London Despatch

Jack Straw (L): Rebuked the Foreign Office law chief for being ‘dogmatic’         Lord Goldsmith (R): Yielded to pressure to change his mind about legality of war

The United Nations Security Council’s tenuous authority in Africa has been further threatened by an explosive new report from a UN Group of Experts* showing wide-ranging violations of the arms embargo on Congo-Kinshasa by both Western and African states. The expert panel reports that killer militias in Eastern Congo have been receiving military orders from leaders based inGermany and France and getting finance from two Spanish-based charities linked to the Roman Catholic church in clear breach of the UN sanctions regime. The report also accuses the governments of Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa of allowing serious breaches of sanctions and the illegal export of mineral wealth.

After heated discussions at UN headquarters in New York on 20 November, several Council members want to dilute the report’s recommendations – if not bury them, Africa Confidential has learned. The Council is due to meet again on 25 November to discuss the report, but China has been pushing for a substantive delay on any actions while the report is translated into another five languages.

This latest crisis for the UN’s operations in Congo-Kinshasa follows growing concerns about relations between the Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (Monuc) and the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) after the latter was found to have been involved in mass killings and rapes of civilians in Eastern Congo. The new report reinforces concerns voiced by some UN officials about the management of Monuc, the UN’s most expensive peacekeeping operations costing over US$1 billion a year, under Alan Doss, the British diplomat who is currently UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative in Congo. Continuing criticism of the ineffectiveness of Monuc and its high cost are undermining diplomatic support for the mission.

Analysing internal Monuc reports and its information from its own sources the Expert Group concludes that military operations by the FARDC, first in conjunction first with the the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) and then with Monuc, against the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) militia have had much less impact than the Kinshasa government and the UN have claimed.

It adds that the joint FARDC-RDF operation in North Kivu earlier this year, known as Umoja Wetu, was weakened by the embezzlement of several million US dollars of funds by senior FARDC and RDF commanders. Umoja Wetu was followed in March 2009 by Kimia II, an FARDC operation backed by Monuc, which the FARDC says has contained and greatly weakened the FDLR. Yet the Group’s report states that since forming a tactical alliance with a predominantly Hunde militia in North Kivu as well as with its splinter faction RUD-URUNANA, the FDLR has been able to return in strength to the Masisi, Lubero and Walikale regions of the province. The report concludes that the FARDC’s military operations have not succeeded in neutralising the FDLR, despite the intense humanitarian crisis they have provoked.

The previous UN panel report on Congo-Kinshasa, released last December, reported at length on secret collaboration between the FARDC and FDLR. This was followed in January, however, by a groundbreaking deal between Congo-Kinshasa’s President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, which was widely assumed to mean, not least by the Security Council, that FARDC support for the FDLR would cease. Yet this latest report shows that the senior commanders of the FARDC’s 10th military region, which roughly comprises South Kivu, continue to provide logistical support to the FDLR.

The commanders of the FARDC 10th military region, who the report claims are responsible for the provision of this logistical support, are General Pacifique Masunzu, a Banyamulenge (South Kivu Banyamulenge Tutsi) who broke with the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) back in 2003 and who clearly remains implacably opposed to the Rwandan government, and his deputy Colonel Baudouin Nakabaka, a former Mai-Mai fighter with close links to the FDLR.

Another interesting link to the FDLR and to a related and equally brutal Rwandan militia in eastern DRC called RUD-URUNANA, reveals the report, is Mbusa Nyamwisi, Congo-Kinshasa’s Minister of Decentralisation. Mbusa Nyamwisi, who was previously Foreign Minister, has been linked by the report to Kasereka Maghulu, otherwise known as Kavatsi, who has apparently been helping RUD-URUNANA obtain food supplies, arms, ammunition and cash in return for minerals and timber.

