Vindicated at last, but is it the end of the story?

During commemorations to mark the 20th anniversary of the Genocide last April, President Paul Kagame tickled many when he belted out in French, “Les faits sont têtus” (truth is stubborn); the significance of the statement escaped many. Truth can never be stifled forever, no matter which sophistication is used to dissimulate it. Now it has come to haunt some sections of the French judiciary, especially Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière. His shameless attempt to fabricate evidence - albeit in the most primitive manner - to implicate current Rwandan government officials for the shooting down of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane has now been embarrassingly torn apart. His successors in the investigations, Marc Trevidic and Nathalie Poux, shifted blame where it has always been suspected - Habyarimana’s extremist inner circle. The political manipulations that accompanied the case and the mass media campaign to drive home the judicial fallacy that Bruguière cooked up, was an indication that people high up in the French political and military establishment had something to hide. Now that the bubble has burst, will the real culprits be brought to book? Will the wrongly accused individuals receive justice for being accused, judged and condemned in the court of public opinion? Whatever the outcome, truth has won the day. Rwanda’s tireless efforts to clear its name have paid off, but will the real conspirators have the courage to look themselves in the mirror or are they cooking up something else? As the saying goes, it’s a waiting game.

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Vindicated at last, but is it the end of the story?