Habyarimana plane crash probe report out this month

KIGALI - The long awaited findings of former president Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane crash report will be made public before the end of this month, The New Times has learntOfficials in the National Commission which was set up to establish the possible cause of the plane crash confirmed the development yesterday. The Falcon 50 jet, which had on board 12 people, including the former president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994. The commission chaired by former Chief Justice Jean Mutsinzi is now working within a time-frame that is less than twenty days before it releases the findings. The commission had earlier requested for more time last December to accomplish the task. “Everything is on course. We shall complete our work by the end of this month like we had said earlier,” the Commission’s Vice President, Dr. Jean Damascène Bizimana said in a telephone interview yesterday. “The report requires a lot of scrutiny. We have to examine everything and that is why we asked for the extension,” explained Bizimana, a legal expert who was also part of the seven-man commission that was charged with adducing evidence on the role played by France during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis. The government set up the commission, which is also composed of seven people, in 2007 to investigate the cause of the plane crash. Bizimana said that their term of office is always renewable whenever commissioners find it necessary given the progress of their work. Ends