Rwandan FM dismisses French court's arrest warrant

(22 Nov 2006)
1. Wide of downtown Kigali
2. People on street buying newspapers
3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Charles Murigande, Foreign Affairs Minister:
"This judge Bruguiere has never come to Rwanda to investigate this crime he is claiming to have investigated. This judge or even the government of France has never sent an (inaudible)commission to investigate the downing of this plane. How can you sit somewhere at eight kilometres away from the scene of a crime and claim to have done a serious investigation and be at the point of issuing an international arrest warrant? This is just a political game with the objective of just intimidating us and even putting some of our people into difficulties, but we believe also that countries around the world know very well the role that France played and know very well that France is ill placed to judge anybody in Rwanda who moreover contributed to stopping genocide."
4. Various of newspaper and magazine vendors
STORYLINE
Rwanda's Foreign Minister on Wednesday rejected the conclusion by a French Judge that Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered a 1994 attack that killed Rwanda's then-president and triggered a genocide.
The conclusion came in a request for international arrest warrants for nine Rwandan officials by French anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
The late Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was mysteriously shot down over the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on April 6, 1994, setting off attacks in the central African nation by extremists members of the Hutu majority who killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
About 500,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were killed over the hundred days that followed.
Speaking to AP Television, Charles Murigande, Rwandan Foreign Minister said the ruling was nothing more than "political game playing."
He questioned how Judge Bruguiere arrived at his conclusion when Bruguiere had "never come to Rwanda to investigate this crime he is claiming to be investigating."
"How can you sit somewhere at eight kilometres away from the scene of a crime and claim to have done a serious investigation and be at the point of issuing an international arrest warrant?" he said.
Judge Bruguiere activated an arrest warrant for nine Rwandan officials in connection with the investigation on Monday when he gained approval from French prosecutors in Paris.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Bruguiere's request on Tuesday.
The nine for whom Bruguiere sought warrants did not include Kagame but are considered close to him.
Immunity accorded by France to acting heads of state prevents French judicial authorities from issuing a warrant for Kagame.
Bruguiere suspects the decision to down Habyarimana's plane was made in late 1993 or early 1994 by officials of the rebel group RPF.
"The investigations undertaken have clearly shown that for the RPF, the physical elimination of President Juvenal Habyarimana was the necessary precondition for seizing power by force, and was inscribed in a vast plan worked out to this end," Bruguiere wrote in the warrant request.
The document said the "final order to attack the presidential plane was given by Paul Kagame himself during a meeting held in Mulindi on March 31, 1994."
Bruguiere's case rests mostly on testimony from former FPR members who fled to Europe, including Abdul Ruzibiza, a former medic and soldier.
Ruzibiza described the attack in detail in the pages of a book he released a year ago, and admitted involvement.
Kagame has in the past dismissed Ruzibiza's allegations.
The French court is investigating the case because Habyarimana's plane's crew was French.
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