One of the report’s strongest findings is the extent of the FDLR’s support network in Europe, and particularly in Germany and France. It shows that German-based Ignace Murwanashyaka is not only the FDLR President but also its supreme military commander, and that Straton Musoni, its German-based Vice-President, is also President of the militia’s high command. The Deputy President of this high command is apparently Callixte Mbarushimana, the FDLR’s France-based Executive Secretary. All three men have previously been sanctioned by the UN, which is supposed to mean that they are banned from international travel and that their bank accounts are frozen. But Etablissement Muyeye, one of the biggest mineral trading houses in Bukavu, organised the transfer of funds through Western Union to Murwanashyaka’s associates in Germany on behalf of FDLR, the report shows.

The arrest of Murwanashyaka and Musoni by the German authorities last week on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity raises questions about timing. The German government had not previously acted against Murwanashyaka and Musoni despite evidence of their continued leadership role in the FDLR and appeals from the Rwandan government to take action. Some UN sources suggest Germany acted because it had heard about the UN report with details about the FDLR networks in Europe.

Germany’s arrest of the two FDLR men puts pressure on France, which has not arrested Calixte Mbarushimana, and is criticised in the report for being reluctant to share information about the FDLR with the panel. The experts identified 21 telephone numbers in France that have been in contact with FDLR military satellite phones between September 2008 and August 2009. They asked the French government to collaborate and identify these numbers but the French authorities are yet to respond. Similarly, the French authorities have failed to respond to questions about FDLR leadership resident in France.

The networks are wider: the UN experts also identified money transfers from Belgium to the FDLR. They also complain about the lack of cooperation from Britain and the United States on enquires into phone numbers in contact with FDLR military satellite phones.

Also under scrutiny are those Roman Catholic networks which have provided continuing support to Hutu extremists before, during and after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. The panel names two Spanish charities linked with the Roman Catholic church, the Fundació S’Olivar and Inshuti, which are funded by the government of the Islas Baleares Province and have been providing financial support to the FDLR, which groups around youth recruited in refugee camps and young Congolese Hutus, the last quarter of the former militiamen and Forces Armées Rwandaiseselements. Fundació S’Olivar is run by Juan Carrero, a prominent figure in Spain who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Inshuti used to be run by Joan Casoliva. Both men are cited in the report as being FDLR sympathisers and for being involved in pushing forward the prosecution of RPF officials in the Spanish courts. The authors of the report also gathered testimonies claiming that a Belgian brother of a charity called Constant Goetschalckxhas given money to the FDLR.

Another important revelation by the Group is that the FDLR and RUD-URUNANA have since early this year been recruiting hundreds of combatants from Rwandan refugee camps in Uganda, in particular from the camps of Nyakivale and Cyaka, under the noses of the Ugandan military which is supposed to have been preventing this. A key organiser is said to be the FDLR’s ‘Colonel’ Wenceslas Nizeyimana, who is accused of facilitating a visit in 2006 by FDLR President Ignace Murwanyashyaka to Uganda in violation of a UN travel ban.

These findings embarrass Uganda, which is a temporary member of the UN Security Council, as do revelations in the report about Uganda’s deep involvement in a thriving trade in gold mined from eastern Congolese sites controlled and taxed by the FDLR. The report says that Rajendra Vaya and J.V. Lodhia (also known as Chuni), who headed two Ugandan gold trading companies called UCI and Machanga which were previously sanctioned by the UN Security Council for buying gold from mines taxed by an assortment of Ituri militia, are the most active and are trading with the protection and connivance of the Ugandan authorities.

The report criticised the Ugandan government for supplying the Group with only ‘incomplete and partial’ customs declarations for the country’s gold exports, and claims to have documentation showing that far more is going out then the official figures reveal. Almost all the Congolese gold being exported via Uganda, it seems, goes to Dubai, which has so far declined to respond to any of the Group’s requests for further information.

