Republic”
AML: Automitrailleuse Légère, a type of light armored vehicle
AMT: Assistance Militaire Technique [Technical Military Assistance], refers to technical
assistants deployed by the French military to professionalize and modernize foreign military units
AMASASU: a clandestine organization that purported to speak for Hutu nationalists within the
Rwandan military prior to the Genocide
Arusha Accords: a series of peace agreements signed by representatives of the government of
Rwanda and the RPF, culminating in the August 1993
BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
Broad-Based Transitional Government (BBTG): the cabinet that was designated to wield power
in a new transitional government in Rwanda following the signing of the 1993 Arusha Accords,
but that never came into being
Bourgmestre: mayor of a commune in Rwanda
CDR: Coalition pour la Défense de la République [Coalition for the Defense of the Republic], an
anti-Tutsi extremist party allied with President Habyarimana’s MRND party before the Genocide
CLADHO: Comité de Liaison des Associations de Défense des Droits de l’Homme [Liaison
Committee of Associations for the Defense of Human Rights], a coalition of Rwandan humanrights groups
CND: Conseil National de Développement [National Development Council], Rwanda’s
parliament
COS: Commandement des Opérations Spéciales [Special Operations Command] (France)
CPCR: Collectif des Parties Civiles Pour le Rwanda [Civil Parties Collective for Rwanda], a
nonprofit based in Reims, France that seeks to bring génocidaires to justice
CRAP: Commandos de Recherche et d’Action dans la Profondeur [In-Depth Research and Action
Commandos], an elite intelligence-gathering unit within the FAR’s para-commando battalion
CRCD: Centre de Recherche Criminelle et de Documentation [Center for Criminal Research and
Documentation], a facility in Kigali, formerly known as the Fichier Central [Central File], where
criminal investigations and interrogations were conducted
DAMI: Détachement d’Assistance Militaire et d’Instruction [military assistance and training
detachment], a term referring to a temporary deployment of French military officers to provide
training and advice to foreign military units
DAMI Panda: a contingent of French military advisors stationed in Rwanda between March 1991
and December 1993 to train Rwandan soldiers
DGSE: Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure [General Directorate for External Security],
France’s foreign intelligence and counterintelligence agency
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DMZ: Demilitarized zone
DPKO: United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations
DRC: Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire
DRM: Direction du Renseignement Militaire [Directorate of Military Intelligence], the French
army’s intelligence branch
Duclert Commission: a commission of researchers (known, in French, as la Commission de
recherche sur les archives françaises relatives au Rwanda et au Génocide des Tutsi) appointed by
French President Emmanuel Macron to examine the French government’s role in the Genocide,
which released a report of its findings in March 2021
Élysée: The Palais de l’Élysée is the official residence and office of the president of France
EMP: L’état-major particulier du président de la République [particular staff of the president of
the republic], the staff of military advisors in the Élysée
ENA: École Nationale d’Administration, an elite French graduate school
ENI: Enemy
ESCAVI: Escadrille d’Aviation (Rwanda), the Rwandan armed forces’ aviation squadron
FAL: Fusil Automatique Léger [lightweight automatic rifle]
FAR: Forces Armées Rwandaises [Rwandan Armed Forces]
FIDH: Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme [International Federation of Human
Rights], a Paris-based consortium of human rights groups that released a March 1993 report on
human rights abuses in Rwanda
Gendarmerie: national police
GIGN: Groupement d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale [National Gendarmerie
Intervention Group], an elite tactical unit in the French Gendarmerie
GOF: Government of France
GOMN: Neutral Group of Military Observers, organized by the Organization of African Unity
(OAU) to monitor cease-fires between the FAR and RPF forces during the war in Rwanda
GOR: Government of Rwanda
GSIGP: Groupe de Sécurité et d’Intervention de la Garde Présidentielle [Presidential Guard
Security and Intervention Group], a tactical unit of the Rwandan Gendarmerie modeled on the
French National Gendarmerie’s Security and Intervention Group
HRW: Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization
ICTR: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, an international court established after the
Genocide to bring perpetrators of the Genocide to justice
ICTY: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
Impuzamugambi: anti-Tutsi youth militia affiliated with the CDR political party; the name means
“Those with a single purpose,” in Kinyarwanda
Interahamwe: anti-Tutsi youth militia affiliated with the MRND political party; the name means
“Those who come together,” in Kinyarwanda
Page | 589
IRG: Interim Rwandan government, the self-appointed government of Rwanda during the
