Issued on: 07/09/2022 – 19:00
French judges have dropped a case against French peacekeepers deployed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda accused of complicity in massacres, legal sources said Wednesday.
Survivors of the June 1994 massacre in the Bisesero hills in western Rwanda had accused French troops of deliberately leaving them to Hutu extremists who murdered hundreds of people in the area within days.
French prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into possible complicity in crimes against humanity in December 2005 following complaints from survivors and human rights groups.
Judges overseeing the case chose not to proceed with a trial for the military, in a widely anticipated decision.
Investigators had alleged “the direct participation of French troops in extortions committed in the refugee camps, neither complicity in aiding or assisting genocidal troops, nor complicity in abstinence,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
Investigators also called for the case to be dropped last year.
France, which had close ties to the ethnic Hutu government in power at the time, deployed thousands of troops to a UN-backed peacekeeping mission in the country during the genocide.
In March last year, a historic French report prepared by historians concluded that Paris bore “serious and overwhelming” responsibilities for the massacre of about 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis minorities.
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An estimated 50,000 people were killed in the Bisesero area, which was considered a refuge from Tutsi resistance.
Diplomatic relations between France and Rwanda have thawed recently after decades of tensions and ill-will over the genocide.
The decision of the judges to dismiss the case is subject to appeal.
(AFP)