The report also says that the FDLR is receiving ’significant deliveries’ of weapons and ammunition from Tanzania via Lake Tanganyika and strongly suggests the Tanzanian government knows all about it. The Tanzanian government’s motivation, moots the panel, is to retain influence over illegal trade with Congo, including fuel smuggling from Tanzania to Congo and minerals smuggling in the other direction. The panel has email correspondence from Bande Ndagundi, a Congolese arms trafficker active in Tanzania and Burundi, talking about his high level contacts with Tanzanian officials. The panel shows Ndagundi has been in regular phone contact with the Tanzanian Ambassador to Burundi, who the panel’s sources allege facilitates Ndagundi’s activities.

The Group’s report claims the Burundian government is allowing the FDLR to use its territory as a rear base and to recruit from there, and further finds that it may be facilitating a supply of arms to the militia from international dealers. It has long been known that Burundi was the main conduit for gold mined in South Kivu, since the country exports gold without producing it. Most, if not all, South Kivu’s gold mines are controlled by one armed group or another, with the FDLR controlling a number of the best deposits.

Several FDLR ex-combatants interviewed by the experts stated that several hundred of fighters were recruited in Rwanda and infiltrated through Burundi into Congo-Kinshasa. There is little doubt that Burundi will dislike this report, in particular the mention that according to several testimonies and backed by phone records,’the FDLR maintain a relationship with Gen. Adolphe Nshimirimana, Burundi’s head of intelligence’. Moreover, the experts found suspicious the attempted purchase in Malaysia by Burundian officials of 40,000 Steyer AUG assault rifles, which exceeded the needs of the Burundian police.

Several foreign mining houses continue to trade with the FDLR. End buyers for this cassiterite include the Malaysia Smelting Corporation and the Thailand Smelting and Refining Company (Thaisarco), held by the British-registered Amalgamated Metals Corporation. Furthermore, the fact that Thaisarco is supplied by African Ventures Ltd, a Samoan-registered company with a Hong Kong address, which is being used as a front company for the Swiss businessman Chris Huber, is also embarrassing; Huber was involved in the conflict coltan business during the 1998-2003 war in Eastern Congo and today he is also sourcing material from companies with close ties to FARDC officers from the former Congrés National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP, the ex-Congolese Tutsi guerilla force headed by Gen. Laurent Nkunda), who are in control of mines in the Walikale and Kalehe territories as well as companies buying from FDLR zones.

The report published a document showing how gold from these mines makes it into Burundi, focusing in particular on the role played by Bujumbura-based Mutoka Ruganyira. Ruganyira, it seems, is a good friend of Gen. Adolphe Nshimirimana, the director general of the Burundian intelligence services, and a business associate of Antwerp-based gold dealer Alain Goetz.Goetz, says the report, is linked not only to Ruganyira but also to a North Kivu-based company improbably called Glory Minerals, which also sources its gold from FDLR-controlled mines. Goetz has, however, denied the story, telling the panel he had not purchased gold from the DRC ‘for several years’.

Among the Group’s less surprising revelations are that North Korea and Sudan have violated UN Security Council resolution 1807 which imposes all states to notify the Sanctions Committee in advance regarding the shipment of arms for Congo. 

China also supplied ammunition and equipment. The An Xin Jiang A vessel docked at Matadi in May 2009. China informed the Committee about the delivery but did not provide details about the cargo. China has been leading the charges against the expert report in the UN Security Council.South Africa, Angola and the USA, which train FARDC units, failed to notify the UN Sanctions Committee in advance on this provision of military assistance, advice or training. US authorities also failed to provide information on the bank account of a CNDP activist in Gisenyi. 

Russia will face questions about the purchase of cassiterite by the Novosibirsk Integrated Tin Works company from ex-CNDP Congolese army officers and an attempted sale of military equipment including helicopter parts to the Congolese government in August 2009 by a Russian national named Dmitry Popov.

