French judge arrives to follow up genocide allegations

A French judge is in Rwanda to investigate accusations that France helped the former pro-Hutu administration in its attempt to exterminate Tutsis during the 1994 genocide, a French diplomat told IRIN on Tuesday. "The judge arrived here [in the capital, Kigali] on Monday evening to follow up allegations by six Rwandans accusing France of taking part in the genocide," Dominique Decherf, the French ambassador, said. In April 2004, Rwandan President Paul Kagame accused France of training and arming Hutu militias who have been largely blamed for the 1994 killings in which an estimated 937,000 Rwandans, most of them Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, were the target. Decherf said the judge would return to France on Friday where she would present a report to enable the authorities determine whether or not there was substantial evidence to investigate the case further and set up trial hearings. Relations between France and Rwanda have long been tense but were strained even more after Kagame's accusation in 2004 at a ceremony to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide. Kagame's remarks came after a report in a Paris daily, Le Monde, accusing him of giving direct orders for the rocket attack on then President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane. The death of Habyarimana, a Hutu, sparked the genocide. France became close to Habyarimana's government shortly after independence and replaced the ex-colonial power, Belgium, as Rwanda's main western backer. When the Tutsi-dominated rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), first launched its war against the Hutu authorities in the early 1990s, France sent soldiers to Kigali. The French helped stop the RPF advance and then stayed on, officially as military advisers right up to the start of the genocide. France has denied any direct involvement in the 1994 killings.