The Turquoise French military force, deployed in Rwanda under the UN mandate, was accused by associations and survivors of having deliberately abandoned the genocidaires of the hundreds of Tutsi refugees in the hills of Bisesero.
Le Monde with Reuters
French justice pronounced a dismissal in the investigation into the accusations of complicity in genocide and complicity of crimes against humanity which targeted the French army during the massacres committed on the hills of Biseseo, in Rwanda , in 1994, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced Wednesday, September 7 in a press release.
In their non-place order rendered on 1 er September, the investigating judges considered that “the elements of the procedure did not establish the direct participation of the French military forces in exactions committed In refugee camps, nor any complicity by assistance or assistance to genocidal forces or complicity by abstention of French soldiers on the hills of Bisesero “.
The classified procedure
This decision complies with the requisitions of the Paris prosecutor’s office, which had estimated in May 2021 that the investigation opened since 2005 had made it possible to establish “no assistance or assistance of the French military forces during the Exactions Commission , no membership of the latter to the criminal project continued by the genocidal forces or any abstention to intervene in the face of crimes constituting a genocide or crimes against humanity “.
The Ibuka, Survival, Fidh associations and six Kissero survivors accused the Turquoise French military force, deployed in Rwanda under the UN mandate, of having deliberately abandoned the genocidaires of the hundreds of Tutsi refugees in the hills of Bisesero, in western Rwanda. At their request, the report “France, Rwanda and the Tutsi genocide (1990-1994)” written by a commission of historians chaired by Vincent Duclert, rendered in March 2021 before a trip by President Emmanuel Macron to Kigali, been paid to the instruction last year.
But the instructing magistrates did not find a reason to relaunch the judicial information because “the documents cited by reference by the authors of the support for the support of their observations, in their immense majority, were already in the procedure” , explains the prosecution in its press release.
The procedure, which aimed at five officers of the Turquoise operation of the heads of “complicity in genocide”, “complicity of crimes against humanity” and “agreement with a view to committing a genocide or a crime against humanity” , is therefore definitely classified.