French troops advised Rwandan Hutu extremists how to hide their gruesome work from spy satellites, the author of a new book on the central African nation’s 1994 genocide said on Thursday.
Silent Accomplice, by British researcher and author Andrew Wallis, gives what the author says is new evidence of French complicity in the 1994 slaughter of Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus, by militias formed by the Paris-backed Hutu government.
Kigali has broken ties with Paris in a nasty diplomatic spat, saying France has never admitted its role in helping foster the killing of 800 000 people.
Paris, whose troops had a long military presence in Rwanda, vehemently denies abetting the genocide, saying it only acted in a humanitarian capacity as the murders unfolded.
Wallis said some troops became aggravated by corpses floating on rivers — images picked up by spy satellites.
”So the French soldiers were telling them you have to slit off the bellies of these Tutsi that you kill so that they sink and satellites do not see them,” Wallis told Reuters in Kigali.
Rwanda’s river Akagera feeds into Lake Victoria, and carried thousands of dead bodies into neigbouring Uganda at the time of the slaughter. Some Ugandans reported finding human teeth in fish they ate after the killings.
Wallis said the French role went far beyond arms deals with the pro-Hutu government, saying that before and during the genocide, French special forces armed and trained soldiers who later become the militias that carried out most of the killing.
”Their role is fairly clearly marked, their role is that of accomplice to the genocide crime,” Wallis said.
”From September 1993 up to the time of genocide, French secret forces in Rwanda were involved in surveillance on the Rwanda Patriotic Front rebels. Their military were actually commanding the Rwanda military forces.
”They were flying in arms, they were flying in radio sets, they were helping to finance it, and they continued these operations even after this government was defeated.”
French denial
The British author testified before a Rwandan commission investigating the role of France in the 100-day slaughter.
Wallis’ accusations have angered France before.
The French embassy in London last year accused him of making ”defamatory insinuations”. ”France has nothing to hide … Moreover, she alone took the risk of intervening on the ground in a tragic situation,” the mission said in a letter.
In November last year, relations between Rwanda and France became further strained after a French judge issued arrest warrants for nine top Rwandan officials accused of downing a plane carrying former president Juvenal Habyarimana.
The judge separately said former RPF rebel leader and now President Paul Kagame should stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for ordering that assassination. Kagame denies that.
Rwanda said the arrest warrants were advanced by the French government and responded by cutting diplomatic ties.
Rwanda’s interim government, which took over after Habyarimana’s assassination and is largely blamed for the killings, was formed in the French embassy, Wallis said.
”There’s clear evidence of French political support to an interim government that was killing its own people,” he said. – Reuters 2007