By Our Reporter
The investigation into Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana’s possible role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda has concluded, without the widow of the former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, being indicted.
Judges determined that the incriminating testimonies were “contradictory, inconsistent, or even false.”
According to sources close to the case cited by French media this Monday, the investigating judge for crimes against humanity at the Paris Judicial Court issued the closure decision on Friday, May 16.
Since 2016, Agathe Habyarimana, 82, had held the intermediate legal status of assisted witness, and therefore now escapes a trial at this stage.
“Lack of specific and corroborating evidence”
This decision may indicate a forthcoming dismissal of the case. The French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) had in September requested the indictment of Mrs. Habyarimana for conspiracy to commit genocide.
A closed-door hearing is scheduled for this coming Wednesday, May 21.
“Mrs. Habyarimana is calmly awaiting the outcome of the procedure, which has taken a dramatic turn today with the decision issued by the investigating judge, which undermines the prosecution’s case,” said her lawyer, Philippe Meilhac, as quoted by AFP news agency. “It is time for the necessary dismissal to be pronounced as soon as possible.”
Rejecting the PNAT’s requests, the judge in charge of the case—co-assigned with another specialized judge—concluded in a Friday order that “there is currently no serious and corroborating evidence against Agathe Kanziga (Habyarimana) suggesting she could have been complicit in acts of genocide” or “participated in a conspiracy to commit genocide.”
“While rumors are persistent, they cannot serve as evidence without specific and consistent facts,” the judges wrote.
They re-interviewed Agathe Habyarimana in December 2024, along with other witnesses, but refused to carry out other “unnecessary actions” given the “already significantly exceeded reasonable timeframe,” the order states.
“No hate speech”
On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying Agathe Habyarimana’s husband, president Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down while landing in Kigali. The ensuing days and months saw the systematic genocide against Tutsis, carried out by the Rwandan Armed Forces and extremist Interahamwe militias.
From April to July 1994, the genocide resulted in massacre of over a million Tutsis, according to official data verified from a national census in 2008.
Agathe Habyarimana has been prosecuted for “complicity in genocide” in France since 2007, following a complaint filed by the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda.
She is also the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda. However, while France denied her asylum application, it has also refused to extradite her to Rwanda.
She has lived in France without legal status since 1998.
According to the judges in their latest decision, Agathe Habyarimana “appears not as a perpetrator of the genocide, but rather as a victim of this terrorist attack,” and “there is no evidence of a link between the first murders committed by some members of the presidential guard or the army and an order she may have given” on the evening of April 6, 1994.
Three days later, she was evacuated to Europe with her family at the request of French President François Mitterrand, a close ally of her husband.
According to the judges, there is “no public speech by Agathe Kanziga inciting hatred or genocide,” “no testimony linking her” to lists of Tutsi to be killed, and “no trace” of her having intervened to spread propaganda on Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which broadcast anti-Tutsi hate messages, or of having funded it.
The judges thus were essentially responding to long-standing accusations against Agathe Habyarimana as one of the leaders of the akazu—the inner circle of the ethnic extremist Hutu power—which, according to indictments from Rwanda; planned and orchestrated the genocide of the Tutsi, allegations she denies.
Patrick Baudouin, lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a civil party, told Le Monde that he “regrets the lack of indictment, despite the existence of ample incriminating evidence.”