Of all governments in the region, Rwanda’s seems to have earned the least criticism in this report – although it will also be embarrassed by revelations that Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the founder and former leader of the predominantly Congolese Tutsi CNDP who is supposed to be under detention in Rwanda, has been allowed to remain in contact with former associates and to exert a degree of control over the CNDP. The link with Chris Huber is also embarrassing. Huber used to ship minerals out of Rwanda during 1998-2003 via the state run Rwanda Metals, a company owned by the Rwandan Patriotic Forces (RPF).

The report says that the man who toppled Nkunda from the CNDP leadership, Jean Bosco Ntaganda, is the deputy commander of Kimia II despite being wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. The new US envoy to the Great Lakes region, Howard Wolpe, recently called on the Congolese government to hand Ntaganda over to the ICC, but Information Minister Lambert Mende retorted that the government was ‘not yet ready’ to do so. Ntaganda appears, meanwhile, to be building a military/business empire for himself in the Kivus, collecting taxes from mines now controlled by the FARDC’s ex-CNDP units, illegal checkpoints, charcoal markets, the timber trade and border controls, and also centralising under his control a growing number of the CNDP’s disparate arms caches.

The Group’s report recommended that the UN Security Council request member states, like Germany, to prosecute violations of the sanctions regime by their nationals and leaders of armed groups residing in their territories, but we hear the recommendation is set to be rejected by the Council.

The Council also reacted with hostility to the panel’s recommendation that it adopt a coordinated strategy for the full implementation of its previous anti-FDLR resolutions, and that it direct member states to share evidence they may have against the FDLR with each other and with the panel, apparently on the recommendation of France.

It will become clear on 25 November, when the Security Council is due to vote on a new resolution, how the Council has reacted to other recommendations from the panel. It recommends that member states clarify the due diligence obligation of companies under their jurisdiction operating in Congo’s mineral trading sector, and that an eastern Congo cassiterite monitoring mechanism recently proposed by the International Tin Research Institute (ITRI) be widened to allow for the establishment of an independent monitoring team. The team should have a mandate to conduct spot checks on mineral shipments, acting on the basis of a ‘clear definition’ of what constitutes an illegal trading activity.

Given the hostility to the report from several members of the Security Council, the Group’s future will depend heavily on the energy with which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon defends the panel, which he appointed and whose mandate he agreed. Yet the Group’s report is so hard-hitting and wide-ranging in its targets that it is likely to provoke the same closing of ranks and quiet panic on the Security Council as previous reports on the illegal exploitation of minerals in Congo-Kinshasa

Criticisms of the USA’s and China’s military assistance to the Congo as ‘inadequate’, and of Russia’s trying to secure new arms deals is likely to elicit hostility from three of the five permanent members. Yet the Council will not want to be seen to be blocking actions against governments and individuals breaking UN sanctions on support for the militias wreaking havoc in Eastern Congo. The Group of Experts appointed by Ban Ki-moon has delivered on its mandate by producing a report that is unusually well-researched, detailed and precise in its allegations.The Council will be risking its already waning credibility in eastern Congo if it rejects the report and the recommendations that flow from it.

*The UN Group of Experts consists of Raymond Debelle (Belgium), Kokouma Diallo(Guinea), Christian Dietrich (United States), Claudio Gramizzi (Italy) and Dinesh Mahtani(Britain).

The April 6, 1994 assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana was the work of Hutu extremists who calculated that killing their own leader would torpedo a power‐sharing agreement known as the Arusha Accords. The landmark deal would have ended years of conflict by creating a broad‐based transitional government and an integrated Rwandan army.

However, members of the president’s inner circle, including Théoneste Bagosora, Anatole Nsengiyumva, Mathieu Ngirumpatse and Joseph Nzirorera– who would later distinguish themselves as some of the 20th Century’s most notorious war criminals– viewed the Accords as an existential threat to a Hutu- dominated Rwanda as well as their own political and economic standing. These men were not simply opposed to a reconciliation process; they were committed to the wholesale extermination of Tutsis.

