France armed and trained radical militia blamed for most of the killings in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, two Rwandan ex-soldiers told a panel probing alleged French complicity in the massacres on Monday.
As the government-appointed inquiry commission resumed public hearings after a month-long break following Rwanda’s severing of ties with France in a major diplomatic row, the pair said French troops had worked closely with the former Rwandan army and members of the Interahamwe militia.
“The training of Interahamwe was held discreetly at the Gabiro military base,” said Isidore Nzeyimana, a former military instructor, referring to a facility in north-east Rwanda where French troops were stationed.
He said his relations with the French instructors was that of “very close colleagues, some were even close friends. At some point they even brought some of their trainees from France to hold joint sessions with us.”
Nzeyimana said he had personally participated in several training sessions run by French officers for Rwandan troops defending the Hutu-led former government of the late president Juvenal Habyarimana from Tutsi rebels.
Another former soldier, Corporal Jean Damascent Kaburare, told the commission that he had also witnessed French instructors at the Gabiro base training Interahamwe members.
“They told recruits that the enemy was the Tutsi,” he said. “After the training that lasted a few days, they provided each of the trainees with a gun.”
He added that French troops continued to arm the Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militias in what was then Zaire but is now the Democratic Republic of Congo after the government was toppled by the Tutsis.
The Interahamwe was a militia wing of Habyarimana’s ruling party, which is blamed for most of the killings in the genocide in which about 800Â 000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.
Nzeyimana and Kaburare were the first two of an expected 30 witnesses to testify before the inquiry commission that is charged with determining if there is enough evidence for Kigali to file suit against Paris at the world court.
The latest hearings come after bubbling tensions between the two countries boiled over last month when France’s top anti-terrorism judge accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame and several top aides in connection with the April 6 1994 shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane that touched off the genocide.
Kagame, then the head of the Tutsi rebel movement, has denied involvement in the downing of the plane, has blamed France in the past for playing a role in the genocide and reacted furiously to the judge’s report.
Within days, Rwanda had cut of diplomatic and cultural ties with France and ordered the expulsion of all French diplomats and employees of French state-run institutions.
France denies Rwandan allegations of complicity in the genocide, saying that its troops in Rwanda at the time helped persecuted ethnic Tutsis. — AFP