2024-04-05 15:30:09
Agathe Habyarimana arrives at the Paris courthouse on November 3, 2020, to be heard in the investigation into the role played by former French gendarme Paul Barril during the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994. THOMAS SAMSON / AFP
It’s an inextricable affair. That of a woman who, for thirty years, has been suspected of having orchestrated and encouraged the most serious crime, but without ever having been tried. Agathe Habyarimana, 81, widow of the former Rwandan president, was evacuated by the French army in the first days of the Tutsi genocide on April 9, 1994. She now lives in a house in the Paris suburbs. Prosecuted for “complicity in genocide” in France since 2007, she is subject to an international arrest warrant issued by Kigali. But Paris, which rejected her asylum request, also refuses to extradite her to Rwanda.
« I am committed to ensuring that no person suspected of crimes of genocide can escape justice,” However, affirmed Emmanuel Macron, on May 27, 2021 in Kigali, where he came to seal Franco-Rwandan reconciliation.
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Three years later, while Rwanda is preparing to celebrate the thirtieth commemoration of the Tutsi genocide and the trials of genocidaires follow one another before the Paris Assize Court at the rate of two per year – six men have already been sentenced with sentences ranging from fourteen years of criminal imprisonment to life imprisonment – the case of Agathe Habyarimana seems insoluble. The former first lady of Rwanda was placed under assisted witness status in 2016 and has not been questioned by the courts since. In September 2020, she asked an investigating judge to close the investigation citing the “unreasonable delay” of the procedure, but his request was judged “inadmissible”.
“In this case, French justice has dragged on far too long, deplores Alain Gauthier, president of the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR). His role played during the planning of the genocide seems indisputable. » In May 2021 in Paris, Rwandan President Paul Kagame reaffirmed that Ms. Habyarimana was included “at the top of the list” suspects he wanted to see tried. But the file is bogged down.
“The devil in the body”
Born in 1942 in Gisenyi, Agathe Habyarimana, née Kanziga, is a descendant of one of the highest lineage Hutu clans of northern Rwanda, the Abahinza.. She was 21 years old when she married Juvénal Habyarimana, an ambitious career soldier who took power in July 1973 in a coup d’état. Around twenty Hutu radicals from the north created “Akazu” in 1991., the “little house” in Kinyarwanda, the language commonly spoken in Rwanda.
This political-economic network locks access to power in order to prepare, militarily and financially, for the genocide. Even if Agathe Habyarimana has always denied the existence of the “Akazu”, several notes and reports show the influence she had over this clan, and in particular the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE) which wrote in September 1994 : THE “the real brains of Akazu would be Agathe Habyarimana and her brother Protais Zigiranyirazo, alias “Mr. Z””.
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Paris, which supports Rwanda militarily and financially, is informed of the excesses of the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, in good relations with François Mitterrand. These alerts, coming from diplomats or soldiers, are ignored by the presidential staff meeting at the Elysée. On April 8, 1994, two days after the attack on the plane in which the Rwandan and Burundian presidents were killed, Paris launched Operation “Amaryllis” to evacuate its nationals from Rwanda.
The next day, the Directorate of African and Malagasy Affairs (DAM) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to the French ambassador in Kigali that President Habyarimana’s family would be taken away. “in the first rotations with French nationals”. In Rwanda, mass massacres begin but the evacuation of Ms. Habyarimana and her family is a priority for the Elysée.
Twelve people from the Habyarimana family board with 44 other French passengers in the first C160 which takes off for Bangui, in the Central African Republic. During the restricted council of April 13, Alain Juppé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, drew the attention of François Miterrand to the fate of the former first lady: “President Habyarimana’s close family is currently in the Central African Republic. Gold Patassé [président de la République centrafricaine] wants to get rid of it. There are two solutions, Zaire or France. » “If they want to come to France, France will welcome them, naturally,” President Mitterrand decides.
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As the genocide entered its most active phase, Agathe Habyarimana settled in Paris. Their plane tickets and accommodation are covered. But the Rwandan guest ultimately proves to be cumbersome. “She has the devil in her body. If she could, she would continue to launch calls for massacres from French radios, entrusts François Mitterrand to a delegation from Médecins sans frontières (MSF) during the summer. She is very difficult to control. » With part of her family, the widow returns to Africa, resides for a time in a deliquescent Zaire, then in Kenya.
” Master piece “
She returned to France in 1998 and then contacted a suspicious character: Paul Barril. This former Elysée policeman who became a mercenary worked at that time for several African heads of state. “Links existed between Paul Barril’s group “SECRETS” and the entourage of President Juvénal Habyarimana before the attack was carried out, write the rapporteurs of the information mission led by the socialist deputy Paul Quilès in 1998. These contacts were more particularly established by certain Rwandan officials with a view to helping the proper execution of an arms sales contract signed on May 3, 1993.
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The years pass and Agathe Habyarimana is forgotten. In 2004, she settled in Essonne and requested political asylum. A real legal marathon begins for her as her situation embarrasses the authorities. After an investigation by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) which lasted a year and a half, his request was rejected.
Argument accepted: there are “serious reasons” to think that Agathe Habyarimana “participated as an instigator or accomplice in the commission of the crime of genocide” and that she was able “extensively implement a power of influence in order to impose one’s directives or choices in matters of policy through the use of levers in one’s entourage. » According to the public body, the former first lady was “at the heart of the genocidal regime… the centerpiece of the system of repression”.
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At the beginning of 2007, Agathe Habyarimana filed an appeal. The CPCR filed a complaint in return. The former first lady’s request is examined during a public hearing during which she presents herself as an ordinary wife: “My husband worked as a civil servant: he left in the morning and returned in the evening. I was at home. We were a family. » After five hours of debate, an assessor concluded: “Madam, you present a picture too angelic to be believed. »
Her appeal once again refused, Agathe Habyarimana appealed to the Council of State which, in 2009, refused to grant her refugee status. The same year, Rwanda issued an international arrest warrant against her. The widow of the former president then turned to the Essonne prefecture to obtain a residence permit. In vain.
“The file is empty”
On the diplomatic level, a rapprochement towards Rwanda is made by Nicolas Sarkozy. Five days after the French president’s visit to Kigali in February 2010, Agathe Habyarimana was arrested at her home. But France refuses to extradite him, on the grounds that Rwandan justice is not able to guarantee him a ” fair trial “. The affair gets bogged down. In February 2022, the investigating judge in charge of the case announced the closure of the investigations. This decision could portend a dismissal of the case in favor of Ms. Habyarimana, no indictment having been issued.
On April 15, 1977, French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, his wife Anne-Aymone, Prime Minister Raymond Barre and his wife Eva Hegedus received Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and his wife Agathe at the Elysée. STF/AFP
“Six French investigators went to Rwanda to look for evidence and they found nothing against my client, underlines Phillipe Meilhac, his lawyer. The file is empty, at odds with the seriousness of the accusations. The procedure is closed. If the decision has not been rendered, it is because Mrs. Habyarimana is hindering diplomatic relations. » Faced with an Assize Court, the evidence would therefore be lacking: the “Akazu” had no organization chart or official structure and witnesses became rare. “There is nothing against Agathe Habyarimana because she caused terror to reign by giving her orders by voice, assures a Rwandan diplomat. It is said that a simple look could sometimes be enough. »
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According to a source close to the case, the French investigating judges have concentrated their research “over a very short period” between April 6, 1994, which marks the start of the genocide, and April 9, the day of his departure for France. “On the diplomatic level, she concludes, the worst situation would be for her to be tried and ultimately acquitted. »
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