07.05.09 - RWANDA/HABYARIMANA - RWANDA: REPORT ON HABYARIMANA'S PLANE SHOOTING DOWN READY

Kigali, 7 May 2009 (FH) - The committee of independent experts set up by Rwandan government to inquire into the attack which cost the life on 6 April 1994 of President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, and the members of the French crew, has completed its findings , reports Hirondelle Agency.

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The two presidents were returning from a regional peace meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

"The team has already presented its report which will be made public in the next few days", an official statement of Rwanda Council of Ministers was read Thursday on Radio Rwanda.

Set up in October 2007, this committee was presided by Jean Mutsinzi, former President of Supreme Court of Rwanda and the current President of the Arusha-based African Court of Human and People's Rights.

The shooting down of the presidential plane near the capital, Kigali, and his subsequent death, sparked the 1994 genocide, in which approximately 800, 000 people, primarily Tutsis, were killed.

This theory has been refuted by Rwanda which supports that the genocide against the Tutsis had started with the pogroms of 1959, 1963, 1973, and 1990.

At the end of 2006, an investigation by French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière had pointed that the current President Paul Kagame as the main instigator of the attack, as he commanded the armed wing of the former rebellion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), currently in power. The former rebellion leader has always denied any involvement in the attack.

Judge Bruguiere had issued arrest warrants against nine close associates of Kagame and suggested to the United Nations to start investigations against the Rwandan President. Kigali had reacted sharply by severing diplomatic ties with Paris.

The Rwandan government, instead, published, in August 2008, an investigation conducted by a commission into the role of France in the genocide, which blames about 30 civil and military French officials, including the late President François Mitterrand.

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© Hirondelle News Agency