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Survivors and human rights groups criticized a recommendation by French prosecutors to drop a 15-year case accusing senior French military officials of complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Survivors of the June 1994 massacre in the hills of Bisesero, western Rwanda, accuse French troops of deliberately abandoning them to Hutu extremists, who subsequently murdered hundreds of local people within days.
Around 50,000 people were murdered in the Bisesero region during the 100-day murderous frenzy.
French military commanders were the subject of a criminal investigation for complicity in genocide in December 2005 following complaints by survivors and human rights groups.
Earlier this week, prosecutors recommended that judges drop the case accusing French soldiers of complicity in crimes against humanity because of their inaction in the massacre.
Eric Plouvier, lawyer for the NGO Survie (Survival) which works to encourage better relations between France and Africa and which was part of the groups that filed the initial complaint, qualified the decision to request the abandonment of the case of “heartbreaking and legally painful”.
This decision represents a “denial of justice”, says Plouvier, because justice did not take into account the “crushing responsibilities” of France in allowing the genocide to take place.
The five French soldiers targeted by the investigation have never been charged.
Evidence-based decision in French report
The call to drop the 15-year affair followed the publication in March of a major report on France’s role in the genocide, which found that Paris had been “blind” to the preparations but not complicit in the killings.
The report, which was commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron, was particularly damning on the events in Bisesero, calling it the failure of French troops to protect Tutsi who were sheltering in the hills, in a so-called “zone of security ”, a“ profound failure ”. .
He also noted that the French knew that Tutsis hiding in the area had been attacked but did not respond after days of pleading for rescue, by which time hundreds of people were murdered.
The French historical commission blamed the failure of troops to protect Tutsi in Bisesero on strategic considerations rather than on the failures of individual soldiers.
Final decision to come
The Paris prosecutor’s office concluded that the investigation “did not establish that the French forces could have been guilty of the crimes of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity”.
The investigation did not confirm that there had been “aid or assistance from French military forces in carrying out the atrocities,” according to Paris chief prosecutor Rémy Heitz.
Nor has it established that the French forces “refrained from intervening in the face of genocide or crimes against humanity because of a prior agreement”.
The final decision on whether to advance the case against the French soldiers now rests with the investigating judges.
According to a source close to the investigation, it is now highly likely that they will drop the case unless new investigations are ordered.
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