Editor,

For years now, a malicious whispering and legal campaign has been waged against the leadership of this country. This campaign was based on the ludicrous claim that the Rwanda Patriotic Front forces were to blame for the downing of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane.

This whispering campaign turned legal when the now disgraced French judge, Jean Louis Bruguière, decided that he had the ability to indict many of the top leaders of the Rwandan government and military.

Sadly for him, and joyously for anyone who actually has a sense of justice, his own witnesses turned against him and his case crumbled. So, while the cases were meant to bring the Rwandan leadership to its knees, it actually made it stronger.

This is because the report probing the downing of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane has pinned Colonel Theoneste Bagosora as the key mastermind of the plot to shoot down the plane, killing the former president and his Burundian counterpart.

This criminal, who is presently serving a life sentence, was intimately familiar with the President’s travel schedule.

According to the report, he was using a military radio network to keep in direct contact with elements of the presidential guard, the Para-commando battalion and most importantly, the Anti-Aircraft Battalion, all of which were based in Kanombe Camp, near the International Airport.

The report also quoted Maj. Gen. Laurent Munyakazi confirming that Colonel Bagosora had on April 4 declared that Habyarimana’s plane would be shot.

How could he have possibly known that that would happen? Was he a soothsayer? I think not; I believe that he had insider information that led him to come to that conclusion.

All I wonder is whether this report shall finally lay to rest all those rumors or shall the detractors still continue spouting nonsense?

Joseph Asiimwe
Remera