Ex-Rwandan Ambassador says Kagame Triggered Rwanda Genocide : Indybay

The Taylor Report broadcasts out of CIUT-Toronto, 89.5fm and www.ciut.fm, every Monday at 5 pm. On 10.03.2011, host Phil Taylor spoke to Theogene Rudasingwa about his confession and apology for collaborating with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in concealing the truth about the Rwanda Genocide and catastrophic, ensuing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During the second week of September, Rudasingwa wrote:

On April 6, 1994, at 8:25 p.m., the Falcon 50 jet of the president of the Republic of Rwanda, registration number 9XR-NN, on its return from a summit meeting in Tanzania, as it was on approach from Dar-es-Salaam to Kanombe International Airport in Kigali, Rwanda, was shot down. All on board, including President Juvenal Habyarimana, President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, their entire entourage and flight crew, died.

The death of President Juvenal Habyarimana triggered the start of genocide that targeted Tutsi and Hutu moderates and the resumption of civil war between the RPF and the government of Rwanda. The RPF’s sad and false narrative from that time on has been that Hutu extremists within President Habyarimana’s camp shot down the plane to derail the implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement and to find a pretext to start the genocide in which over 800,000 Rwandans died in just 100 days. This narrative has become a predominant one in some international circles, among scholars, and in some human rights organizations.

The truth must now be told. Paul Kagame, then overall commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the armed wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, was personally responsible for the shooting down of the plane. 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 RPF and RDF (Rwandan Defense Force) circles. Like many others in the RPF leadership, I 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.

To read more, see San Francisco Bay View: Rwanda: Current President Kagame confessed ordering predecessor's plane shot down.

Rudasingwa's report, and various commentaries, have now been published all over the world. He is not making his current location public for fear of assassination.

Ex-Rwandan Ambassador says Kagame Triggered Rwanda Genocide

Donate

Get Involved

Publish