A dismissal was ordered in the investigation into the inaction criticized at five officers during massacres perpetrated in Rwanda in June 1994.
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Seventeen years after the opening of judicial information and twenty-eight years after the facts, the Paris court ordered, Wednesday, September 7, a dismissal in the investigation targeting five French officers in Bisesero , a village in western Rwanda. Jean-Rémi Duval, Marin Gillier, Jacques Rosier, Jean-Claude Lafourcade and Etienne Joubert were notably prosecuted for “complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity” for acts in June 1994, at the end of the Tutsi genocide, While the French army was deployed in Rwanda as part of the operation “turquoise”.
“At the end of very numerous investigations carried out by ten successively seized or co-saisis magistrates, the judges considered, in accordance with the assessment of the Paris prosecutor’s office, that the elements of the procedure did not establish any complicity by aid or Assistance to the genocidal forces on the hills of Bisesero, “said Laure Beccuau prosecutor in a press release. This decision was expected, none of the officers involved having been indicted at the end of the investigation concluded in July 2018, a necessary step before a possible trial.
On the hills of Bisesero played one of the most dramatic episodes of the Tutsi genocide, which made between 800,000 and 1 million dead in the spring of 1994. On June 27 at the start of the afternoon , Jean-Rémi Duval and a dozen soldiers from the special forces go up in Jeep to the village. By hundreds, Tutsi refugees then come out of their hiding places, “hungry, completely helpless and seriously injured”, according to the investigation, to be treated and saved. Lieutenant-Colonel Duval listens to them, then he turns back with his men. Back in the city of Kibuye, he claims to have alerted his hierarchy to the situation, and in particular Colonel Jacques Rosier, head of special operations, even if the latter disputes it.
When the soldiers returned to Bisesero on June 30, the hills were covered with corpses. In three days, nearly 2,000 Tutsi were exterminated by interahamwe militiamen and villagers.
“The impression of having been fuses”
“Having in mind that the instructions were not to remain in a night’s recognition, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Rémi Duval, who had […] light armament and was not provided with any case Rescue, estimated that it is unable to ensure the safety of refugees, indicates the non-place order, a 101-page document that Le Monde consulted. He did not wish to take the risk of ‘A confrontation with the militias and considered that he could not afford to leave [his] men at the risk of their lives […] Jean-Rémi Duval did not refrain from protecting the refugees of Bisesero to help or Kindly assist the authors and co-authors of the crime of genocide. “
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