The Muse report presented to the Council of Ministers on Monday 19 April rules out the crime of complicity in genocide against France. It largely opens the way to reconciliation.
The conclusions of the Muse report prepared by an American law firm does not establish the crime of complicity in genocide of the French state. “The French state bears a heavy responsibility for having made a foreseeable genocide possible,” says the report by Muse lawyers in Washington, USA.
“French officials armed, advised, trained, equipped and protected the Habyarimana regime without regard to the state’s desire to dehumanize the Tutsi and ultimately ensure their destruction and death,” the report said.
Unlike the Declert report, the Muse report goes beyond 1994. It shows how French justice sought to hide the truth through the investigation of Judge Jean Louis Bruguière. It focused on the attack of 6 April 1994 against the plane of President Juvénal Habyarimana. This was at the origin of the rupture of diplomatic relations between the two countries, France and Rwanda.
“Over the past 25 years, France has conducted a cover-up operation to bury its past in Rwanda,” the Muse report reveals.
The report gives space to France’s behaviour in the trial of alleged genocidaires. “While Rwanda’s national courts and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) sought to bring genocidaires to justice, the French state allowed many cases to remain unresolved for decades,” it says. “The French state has offered refuge to many people suspected of involvement in genocide crimes, including former first lady Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana,” the Muse report said, adding that more than 100 alleged genocidaires are believed to be based in France.
The report, entitled “A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French State Government in connection with the Genocide against the Tutsi,” recalls that despite all this responsibility, the French state has still not acknowledged its role and officially apologized.
The visit of the French Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, to Rwanda would perhaps be the right moment to seal the reconciliation between the two countries.
Gérard Rugambwa
