Rwandans and the rest of the world will today get the full facts behind the crash of the Falcon 50 aircraft, carrying former President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994.

The report carried by an investigative commission sets the record straight and identifies the culprits behind the downing of the plane.

It concludes that extremists, and members of Habyarimana’s inner circle, "Akazu”, were responsible for the assassination.

The report lays out this story with convincing detail. It relies on a number of previous international investigations and evidence from interviews conducted with close to 600 individuals, some with the most intimate details regarding the crash. 

It concludes that the assassination was a plan hatched by extremists, bitter that Habyarimana had agreed to implement the Arusha peace accord by sharing power with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

In short, the report concludes that the former dictator was killed because he was regarded as a traitor to the Hutu Power cause.

The report traces the history of earlier investigations on the crash and draws on some these conclusions to complement its findings.

The investigators enlisted the services of ballistic experts from the United Kingdom’s National Defence Academy to provide analysis.

The diversity of the witnesses was demonstrated by the fact that the committee relied heavily on evidence from foreigners especially in Europe and North America.

Therefore, this report has indeed resolved the mystery that had been manipulated and used to falsify history for years. Now that the truth is out, this controversy should be put to rest.

Ends