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[AfricaRealities] Rwandan witness to Habyarimana assassination disappears [Includes Audio)

 

http://sfbayview.com/2014/11/rwandan-witness-to-habyarimana-assassination-disappears/

Rwandan witness to Habyarimana assassination disappears

November 24, 2014
 1

KPFA Weekend News broadcast Nov. 22, 2014

00:00
00:00

A Rwandan witness whose testimony would have implicated Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the assassination of his predecessor, President Juvenal Habyarimana, and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira has gone missing in Nairobi.

Transcript

Emile Gafirita
Emile Gafirita
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Sharon Sobotta: A Rwandan witness for a French court investigating the assassination of two African presidents in 1994 has gone missing and is reported to have been kidnapped in Nairobi, Kenya. The witness, Emile Gafirita, is a former bodyguard to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Emile Gafirita, one of Rwandan President Paul Kagame's former bodyguards, is reported to have fled Rwanda and gone into hiding in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was kidnapped on Nov. 13. Through his French lawyer, Gafirita had contacted the French Anti-Terrorism Court of Judge Marc Trédivic to say that he was prepared to testify that in 1994, as a young soldier in the Rwandan Patriotic Army led by Paul Kagame, he had helped transport the missiles that were used to shoot down the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and the plane's French crew.

In the BBC's controversial documentary, "Rwanda: The Untold Story," BBC producer Jane Corbin, Belgian Col. Luc Marchal and a 1994 BBC broadcast anchor described the assassinations:

BBC/Jane Corbin: On April the 6th, 1994, President Habyarimana was returning to Kigali from a summit. With him was the chief of the army and the new president of Burundi.

Col. Luc Marchal: I heard two or three very violent explosions. First, I thought it was a munitions depot exploding. But than, after 15 or 20 minutes, there was confirmation that the president's airplane had been attacked.

BBC anchor, 1994: 0-4 Hours, Greenwich Mean Time. The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in Central Africa have been killed in a plane crash. The circumstances are unclear. Rwandan officials say the plane was shot down.

KPFA: The assassinations shattered the fragile peace that had been negotiated between the Rwandan government and the invading army led by Gen. Paul Kagame. Many call it the spark that lit the volatile situation on fire, causing panic and ethnic massacres. In the BBC documentary, producer Jane Corbin and Col. Luc Marchal, who was second in command at the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Rwanda, also describe it as Gen. Paul Kagame's resumption of the war.

BBC/Jane Corbin: For Kagame and the RPF, the plane crash was an opportunity to restart a full scale war and seize power, and some U.N. officers knew it.

Col. Luc Marchal: In my opinion, the conclusion to draw is crystal clear. The attack on President Habyarimana's plane was the trigger to begin the military operations and the armed takeover by the RPF.

KPFA: No one has ever been indicted for the assassination of the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Louis Arbour, as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, quashed her investigating team's evidence that Gen. Paul Kagame had ordered the assassinations.

Arbour was succeeded by Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who announced that she planned to indict President Kagame for the assassinations, and was summarily fired. French and Spanish judges have compiled evidence that Kagame ordered the assassinations and indicted his top officers for the assassinations.

They have not indicted Kagame himself, because French and Spanish law do not allow them to indict a sitting head of state. Only the International Criminal Court has done that.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
Oakland writer Ann Garrison contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Counterpunch, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Agenda Report and Black Star News and produces radio news and features for Pacifica's WBAI-NYC, KPFA-Berkeley and her own YouTube Channel. She can be reached at anniegarrison@gmail.com. If you want to see Ann Garrison's independent reporting continue, please contribute on her website, anngarrison.com.

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