UN memorandum on 1994 plane crash found

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard says the organisation has found a “three-page internal memorandum” on the shooting down of a plane in 1994 in which the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were both killed. He told a news briefing there was no report as such, as alleged in an article by the Canadian ‘National Post’ newspaper. The article, issued earlier this month, said the UN document contained allegations of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) complicity in the downing of the plane. “That memo was drafted by Michael Hourigan, who had been an investigative team leader for the Tribunal Prosecutor’s Office in Rwanda that was investigating the 1994 genocide in that country,” Eckhard said.

“He subsequently was engaged on a short-term contract with the [Office for] Internal Oversight Services here in New York, at which time he drafted this internal memo.” The memorandum has been transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which will determine whether or not to make it available to lawyers for clients facing prosecution. Eckhard stressed that the memo was the product of an individual who “committed to paper his thoughts, as well as information conveyed to him”, and which subsequently “got buried in a file”.