Genocide
Kangura: a pro-Hutu extremist publication in Rwanda
KWSA: Kigali Weapons Secure Area, administered by UNAMIR prior to the Genocide
La Baule: a commune in western France where President Mitterrand delivered a major speech to
African leaders in June 1990
LRAC: Lance-roquettes anti-chars [Anti-tank rocket launchers]
MAM: Mission d’Assistance Militaire [Military Assistance Mission], the authority under which
French military cooperants worked with the Rwandan military pursuant to the 1975 FrancoRwandan military assistance agreement
Matignon: a metonym referring to the office of the French prime minister
MCM: Mission de Coopération Militaire [Military Cooperation Mission], an office within the
French Ministry of Cooperation and Development responsible for supervising France’s military
partnerships with African governments
MDM: Médecins du Monde [Doctors of the World], an international non-governmental
organization
MDR: Mouvement Démocratique Républicain [Democratic Republican Movement], a Rwandan
political party that was part of the political opposition to President Habyarimana’s MRND party
MILAN: Western European anti-tank missile
MIP: Mission d’Information Parlementaire [parliamentary information mission], the French
National Assembly’s 1998 information mission that conducted hearings on France’s involvement
in Rwanda and issued a report on the subject
MRND: Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement [National Revolutionary
Movement for Development], Rwanda’s governing political party during the era of one-party rule
under President Habyarimana
MSF: Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders], an international non-governmental
organization
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO: Non-governmental organization
NIF: Neutral international force, a term referring to the peacekeeping force (what would later
become known as UNAMIR) that the government of Rwanda and the RPF, as parties to the 1993
Arusha Accords, had urged the international community to deploy to Rwanda
NRA: National Resistance Army (Uganda)
OAU: Organization of African Unity
OFPRA: Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides [Office for the Protection of
Refugees and Stateless Persons], the French agency responsible for processing asylum claims
Operation Amaryllis: a deployment of French troops to Rwanda at the start of the Genocide in
April 1994, during which French forces evacuated French nationals and some Rwandan nationals
Page | 590
Operation Chimère: a secret French military operation launched in February 1993 to help the
Rwandan military counter an RPF offensive
Operation Noroît: a contingent of French troops stationed primarily in Kigali between October
1990 and December 1993
Operation Turquoise: a UN-authorized mission, led by France, that deployed to Rwanda between
June 1994 and August 1994
Operation Volcan: a deployment of French troops to Rwanda in February 1993 to evacuate
French nationals following an RPF offensive in Ruhengeri
ORINFOR: l’Office Rwandais d’Information [Rwandan Information Office], the Rwandan media
and propaganda ministry
Parmehutu: Parti du Mouvement et de l’Émancipation Hutu [Party of the Movement and of Hutu
Emancipation], the political party led by Grégoire Kayibanda, Rwanda’s first president
PDC: Parti Démocrate Chrétien [Christian Democratic Party], a Rwandan political party
PL: Parti Libéral [Liberal Party], a Rwandan political party
PNG: Persona non grata
Prefect: governor and chief administrator of a Rwandan prefecture (province)
PSD: Parti Social Démocrate [Social Democratic Party], a Rwandan political party
Quai d’Orsay: a metonym referring to the French Foreign Ministry
RANU: Rwandese Alliance for National Unity, an organization of Rwandans in exile which later
morphed into the RPF
RAP: Régiment d’Artillerie Parachutiste [Parachute Artillery Regiment], a unit of the French army
Recce: Reconnaissance
RFI: Radio France Internationale
RICM: Régiment d’Infanterie et de Chars de Marine [Marine Infantry Tank Regiment], a regiment
of the French Army
RPA: Rwandan Patriotic Army, the military wing of the RPF
RPF: Rwandan Patriotic Front [known in French as the Front Patriotique Rwandais, or FPR]
RPIMA/RPIMa: Régiment Parachutiste d’Infanterie de Marine [Marine Infantry Paratroopers
Regiment], a French special forces unit
RTLM: Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines, a privately-run radio station in Rwanda that
became a tool of the génocidaires
SCR: Service Central de Renseignements [Central Intelligence Service], Rwanda’s intelligence
service
SHZ: Safe humanitarian zone (Rwanda), an area in western Rwanda placed under the protection
of Operation Turquoise forces in July 1994
UN: United Nations
UNAMIR: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
UNDP: United Nations Development Programme
Page | 591
UNOMUR: United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda, a mission established in June
1993 to monitor the Rwandan-Ugandan border
UPC: Uganda People’s Congress, a political party in Uganda
VIP: Very important person
VLRA: Véhicule Léger de Reconnaissance et d’Appui [light reconnaissance and support vehicle]
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