Hutu Extremists Shot Down Plane, Gov Says

originally published in the New York Times, United States

Extremist Hutus in Rwanda’s government in 1994 were responsible for shooting down a plane carrying the Rwandan president, who was also a Hutu, in a premeditated attack that set off a spiral of violence that led to genocide, according to a report released Monday by the current Rwandan government.

The report, requested by President Paul Kagame, accused members of the Rwandan armed forces of firing surface-to-air missiles at a private jet that was carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi as they were returning from peace talks in Tanzania on April 6, 1994.

The report, a result of more than two years of research, including more than 500 interviews and input from British ballistics experts, also includes allegations about the French military that are related to the assassination.

The role of the crash in catapulting Rwanda, a tiny central African country, into violence that left about 800,000 minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead is well documented. But the question of who shot down the president’s airplane had remained a matter of dispute.

The current government, which is mostly Tutsi, and many independent historians have long contended that senior members of the Hutu-dominated government plotted to kill Mr. Habyarimana to set off ethnic violence. That hypothesis remains a cornerstone of the current government’s legitimacy and historical narrative.

Critics, though, have contended that the Kagame government’s reluctance to investigate the plane crash implied doubts about who was really responsible. These critics view the report’s conclusions as unsurprising.

A French judge in 2006 accused Rwanda’s ruling elite, including Mr. Kagame, of being complicit in the plane’s destruction, an allegation that led Rwanda to suspend diplomatic relations. Some members of the current government have since been arrested on charges of plotting the assassination.

Rwanda has accused France of working with the former Hutu-dominated government during Rwanda’s civil war. The report offers many details of France’s relations with the government in 1994, including an assertion that French soldiers were deployed near the place from which the missiles that brought down the president’s plane were launched.

The two countries resumed diplomatic relations late last year, days after Rwanda was admitted to the Commonwealth, an association of 54 countries. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is scheduled to visit Rwanda in February.