By the spring of 1994, they had the means, motive and opportunity to act… and they did. While talk of assassinating the president was rampant in political and military circles, Bagosora and his co‐conspirators translated words into deeds after Habyarimana assured the UN Special Representative to Rwanda on April 2nd that he planned to implement the Arusha Accords. The president’s fate was sealed two days later when he informed his head of cabinet that a new broad-based transitional government would be sworn in upon his return from a summit meeting in Dar es Salaam set for April 6th.

Despite the far-fetched conspiracy theories that have circulated over the years, the assassination plot was relatively straightforward. Colonel Bagosora was intimately familiar with the president’s travel schedule and sufficiently powerful that the night before the summit, he was able to change the composition of the Rwandan delegation to ensure that Army Chief of Staff General Déogratias Nsabimana– who opposed Bagosora’s genocidal plans– would be on the president’s plane.

Using a proprietary radio network, Bagosora was in direct contact with elements of the presidential guard, the para- commando battalion, and most importantly, the Anti-­Aircraft Battalion (LAA). These units were located in Kanombe Camp, a stone’s throw from Kanombe International Airport in Kigali.

The LAA, which Bagosora personally commanded for several years, was not only responsible for the security of the airport, but had anti‐aircraft weapons stationed in the immediate vicinity. What’s more, LAA personnel had received specialized training in the use of surface- to- air missiles (SAMs) in France, Libya, China, North Korea and the Soviet Union.

Through their private communication channel, the conspirators tracked the progress of the president’s Falcon-50 aircraft from the moment it left Dar es Salaam to return to Kigali. As it flew west toward the airport, the conspirators fired two SAMs from an area just east of the runway and toward the northern part of Kanombe Camp. Traveling hundreds of meters a second, at least one of the missiles struck the left wing and fuselage, causing the plane to crash into the grounds of the president’s Kanombe residence.

Habyarimana’s Assassination Was Months In The Making

On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana flew to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to attend a regional summit intended to prompt implementation of a power-sharing agreement– signed in August 1993– called the Arusha Accords.

Designed to end four years of fighting, the Arusha Accords promised to effectively end Habyarimana’s twenty-year monopoly on power. For that reason, Hutu extremists, including members of the president’s own family, were determined to stop him.

Four days earlier, Habyarimana, under considerable international pressure, told the special representative of the UN Secretary General, Jacques- Roger Booh-Booh, that he would accept a broad- based transitional government and the integration of the armed forces as envisioned by the Arusha Accords. Word quickly reached Hutu extremists who began to make good on their long- standing threats:

• Lieutenant Jean de Dieu Tuyisenge, a Rwandan intelligence officer, stated that the idea of assassinating President Habyarimana originated in February 1994, with the creation of AMASASU, the armed wing of the Hutu Power movement. Led by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who would come to be known as Rwanda’s Heinrich  Himmler, AMASASU was staunchly opposed to any accommodation with the Tutsi‐led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Indeed in August 1993, Bagosora stormed out of negotiations over the Arusha Accords,  vowing that he would return to Rwanda to “prepare for the apocalypse.”

• Gasana Jean- Marie Vianney, a member of an elite French- trained commando squad based at Kanombe camp, says, “We knew that Habyarimana was going to be killed. We did not know the identity of the person who was going to kill him, but we were familiar with the planning of his death. Extremist soldiers… were angry about the fact that, during the Arusha talks, he took the side of the Tutsis… From then on; they said they were prepared to carry out a coup d’état. You understand, therefore, that his death was not a surprise to us.”

• A fellow commando at Kanombe camp, Sengendo Vénuste, was even more explicit: “Three months before the attack, some soldiers mentioned that Habyarimana was going to be brought down, that there was a plot against his airplane, that that was the reason why he left discreetly to go abroad. They said that it was Habyarimana who had prevented us from massacring the Tutsis, from exterminating the Inyenzi [cockroaches]… They said that [Colonel] Bagosora and the French had a plan to kill Habyarimana. It was said that if he died, they would be able to kill the Tutsis, to execute the genocide.”

