GENOCIDE - A Belgian witness yesterday told the commission charged with gathering evidence on the role of France in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda that French soldiers helped to evacuate all the masterminds of the Genocide. Pierre Olivier Richard, a journalist who worked with Deuschewelle radio said he got wind of this during an extensive interview he had with Col. Luc Marshal who commanded the Belgian contingent of the Unamir (UN Mission in Rwanda) during the Genocide.

“I have it on record that France, while evacuating these people would take them to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from where they were trained and armed by French soldiers,” Richard told the seven-man commission.

Richard, who authored Casques Bleu Sang Noir (literally meaning Blue Berets Black Blood), a book specifically defining the status of the Unamir during the Genocide said that arms were trafficked into the country from a network created by Jean Christophe Mitterand, a son of former French president, Francois Mitterand.

“Why did France not offer soldiers for the UN Mission in Rwanda? Why were they keen to have their separate mission when it came to Operation Turquoise; this means that they were hiding something and it all adds to the various scenes we have witnessed to ascertain that they had a role in the Genocide,” Richard said.

He said that at a certain time in 1993, despite the fact that the mass massacres had not started, he witnessed people being killed in the presence of French soldiers.

“I remember one time I was traveling to Gisenyi (now Rusizi District in Northern Western) and found a roadblock which was manned by Ex-FAR (former government soldiers) and with French troops standing nearby. When we got a few meters away, we found dead bodies,” he said.

Another witness who is a war correspondent working for the Associated Press said that French troops imported to Rwanda ice picking axes despite the fact that there is no snow in Rwanda.

“I later established the use of these axes after visiting Nyarubuye church (in Eastern Province) where I found hundreds dead and those axes were all over the place (at the church),” said Jacques Collet, also a Belgian national.

He disclosed to the commission that at one time during the Genocide, he was approached by two French people disguising to be journalists who wanted him to arrange an interview between them and President Paul Kagame (then commander of the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Army).

“This was because I was on most cases operating from within the territory of the RPF but I was suspicious of these men who were posing as journalist (one and another) as a photographer because the paper they claimed they were working for is a very small paper that would not have interest in Rwanda,” he said.

He explained: “I suspected these people to be working for the French intelligence services because even the equipment they had was not professional and their insistence to meet Kagame only aroused my suspicion. I thought may be they want to infiltrate into RPF but then they disappeared.”

He added that the French may have had a hand in what he called assimilated exercise aimed at feigning panic within Kigali which preceded massive arrests of people whom they claimed were accomplices of the RPF who had invaded Rwanda a week before that.

The duo’s testimony follows those of three other Belgians, a German and an English man.
According to Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the president of the commission, there will soon be another screening of foreigners but he did not disclose their identities.