KIGALI - The Commission of enquiry into the crash of the plane carrying former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana has been given a two-month extension by cabinet to finalise its report. According to the Commission’s Vice Chairman, Dr. Jean Damascene Bizimana, they requested for two months to translate the report from French to English and Kinyarwanda. “We finalised the report. The extension that cabinet granted the commission was for the translation and those two months are from March to April. By the end of April we shall be through,” Bizimana told The Sunday Times on phone. On Wednesday, cabinet adopted the Prime Minister’s order to extend the commission’s mandate to present the detailed report on the crash of Falcon 50 registration no. 9XR-NN. The jet which had on board 12 people, including the former army chief of staff Caster Nsabimana and the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994. Reportedly hit by two rockets, the plane crashed as it attempted to land at Kigali International Airport. The Rwandan government set up the commission to carry out investigations of the crash in October last year. Its mandate was supposed to end this year in February. The independent commission of enquiry is composed of seven members, most of whom have a background in the legal field and have kept current findings of their work confidential. “We cannot reveal anything until we give it to the government and you will get to know everything when the report is published,” Bizimana explained. Ends
