Judges looking into the cause of the plane crash that killed president Juvenal Habyarimana have closed the case after 16 years of probe, effectively absolving Rwandan officials of blame.  

A French inquiry, led by Judges Marc Travidic and Nathalie Poux, decided to end the investigation into the attack against the Falcon aircraft that occurred on April 6, 1994, while landing at Kigali airport.

They discredited previous findings by Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who had accused current Rwanda government officials of shooting down the plane.

The judges will give their final decision in three months, but it is not expected to change much.

"This decision is a very important step for the progress of the case,” Lef Forster and Bernard Maingain, lawyers representing government on the case, said in a statement.

"Judge Bruguière handled the proceedings and accused the Rwanda Patriotic Front of being behind the attack. The defence for the Rwandan individuals implicated by the judge was able to demonstrate that the facts and evidence on which judge Bruguière had relied were erroneous, false and forged,” the lawyers said.

Bruguière began his investigation on March 27, 1998, following a complaint submitted on August 31, 1997, by the daughter of the co-pilot of Habyarimana’s plane, Jean-Pierre Minaberry.

Justice minister Johnston Busingye welcomed the findings.

"We have maintained from the onset that the truth will prevail. One of the greatest manipulations and perversions of French justice is inevitably crashing to its end,” Busingye said.

"Trevedic’s closure decision demonstrates that Bruguiere’s case was a deliberate travesty on both facts and evidence.” 

Forster and Maingan said all of the direct testimonies given to Bruguière were false and the indirect testimonies were made by opponents of the Rwandan government and contributed nothing to the progress of the investigation.

"An independent examination conducted on site led to the conclusion that the hypothesis of the Masaka shooting zone evoked by the principal accusers was incorrect, and that the shooting zone was rather to be found at camp Kanombe or its immediate vicinity, a shooting zone which was inaccessible to RPF forces at the time, a fact recently confirmed by General Roméo Dallaire,” they said.

"The investigation should have focused on the Hutu extremists’ camp, which the Bruguière investigation failed to do.”    

‘Worst manipulation’

They added that trying to put blame on the very people who put an end to the Genocide and whose family members were among the dead was one of the worst manipulations in French judicial history.

"In so doing, those who manipulated the French courts aimed to prevent the investigation from focusing on the camp held by Hutu extremists and their accomplices, including in France, the same individuals who successfully carried out the coup started on April 6, 1994, and installed a genocidal government following the assassination of the Prime Minister and the President of the Constitutional Council by the presidential guard at the time when the aforementioned individuals were to form an interim government,” the statement says.

The lawyers stress that the manipulation of the French courts prevented them from asking the difficult questions with regard to the attack against the aircraft, the coup and the 1994 Genocide, all of which implicate Rwandan genocidaires and their accomplices in France.

"It also helped to trigger unprecedented media attention aimed at blaming Rwanda’s Tutsi community and its leaders and at destabilising Rwanda internationally for purposes that remain unclear.”

However, Forster and Maingain pointed out that "facts are stubborn” and the truth was gradually coming to light.

"The defence, which has been very patient, now awaits the case’s timely dismissal, as soon as possible, in favour of the persons named in unjustified arrest warrants that were very appropriately lifted by the examining magistrates.”

The lawyers also called for all those wrongly accused to file complaints against those who perverted justice.

"There can be no compromises in this regard, out of respect for the millions of victims of the perpetrators of the Genocide and of their accomplices, regardless of where they might be,” they conclude.

The case

Bruguière’s case started crumbling in January 2009, after the arrest of former Rwandan Chief of State Protocol, Rose Kabuye, in Germany. Previously, experts also poured scorn on Bruguière’s analysis as, they noted, it was seriously flawed and politically motivated.

Journalist Christophe Boltanski, in March 2009, asserted that Bruguière built his case under the shadow of the French secret service, and said the whole plot was hatched, in 2003, at the French Embassy in Uganda’s capital, Kampala.