The great English writer Charles Dickens once said the law is an ‘ass’. The aphorism has never been more apt than last week, when a French judge dismissed the genocide case against Agathe Kanziga, the widow of Juvenal Habyarimana. They claim “there isn’t sufficient evidence to link her to the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 people.” (Notice how nonchalantly they decline to call that massive atrocity by its proper name, and how they underplay the numbers of the victims? Yeah, it’s part of a wider narrative of those that try to minimise the role of the criminals; even render them innocent). So-called investigative judges in Paris ordered the dismissal of a case accusing Agathe Habyarimana of crimes of genocide, something that of course set off jubilation in Rwandan genocidaire circles in Europe and all over the world, and their family members, not mentioning multitudes of fellow travelers in the negationism and denialism of the 94 Genocide Against the Tutsi. How on earth can a sentient human being, except a cravenly dishonest, bad faith actor, arrive at the conclusion that there is nothing to link Agathe Kanziga to the Genocide? When she was the right hand to her husband Juvenal Habyarimana, and was a principal instigator and organiser? To those who know nothing about Rwanda, be informed of this. Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana wasn’t merely someone’s housewife, completely oblivious of the planning of massacres of Tutsis; of use of rape by the military, FAR, and Interahamwe militias as a crime of war; of the killings by torture of every prominent Tutsi they hated, and other horrific crimes - all which was going on at the Habyarimanas’ residence in Kanombe. If anything, she was, informally, a bigger actor in the horrendous events that engulfed Rwanda, and not only in 94 either. She was in the thick of it starting with the campaigns of torture, and of harassment, and massacres of the Tutsi, and of those Hutu who weren’t ready to be part of genocide, or any other state-organised crime against their Tutsi neighbors - which began in 1990 after the RPF/A launched the war of liberation. Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana was the head of the informal power clique, known as Akazu, composed of her brothers, cousins, or close family relatives that occupied the most powerful offices in the land and that, collectively, wielded more power than Habyarimana the president. Those with more than passing knowledge of this woman’s activities in the aftermath of the death of her husband – after someone from the Kanombe Barracks fired a couple of missiles that brought his plane down – are aware she immediately took over the running of the regime. Or more precisely the running of the Genocide, from their living room, even as the remains of Habyarimana lay in the house, and the ruins of his plane still smoldered just outside their compound. Whoever isn’t unaware of this history, if you are reading this know that much as genocide deniers and their enablers in certain Western circles have done their best (through lies and propaganda repeated ad nauseum) to pin the Genocide on President Kagame, as commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, none of his forces were anywhere near Kanombe Barracks or airport at the time. On the other hand, the chief of the military at that time was none other than Theoneste Bagosora, a prominent “Hutu Power” extremist and member of the Akazu; the same “Colonel Apocalypse that was staunchly opposed of any agreement, such as the power-sharing accords being negotiated in Arusha, that would pave way for the RPF as part of government. The Akazu, of which Bagosora was like the spokesperson, had taken to denigrating the Arusha accords, and increasingly saw Habyarimana as “likely to cave”. Also, Bagosora controlled everything in the military, including whatever activities took place in the Kanombe Barracks, or the French “military advisers” based there; i.e. the kind of people that would know how to wheel out a couple of SAMs and fire them. I am no expert in matters of law, but how can all this and similar factors not be circumstantial evidence to link Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana, at the very least? The wife of Habyarimana has been a resident in Paris, enjoying impunity, with her grown sons. That is ever since the government of Francois Mitterrand (patron per excellence of the genocidal regime) helped her escape justice, in mid 94, as the Genocide against the Tutsi raged, but as the military defeat of the “Interim Government”, which had taken up the task of seeing the genocide through, looked inevitable. She should be repatriated to Rwanda, to be tried by the judiciary, and its competent courts of law, which have only ever shown the utmost respect for due process, for any genocide suspect that’s been repatriated. Nothing gives French “investigative judges” jurisdiction over this personality, who is one of the most wanted suspect criminals in Rwandan history. Well, except contempt but nothing else.
