Rwanda - Habyarimana murder

Rwandan witness retracts claims over Habyarimana assassination

Article published on the 2009-08-26 Latest update 2009-08-27 10:00 TU

An estimated 800,000 people are thought to have died in the Rwandan genocide between April and June 1994
(Photo: AFP)

A witness whose testimony supported French allegations that Tutsi rebels were involved in the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana in 1994 has retracted his claims. Richard Mugenzi was a Rwandan army radio operator when the President’s plane was shot down on 6 April 1994. Habyarimana’s death is seen as one of the main events that triggered the genocide,which left an estimated 800,000 people—mainly Tutsis but also Hutus— dead, killed by Hutus.

In 2001, Mugenzi told investigators that he had “personally intercepted” and transcribed a message from Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) Tutsi rebels, which congratulated one of its squads for carrying out the attack on the President’s plane.

That testimony is central to a case headed by French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who issued warrants in 2006 for the arrest of nine aides to the current Rwandan President—and former RPF leader—Paul Kagame. Bruguière accuses them of being behind Habyarimana’s assassination.

But French newspaper Le Monde reported on Wednesday that Mugenzi told a journalist who was writing a book about the genocide that the message he intercepted was in fact dictated to him by a Hutu superior as anti-Tutsi propaganda.

In an interview with Jean-François Dupaquier, which was conducted in Kigali on 31 May, Mugenzi said he knows that the attack on the plane had "nothing to do with the RPF." 

Mugenzi told Le Monde last week, that he never mentioned the fact that the message had been dictated to him when investigators interviewed him in Arusha, because they never made a distinction between intercepted messages and messages that were given to him.

“I only answered the questions I was asked,” he told the French paper.

Mugenzi said he now wants the truth to be known, and he maintains that authorities in Rwanda, where he has recently returned to live, have never interfered with him.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations with France after Judge Bruguière issued the arrest warrants for Kagame’s aides, and has accused the French of supporting the Hutu perpetrators of the genocide.

Last November, one of the suspects, Kagame's chief of protocol Rose Kabuye, was arrested in Frankfurt and extradited to France.

Shortly afterwards, another key witness in the French inquiry, former RPF soldier Abdul Ruzibiza, also retracted testimony that had implicated the Tutsi rebels in Habyarimana’s murder.