In the months preceding the Dar es Salaam summit, Rwanda was rife with talk of assassinating the president. Some of it may have been aspirational but, according to insiders, some threats– which escalated from February to April 1994– were considered genuine enough to alter the president’s schedule:

• Johann Scheers, a Belgian friend and adviser to Habyarimana, explains that the president first revealed to him in February 1994 that if he left Rwanda, he would be killed. A month later, in March 1994, he says Habyarimana was even more explicit: “I must tell you that in a direct telephone conversation with Habyarimana… confided to me that he feared traveling by airplane for his own safety because an attack was possible on taking off or landing.”

• Innocent Twagirayezu, who served on President Habyarimana’s security detail, observed, “The death of Habyarimana did not really surprise those of us who were in charge of protecting him. I remember that upon the death of his counterpart in Côte d’Ivoire, President Habyarimana had planned to attend his funeral. At the last minute, he received intelligence that his airplane was at risk of being shot down… He therefore refused to travel and sent a representative.”

• Salathiel Senkeri, who was tasked with security at the Dar es Salaam summit, also recalled the severity of the threat: “As someone who worked in the close security staff of the President of the Republic, I was told about intelligence according to which the president’s airplane was at risk of being shot down on his return from Côte d’Ivoire. It was around three months before the attack of 06 April 1994.”

• Evariste Mwongereza, another presidential guardsman, confirmed the existence of this intelligence and the adoption of special protection measures: the Belgian intelligence services had noticed that: “more than a fortnight before the attack on the presidential airplane, Habyarimana made sure he was always accompanied by a Rwandan or even a foreigner.”

• In late March 1994, Zaire’s (DRC’s) intelligence service had collected information on the plot to assassinate Rwanda’s president. The information was considered sufficiently credible that Mobutu Sese Seko warned the president’s wife, Agatha Kanziga that Habyarimana should not go to Dar es Salaam. The first lady, unfortunately, did pass along the information to her husband.

• According to Major General Laurent Munyakazi, Colonel Bagosora declared at a reception at the Kigali Meridian hotel on April 4, 1994 that the airplane Habyarimana was taking to Tanzania would be shot down. General Munyakazi reported the threat information to the president who asked him not to share it with anyone else.

• The French crew of Habyarima’s plane was well aware of the danger. Pilot Jacky Héraud evidently spoke about threats to the president from what he described as “certain Hutu extremists who oppose any form of concession.” Habyarimana’s crew was particularly concerned about a potential attack on the Falcon- 50 and, for that reason, actively sought to delay Habyarimana’s departure out of Dar es Salaam on April 6, 1994.

The Presence Of The Army Chief Of Staff Was Unprecedented And The Result Of Last Minute Maneuvering By One Of The Architects Of The Genocide

Since taking office in 1973, President Habyarimana had never traveled outside Rwanda accompanied by the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army (CASTAR). Furthermore, as Habyarimana’s intelligence adviser, Jean-Marie Vianney Mvulirwenande, stressed such a “double absence should not have taken place in any event when the defence minister was also absent” as was the case on April 6, 1994.

Kamana François, a member of Habyarimana’s guard detail in Dar es Salaam, says that like other members of the president’s staff, he was genuinely puzzled when General Déogratias Nsabimana, the CASTAR, was added to the delegation: “The question that haunted me after I saw the agenda of the Summit… [was] why President Habyarimana had gone away with the chief of staff when the country was at war… I could not understand that logic… They never used to go away together.”

In violation of established procedure, Nsabimana received his orders to accompany the president via an unofficial channel– a telephone called from of all people, Théoneste Bagosora– the night before the trip. According to members of his security detail, even President Habyarimana was taken aback when General Nsabimana boarded the Falcon-­50 on the morning of April 6th.

