Habyarimana’s assassins should be brought to book

The long-awaited French-commissioned report into the April 6, 1994 Habyarimana plane crash, was this week released after a four-year in-depth investigation headed by French judges, Marc Trevidic and Natalie Poux. The research findings are consistent with the January 2010 Mutsinzi Report. Both inquiries concluded that the missiles that downed the Falcon 50 jet carrying the former Rwandan leader and his Burundian counterpart, were shot from the heavily fortified Kanombe Barracks. The findings effectively put to rest all the lies and speculations that persisted, even after the publication of the Mutsinzi Report. The Trevidic Report particularly deals a heavy blow to calculated narrative espoused by the revisionists of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, and reaffirms the fact that Bruguiere’s November 2006 report was nothing but political machinations. Indeed, detractors and attorneys of Genocide suspects, especially at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), made a kill out of Bruguiere’s work, repeatedly using it to argue that the RPF was responsible for the plane crash, and, therefore, should be held accountable for triggering the Genocide. Like the Mutsinzi Report, the French report serves as impeccable evidence that the architects of the Genocide systematically hatched and implemented the assassination to create a pretext to execute the Genocide, which they had been carefully planning for years. For Rwanda, the latest report is only an endorsement of her long-held view that Hutu extremists with the then Rwandan army, masterminded the attack. The Trevidic Report destroys whatever had been constructed by Genocide revisionists and disgraced opportunists, designed to discredit the Rwandan leadership and rewrite the country’s history. With the report now helping to consolidate the truth surrounding one of the main incidents in the country’s turbulent history, it’s important that those responsible for the attack be brought to book to ensure that justice is finally served. Ends

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Habyarimana’s assassins should be brought to book