An estimated 800,000 people were killed during the 100 days of bloodshed following the 1994 assassination of former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana. Kigali accuses Paris of complicity in the genocide.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo
Advertisement
French judges have reportedly dropped a long-running investigation into the killing of former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, which triggered countrywide violence and genocide in 1994.
A legal source on Wednesday told AFP news agency that investigative magistrates in France had decided not to pursue a case against nine Rwandan officials accused of involvement in Habyarimana's assassination.
The probe caused diplomatic tension between Rwanda and France, with President Paul Kagame's close aides charged in the French investigation.
In October, French prosecutors requested the probe be dismissed due to insufficient evidence against the suspects. Habyarimana's widow had called the French prosecutor's move to drop the probe "unacceptable" and "largely politically motivated."
France had launched the investigation into Habyarimana's killing in 1998 at the request of relatives of the French crew who died when a missile downed Habyarimana's plane.
Rwanda's genocide began on April 7, 1994. It was a mass slaughter that shocked the world. At the time the international community — above all France and the UN — failed to come to the aid of victims.
Image: Timothy Kisambira
A signal to extremists
On April 6, 1994, unidentified attackers shot down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana as it was about to land at Kigali airport. President Habyarimana, his Burundian counterpart and eight other passengers died in the crash. The next day organized killings began. Massacres continued over the course of three months, and nearly 1 million Rwandans lost their lives.
Image: AP
Targeted killings
After the assassination of the president, Hutu extremists attacked the Tutsi minority and Hutus who stood in their way. The murderers were well-prepared, and targeted human rights activists, journalists and politicians. One of the first victims on April 7 was Prime Minister Agathe Uwiringiymana.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Foreign nationals rescued
While thousands of Rwandans were being killed every day, Belgian and French special forces evacuated about 3,500 foreigners. On April 13, Belgian paratroopers rescued seven German employees and their families from Deutsche Welle's relay transmitting station in Kigali. Only 80 of 120 local staff members survived the genocide.
Image: P.Guyot/AFP/GettyImages
Appeals for help
As early as January 1994, UNAMIR commander Romeo Dallaire wanted to act on information he had received about an "anti-Tutsi extermination" plot. The warning he sent to the UN on January 11, later known as the "genocide fax," went unheard. And his desperate appeals after the genocide began were rejected by Kofi Annan, who was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at the time.
Image: A.Joe/AFP/GettyImages
Hate media
The Mille Collines radio station (RTLM) and Kangura, a weekly magazine, stoked ethnic hatred. In 1990, Kangura published the racist "Hutu Ten Commandments." Mille Collines radio, which was known for its pop music and sports programs, fueled the genocide by urging Hutu civilians to hunt down and kill Tutsis. Director Milo Rau devoted his film "Hate Radio" to these appalling broadcasts (photo).
Image: IIPM/Daniel Seiffert
Refuge in a hotel
In Kigali, Paul Rusesabagina hid more than 1,000 people in the Hotel Des Mille Collines. Rusesabagina had taken over the position of the hotel's Belgian manager, who left the country. With a great deal of alcohol and money, he managed to prevent Hutu militias from killing the refugees. In many other places where people sought refuge, they were not able to escape the slaughter.
Image: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/GettyImages
Massacres in churches
Churches were no longer sanctuaries. About 4,000 men, women and children were murdered with axes, knives and machetes in the church of Ntarama near Kigali. Today, the church is one of the country's many genocide memorials. Rows of skulls, human bones as well as bullet marks in the walls are a reminder of what happened there.
Image: epd
France's role
The French government maintained close ties to the Hutu regime. When the French army intervened in June, it enabled soldiers and militiamen responsible for the genocide to flee to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even take their weapons with them. They still pose a threat to Rwanda today.
Image: P.Guyot/AFP/GettyImages
Streams of refugees
During the genocide, millions of Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus fled to Tanzania, Zaire and Uganda. Some 2 million of them went to Zaire alone. These included former members of the army and perpetrators of the genocide, who soon founded the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a militia that is still terrorizing the population in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Capture of the capital
On July 4, 1994, rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) patrolled the area around the Church of the Holy Family in Kigali. By that time, they had liberated most of the country and routed the perpetrators of the genocide. However, human rights activists also accused the rebels of committing crimes, for which no one has been held accountable to this day.
Image: Alexander Joe/AFP/GettyImages
End of the genocide
On July 18, 1994, the RPF's leader, Major General Paul Kagame, declared that the war against the government troops was over. The rebels were in control of the capital and other important towns. Initially, they installed a provisional government. Paul Kagame became Rwanda's president in the year 2000.
Image: Alexander Joe/AFP/GettyImages
Lasting scars
The genocide went on for almost three months. The victims were often slaughtered with machetes. Neighbors killed neighbors. Not even babies and elderly people were spared, and the streets were strewn with corpses and body parts. It's not only the physical scars on the bodies of the survivors that remind Rwandans of the genocide. A deep trauma also remains.
Image: Timothy Kisambira
12 images1 | 12
Genocide and diplomatic row
During the 100-day rampage, which followed the assassination of Habyarimana — an ethnic Hutu — Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis.
The bloodshed in Kabarondo, near Rwanda's border with Tanzania, lasted until late April 1994.
It took until July of that year before Tutsi fighters of the now ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) led by President Kagame prevailed over Hutu extremists in the former Belgian colony.
A Rwandan court in 2009 found Hutu extremists guilty of killing Habyarimana.
Kigali has long accused Paris of complicity in the genocide by supporting the Hutu regime and training the militias that carried out attacks on Tutsis.
Diplomatic ties between Rwanda and France were broken off in 2006 in a row over who killed Habyarimana. Ties were restored in 2009.
In 2016, a court in Paris court jailed for life two former Rwandan mayors over a massacre in their village of Kabarondo in 1994. Some 2,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed while seeking refuge in a church — some by machetes.