In short, the president of the republic was unaware that his own chief of staff would be traveling with him outside the country, something that in his twenty years in office had never happened while General Nsabimana, for his part, was mysteriously ordered on the plane by his rival, Théoneste Bagosora, a man later sentenced to life in prison by a UN tribunal for his role as the architect of the genocide.

Unusual Deployments By The Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) Suggest Premeditation

On the first Wednesday of every month, the so- called “Big Market,” or Igiterane, was help in the commercial center of Mulindi, close to Kanombe. Tradesmen for all over the country would flock to the area, which on regular days would close by 1700 hours. The “Big Market,” however, had special customs, particularly when it came to its hours of operation. Authorities did not impose fixed hours but instead allowed the market to operate until it came to a natural end.

But on April 6, 1994, presidential guardsmen from the Kanombe camp entered the “Big Market” between 1400 and 1500 hours and violently dispersed those present. Buyers and sellers alike were forced to pack up their goods. Even on regular market days, people would linger in the area for hours, milling about at local bars. Yet in the hours preceding the attack, soldiers ordered civilians to immediately leave the area and not to go out into the surrounding streets at nightfall.

In other areas, Belgian peacekeepers like Pascal-Charles Voituron noticed that shortly before the attack, Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) soldiers set up barriers and checkpoints near the National Development Council (CND) where a contingent from the Rwandan Patriotic Front was located.

Thierry Charlier, a Belgian journalist working in Rwanda, reported: “European civil witnesses told me in Kigali that roadblocks and soldiers were already in place at certain junctions in town before the attack against the presidential airplane. These junctions were not normally occupied.”

A string of Belgian peacekeepers have testified that the methodical nature of the FAR’s movements suggested prior knowledge and planning.

• Lieutenant LecomteJean- Noël: “[W]e were surprised by the speed of the reaction by the FAR and gendarmes. It should be said that they were very low on radios. The way they reacted only seems possible to me if there was prior organization.”

• For his part, Lieutenant- Colonel Chantraine René: “The speed of the presidential guard’s reaction and the speed with which a new government was put in place with an extremist majority made me think that it was on this side that we should be looking for the perpetrators of the attack.”

Chief Warrant Officer Defraigne Christian Joseph: “What surprised me was the speed with which the FAR acted. Less than 20 minutes after the attack the whole town was controlled and blocked off. It seemed to me that the soldiers were aware before the attack of what was going to happen and what they had to do.” [emphasis original]

The Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) Possessed Surface-To-Air Missiles, Were Trained In Their Use And Had An Anti-Aircraft Battalion Stationed At Kanombe

Documents unearthed by the committee show that between November 1990 and February 1992, Rwandan military officials ordered dozens of man- portable anti- aircraft missiles and missile launchers from the Soviet Union, North Korea, Egypt, China and Brazil. The most sophisticated of these items was the SA- 16 GIMLET (known in the Soviet Bloc as the IGLA- 1), which has an infrared (IR) guidance system and a two- color ‘seeker’ designed to home in on airframe radiation.

There is additional information to suggest that France provided the FAR with SA- 16s purchased by Iraq in 1988 and which France later recovered during the Gulf War. The Committee also obtained documentation showing that between 1992 and 1993, Rwanda specifically requested that France provide 150 mid- range surface- to- air missiles along with 12 launchers.

What’s more, FAR personnel received specialized training in the use of surface- to- air missiles in France, Libya, China, Korea and the Soviet Union.

Upon their return, soldiers were assigned to either the Reconnaissance Squadron Battalion or the Anti- Aircraft Battalion (known as the LAA), which was commanded for many years by none other than Colonel Théoneste Bagosora. The LAA was responsible for the security of Kanombe International Airport in Kigali and had anti-aircraft weapons stationed in the immediate vicinity.

According to experts from Britain’s National Defence Academy who were consulted by the Committee:

The elements of the witness statements accepted by the authors as credible and well founded indicate that the firing point for the surface to air missile/s launch would be bordered by an area incorporating the eastern end of the runway, the President’s Residence, and the northern extremities of Kanombe Camp. This would necessitate a surface to air missile with a capability to engage an approaching aircraft head on or flank/head on.

