Widow of ex-Rwandan leader loses candidacy to quash French genocide investigation

A Paris appeals court on Monday rejected a request by the widow of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana to close an investigation into allegations that she played a role in the country’s 1994 genocide, he told the ‘AFP a judicial source.

Agathe Habyarimana, 78, has lived in France since 1998 and has been interrogated twice on suspicion that she was part of the inner circle of Hutu power that planned and orchestrated the killings of predominantly ethnic Tutsis.

Paris has so far denied Rwanda’s extradition request, but the government has also denied her asylum or residency status as the investigation continues, leaving her in a legal vacuum.

A lower court had already refused last November its request to abandon the investigation, a decision confirmed by the court of appeal.

Habyarimana’s lawyer Philippe Meilhac said the decision was based on technical details.

“The real debate is slipping away as the court focuses on legal quibbles,” Meilhac said.

The investigation has been underway since 2008, when a victims association based in France, the Collectif des Plaignants Civils pour le Rwanda (CPCR), filed a complaint against Habyarimana.

Alain Gauthier, a CPCR co-founder who has spent decades building cases against Rwandan genocide suspects, welcomed the decision but urged investigators to proceed quickly.

“What will come out of the judicial investigation in this case?” asked Gauthier. “Will the French justice continue to drag its feet for years, hoping that Ms. Habyarimana dies and that the case goes away?”

The former first lady fled Rwanda with the help of France just days after her husband’s plane was shot down in April 1994, triggering the genocide.

Around 800,000 people were massacred in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebellion that ended the massacres in July 1994, said Habyarimana was “at the top of the list” of suspects he wanted to bring to justice.

During a visit to Kigali in May, French President Emmanuel Macron admitted that his country had supported the government of Juvénal Habyarimana and ignored warnings of impending massacres, before abandoning thousands of Tutsis to their terrible fate.