The Court of Cassation confirmed the non-place of the Paris Court of Appeal against Rwandan figures, close to Paul Kagame, pursued in this case.
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This is the epilogue of a survey started twenty-four years ago. Tuesday, February 15, the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal against the judgment of the Trial Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal which had confirmed, in August 2020, the non-place against persons close to The current Rwandan President Paul Kagame. The latter were accused of planning and participating in the attack that caused the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, on 6 April 1994. That evening in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, two missiles from the soil had provoked the explosion In theft of the Falcon 50 of the Rwandan presidency and given the starting signal of the Tutsi genocide which has been nearly one million dead in three months.
On the back of debate as to the French responsibilities during the tragedy, the case of the plane of Mr. Habyarimana poisoned diplomatic relations between Paris and Kigali. This judgment of the supreme jurisdiction puts a definitive term to the criminal prosecutions against Rose Kabuye, Sam Kanyemera, James Kaberebe, Jackson Nziza, Charles Kayonga, Jacob Tumwine and Franck Nziza, all members of the entourage of Mr. Kagame .
“It took more than twenty years of procedures for the unworthy charges against them to be invalidated by French justice thanks to the conscientious work of magistrates, investigators and experts, welcome M e Leon-Lef Forster and Bernard Maingain, their lawyers. We pay tribute to the people pursued in a totally defamatory way, who have supported the fight-led fight without a flaw. “
The families of victims of the attack had made an appeal in cassation to assert the fact that the Chamber of Instruction did not distinguish between the stakes or specified for what reasons it is did not exist sufficient charges against each of them. “The Chamber of Instruction […] explained that the information was complete and that there were no sufficient charges against anyone to commit the crimes, or any other offense,” writes the Court of Cassation In its stop.
Approach phase
Diplomatically, the forfeiture of the appeal is part of the continuity of warming between France and Rwanda operated since the arrival at the Elysee of Emmanuel Macron. This normalization of the reports has experienced several stages and in particular the creation, in April 2019, of a Historians commission to study the role of France in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 thanks to unprecedented access to the archives of the State (Elysee, Quai d’Orsay, Justice …).
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