More than 800,000 people were killed in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Pictured above is a shrine dedicated to the victims of the genocide.
A former aide to Rwandan President Paul Kagame says Kagame ordered the shooting down of the plane carrying former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994.
Theogene Rudasingwa said on his Facebook page that Paul Kagame, “then overall commander of the Rwandese Patriotic Army, the armed wing of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), was personally responsible for the shooting down of the plane,” AFP reported on Friday.
Rudasingwa, who is in exile in the United States, said the truth must now be told, adding that “in July 1994, Paul Kagame himself, with characteristic callousness and much glee, told me that he was responsible for shooting down the plane. Despite public denials, the fact of Kagame's culpability in this crime is also a public secret within the RPA and RPF circles.”
A former chief of staff of Kagame and a former Rwandan ambassador to the United States, Rudasingwa admitted that he had “enthusiastically sold this deceptive story line, especially to foreigners who by and large came to believe it, even when I knew that Kagame was the culprit in this crime.”
In April 1994, the plane of Habyarimana was shot down. Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the plane crash.
The Rwandan genocide, in which about 800,000 to one million people, mainly Tutsis, were killed, began after the crash, when Hutus were incited to commit acts of ethnic violence against Tutsis.
All of the details of the double assassination have never come out and investigations continue to this day.
The genocide of 1994 lasted approximately 100 days and hence is called the “100 Days of Hell.”
“By killing President Habyarimana, Paul Kagame produced a wild card in an already fragile ceasefire and dangerous situation. This created a powerful trigger, escalating to a tipping point towards resumption of the civil war, genocide and the region-wide destabilization that has devastated the Great Lakes region ever since,” Rudasingwa added.
Rudasingwa said Kagame should “immediately be brought to account for this crime and its consequences.”
Kagame has repeatedly denied any involvement in the 1994 attack, saying that the plane was shot down by Hutu extremists.
HSN/HGL
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