The arrest of the most wanted genocide suspect of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Félicien Kabuga, 84, in a Paris apartment last week, highlights renewed French commitment to improve relations with Rwanda, long injured by allegations against each other on the genocide.
In an e-mail interview with The EastAfrican, Phil Clark, a professor of International Politics and scholar of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi at the London-based School of Oriental and African Studies said;
“The discovery of Kabuga in Paris raises major questions about how long he has lived in France and about how much the French authorities knew.
His decision was unpopular in French political circles but applauded by Rwandan authorities, who had for long called on France to come clean over its role in the genocide.
In January 2016, Gen Jean-Claude Lafourcade, who led France's UN-mandated unit in Rwanda in 1994, angered Rwandan officials when he said during an inquiry that “no ammunition, not even a bullet” was provided by the French government to the interahamwe militia that carried out the genocide.
There should be no impediment to this trial taking place in Rwanda - and it would bolster the ICTR's legacy to have assisted the Rwandan judicial system to the extent that it can try such a high profile genocide suspect as Kabuga,” Prof Clark said.
