Dig it!
Hmm, ok--someone help me out.
Following the logic laid out by Kagame, Agathe Habyarimana shot down the plane of her husband, Juvenal Habyarimana, in order to incite a massacre??? GI
See also: "The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide"
Reuters – Deadly grenade attack in Rwanda
AFP/Pool/File – Rwandan President Paul Kagame (right) shakes hands with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the presidential …
PARIS (AFP) – French police on Tuesday arrested Agathe Habyarimana, the widow of Rwanda's assassinated ex-president, who is wanted in her homeland as one of the alleged masterminds of the 1994 genocide.
The arrest came just five days after President Nicolas Sarkozy made the first trip by a French leader to Rwanda since the genocide.
Agathe Habyarimana has lived in a Paris suburb for 12 years, having fled Rwanda after her husband Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down in April 1994 and his supporters launched a massacre of 800,000 civilians.
French police acting on an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda arrested Habyarimana at her home in Courcouronnes, south of Paris on Tuesday morning, officials told AFP.
She was later freed on bail, the state prosecutor's office said.
The Tutsi-led government in Kigali has accused the 68-year-old of being a member of the Hutu inner circle that planned the mass killings. She has steadfastly denied the charge.
Officials in Kigali welcomed Habyarimana's arrest.
"It's a very good sign. The French justice system is starting to handle these cases in a serious way," Rwanda's Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told AFP, referring to various Rwandan genocide suspects living in France.
He urged France to extradite Habyarimana to Rwanda, despite the absence of an extradition treaty.
Theodore Simburudali, the head of the survivors' association Ibuka, said the arrest was "good news," but added: "Why did France wait for so long?"
"Just arresting her is not enough; she needs to be tried: at the ICTR, in France or in Rwanda," he said, referring to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania.
Habyarimana's lawyer said the arrest of the widow dubbed "Lady Genocide" by some rights groups was directly linked to Sarkozy's Kigali visit last week, despite Paris' insistence that its judicial system is independent.
"You can't not draw a link," said Philippe Meilhac. "The extradition request from Kigali dates back to November and was obviously re-activated" after Sarkozy returned from Rwanda.
Habyarimana had been seeking political asylum in France but her request was repeatedly turned down.
In October, she lost a final appeal before the State Council, France's highest administrative body, which ruled there were "serious reasons to suspect" she was involved "either as an instigator or accomplice" in genocide.
It remained uncertain however whether France would extradite Habyarimana to Rwanda for trial.
France has transferred three Rwandan suspects to Tanzania to face prosecution before the international tribunal, but judges have so far refused to extradite genocide suspects to Kigali.
In recent cases, French courts have ruled that the suspects cannot hope for a fair trial in their homeland.
Habyarimana's lawyer said she will fight extradition and that "if she must be heard, she asks that it be in a French or international court."
"She considers that Rwandan criminal courts are not sufficiently independent or impartial," said Meilhac.
Juvenal Habyarimana's assassination was seen as the signal for Hutu militias to launch the massacre of minority Tutsis.
French troops evacuated the president's widow as the bloodshed began and she made France her home in 1998 after staying in Gabon, Zaire and Kenya.
Kigali broke off relations with Paris in late 2006 after a French anti-terrorist judge implicated President Paul Kagame's entourage in Habyarimana's assassination.
In Kigali last Thursday Sarkozy stopped short of offering an apology but admitted France had made "mistakes" by failing to recognise the scale of the killings.
He said France would do everything possible to ensure that "all those responsible for the genocide are found and are punished."
Source: Yahoo News
tags: rwanda, genocide, france
Source: Yahoo News
tags: rwanda, genocide, france
No comments:
Post a Comment