While the SA- 16 has this capability, so does the French- made Mistral man- portable surface- to-air missile. According to information obtained by UN peacekeepers as well as an April 1994 weapons inventory obtained by a non- governmental organization, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) possessed fifteen Mistrals.

A Diverse Group Of Eyewitnesses Confirm That Habyarimana’s Plane Was Hit By Missiles Fired From Kanombe—An Area Controlled By The Presidential Guard

As the Dar es Salaam Summit opened on April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana confirmed publicly what he had told a senior UN official privately days earlier; namely, that he intended to implement the Arusha Accords upon his return to Kigali. While it is technically accurate to say he had sealed his own fate, the fact remains, preparations for the president’s assassination were already well underway.

Tanzanian officials tried to persuade the president to overnight in their capitol while Habyarimana’s own flight crew, citing intelligence concerning a threat to the presidential aircraft, pleaded with his security detail to delay departure by a day. The requests went unheeded.

Instead, President Habyarimana left Dar es Salaam at 1807 hours. He was accompanied on the flight by Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, Rwandan Army Chief of Staff General Nsabimana, six staffers and three crew members.

As the Falcon- 50 traveled west on an approach that took it over Rusororo Hill toward Kanombe and the airport, Faustin Rwamakuba, a member of the presidential guard situated on the tarmac reported seeing “a shooting star heading towards the airplane.”

Outside the airport’s Old Control Tower, Belgian peacekeeper Corporal Mathieu Gerlache, observed that:

The point originated from the Kanombe camp… You could have thought it was a shooting star from its shape. It was when I noticed that this point was going in the direction of the airplane that I realized it must have been missile fire. At that moment, the lights of the airplane went out but the airplane did not explode after the first shot… I was even more convinced that it was missile fire when I saw a second point of light, the same as the first, coming from the same place and going in the direction of the airplane.

Stationed on the other side of the airport, Cyprien Sindano, the senior- most aviation official on scene “saw a tracer bullet going up and following the airplane’s path. Straight away, a second was launched and hit the airplane in mid- flight. The airplane exploded with a crash, its lights went out, and a haze of gunfire broke out in all directions at the edges of the airport.”

Inside the control tower, Patrice Munyaneza, the air traffic controller, heard an explosion and went into overdrive. Looking outside, he saw the plane engulfed in flames and rushed to call the pilot who was no longer responding.

Three kilometers away, another Belgian peacekeeper, Lieutenant Colonel Pasuch Massimo, had finished work at Kanombe military hospital and was sitting at home:

I was in my living room. I then firstly heard a “blast” noise and saw an “orange” shooting light. I wondered who on earth would be celebrating something. The “blast” was followed by 2 detonations. At that moment I did not hear any more noise from the airplane.

My first reaction was to think that they had brought down the C-130(B) which was supposed to arrive that evening. I went out of my house and there I saw a ball of fire that was crashing onto the President’s land…

By comparing eyewitness testimony against a range of scientific data, British experts determined that President Habyarimana’s plane was hit by at least one surface- to- air missile fired from Kanombe, an area controlled by Habyarimana’s own presidential guard.

The Committee’s Findings Are Consistent With The United Nations’ Own Confidential Findings

Following the genocide, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) brought together a team of intelligence specialists to examine the downing of President Habyarimana’s plane. Comprised of an Australian, an American, a Brit and a Canadian, the team collected and analyzed information from a variety of sources in Rwanda, Zaire (Congo) and elsewhere.

According to Sean Moorhouse, a British Army captain, the UNAMIR (II) team concluded that “the Rwandan president’s airplane had been shot down by three Whites with the help of the Presidential Guard and that the shots from weapons which brought down the airplane were fired from the Kanombe military camp.”