Essential piece of Rwanda’s genocide ‘puzzle’ discovered

France helped suspects in the 1994 Rwanda genocide escape while under French military protection, a diplomatic cable has revealed. The document was flagged this week by a lawyer researching France's role during the genocide. Radio France Internationale reports that it was written by France's envoy to Rwanda which suggested that Paris knew suspects had sought refuge in a ‘humanitarian safe zone’ controlled by French soldiers. And it has rekindled Kigali's allegations that France secretly supported Hutu forces which orchestrated the massacres. The soldiers had arrived in June 1994 as part of the UN-mandated Operation Turquoise to stop the massacres. French envoy to Rwanda Yannick Gerard asked his superiors what he should do with the genocide suspects.

The cable was found in the archives of an adviser to President François Mitterrand, the incumbent at the time. ‘We have no other choice ... but to arrest them or place them immediately under house arrest to wait for international judicial authorities to decide their case,’ Gerard wrote, in excerpts of the cable first published this week. The cable was discovered by François Graner, a lawyer who works with the victims' rights group ‘Survie’ and who won a years-long battle in June 2020 to access to Mitterrand's archives. In response, French foreign ministry officials told Gerard: ‘You can ... use all indirect channels, especially your African contacts, without exposing yourself directly, to transmit to these authorities our wish that they leave the Humanitarian Safe Zone.’ It is signed by Bernard Emie, a Foreign Ministry adviser who is now the head of France's Foreign Intelligence Service. According to Graner, the cable is ‘the missing written piece of evidence, an essential piece of the puzzle’.