Photo:UNAMIR military force commander, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire.
January 25, 2009
Photo:UNAMIR military force commander, Canadian General Romeo
Dallaire.
The murder of two African presidents
The idea that the Rwandan government planned the genocide of the
minority Tutsi population in 1994 rests primarily on the statements of the
enemies of that government who need the idea of a genocide in order to justify
the final act of aggression against Rwanda by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)
so-called and its allies. That final act of aggression was the RPF offensive
launched the night of April 6, 1994 with the massacre of everyone on board the
jet aircraft of President Habyarimana, the Hutu president of Rwanda and
President Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi.
The two presidents were returning from a meeting called by President Museveni of
Uganda to discuss the implementation of the Arusha Accords, the peace agreement
between the Rwandan government and the RPF-Ugandan forces which had invaded the
country in 1990. Also on board the plane was the Rwandan Army Chief of Staff,
other dignitaries and a French military crew. The plane was shot down by
anti-aircraft missiles as it approached Kigali airport. It is now established
that the plane was shot down by the RPF with the cooperation and assistance of
western powers including the United States of America, Britain, Belgium and
Canada. President Ntaryamira was the second Hutu president murdered by Tutsis.
President Ndadaye of Burundi was murdered by Tutsi officers of the Burundi Army
in October of 1993.
British and US interests
The attack on the plane was the culmination of a long-planned war by
the RPF and its allies. The war began in 1990 when Ugandan soldiers of Tutsi
origin invaded Rwanda under the name of the RPF. This act of aggression by
Uganda was supported by both Britain and the USA. Those countries provided the
encouragement and the financial, material, logistical, advisory and training
support necessary, flowing it all through the Ugandan Army to the RPF. The
American and British instigated and controlled the war as a means of advancing
their grand strategy of invading Zaire to seize control of the vast resources of
the Congo basin.
The first attack was repelled and the RPF then adopted terrorism and guerilla
operations to undermine Rwanda. Several other major attacks took place in the
following three years. At the same time, the western allies of the RPF pressured
the Rwandan government to come to terms with the RPF and in 1993 at Arusha,
Tanzania, a series of negotiations resulted in the signing of the Arusha
Accords. The Rwandan government was forced to make several major concessions to
the RPF even though it could only claim, at best, to represent 15% of the
Rwandan population. The Accords called for the establishment of a transition
government sharing power with the RPF, leading to elections of a final
government. However, it was known by everyone that the RPF could never win such
elections and could only win power by force of arms and treachery.
Enter Dallaire
The Accords also called for the presence in Rwanda of a neutral UN
force to help keep the peace during the process. That force, known as UNAMIR,
was headed by Jacques Roger Booh-Booh and, under him, the military force
commander, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire.
As UN documents show, Dallaire was aware, at least from December 1993, and
probably before, that the RPF, with the support of the Ugandan Army, was daily
violating the Accords by sending into Rwanda men, materiel, and light and heavy
weapons in preparation for a final offensive. Dallaire kept this information
from his boss Booh-Booh and the Secretary General, Boutros-Ghali. The RPF was
assisted in these violations of the Accords by the Belgian contingent of UNAMIR
and the Canadian officers involved who turned a blind eye to the RPF and Ugandan
Army smuggling into Rwanda men and materiel and even assisted them in doing so
all the while protesting that the Hutu regime was hiding weapons, a charge which
has never been proved.
In conjunction with the military build-up by the RPF and its allies, including
the infiltration into Kigali, the capital city, of up to 10,000 RPF soldiers,
western journalists and western intelligence services masquerading as “human
rights” organizations began a concerted propaganda campaign against the
Government and through it the Hutu people, accusing it of various human rights
abuses, none of which were substantiated. The RPF engaged in assassinations of
officials, politicians and civilians, and attempted to cast the blame on the
government. Dallaire assisted in this campaign by suppressing facts concerning
these crimes and openly siding with the RPF propaganda statements.
A country pushed to the brink
These actions, combined with the stresses of the war on the economy and
the social fabric of the country, mass unemployment, a large internal refugee
population fleeing RPF attacks, and the breakdown of the government’s ability to
function caused by the collapse of revenue from coffee and tea exports, resulted
in a tinderbox. Only a spark was needed for the country to explode. That spark
was the murder of the much-loved President and the country-wide offensive
launched by the RPF and its allies the night of April 6, 1994.
From the very start of their offensive, the RPF began a propaganda campaign
claiming that they were motivated by the need to stop a “genocide”. This
entirely false claim was never questioned by the western press, always eager to
support their governments, even in the face of the fact that the Rwandan
government several times asked the RPF for cease-fires so that civilian attacks
on civilians could be stopped, and the fact that Rwanda, then a member of the
Security Council, demanded that 5,000 more UN troops be sent to assist in
controlling the situation a request refused at the instigation of the US.
They stepped up this campaign as the war progressed. On April 13, 1994 the RPF
demanded the trial of the Rwandan government and army for “genocide” before an
international tribunal, echoing the threat made to President Habyarimana by
Herman Cohen
[2] on behalf of the US in the fall of 1993 that unless
Habyarimana ceded all power to the RPF his body would be dragged through the
streets of Kigali and his government tried by an international tribunal. This
demand at one and the same time:
criminalized the Rwandan government,
justified the RPF and American refusal to negotiate terms with “criminals”,
prevented the government from obtaining support and assistance from its major
western ally, France,
destroyed any support it had in the international community and public opinion,
and finally,
justified the brutal RPF military dictatorship over the people of Rwanda and the
refusal to allow Hutus any power in Rwanda.
The RPF and its allies succeeded in all these objectives and continue their
propaganda campaign today with continuous show trials both in Rwanda, through
the Gacaca “trial” system and through the show trials of Hutus taking place at
the American and British controlled Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal in Arusha,
Tanzania.
Two major problems with RPF claims of genocide
However, there are two major problems with the RPF claims. Firstly,
there is a surprising lack of evidence of a genocide of Tutsis. In fact, the
only independent study of those killed in Rwanda in 1994, being conducted by a
team of researchers at the University of Maryland indicates that there were
approximately 250,000 people killed, not the 800,000 plus advanced by the RPF
and that for every Tutsi killed two Hutus were killed and those mainly by the
RPF. This is confirmed in the recently released book, Rwanda, Histoire Secrete
(2005, Edition du Panama) written by a former RPF officer named Abdul who states
that the RPF shot down the plane [for further sources on this key issue see
APPENDIX
below] and that there was a genocide not of Tutsis by Hutus but of Hutus by the
RPF.
Secondly, there is a stunning lack of documentary evidence of a government plan
to commit genocide. There are no orders, minutes of meetings, notes, cables,
faxes, radio intercepts or any other type of documentation that such a plan ever
existed. In fact, the documentary evidence establishes just the opposite.
The "genocide" fax
This lack of documentation is the Achilles Heel of the RPF-western
claims of genocide. Something was needed to fill this void. That something is
the so-called “genocide” fax supposedly sent to New York UN HQ on the night of
January 10th-11th 1994 and which first made its appearance in public on November
28th, 1995 when it was placed in the UN files in New York and contemporaneously
leaked to a journalist in Belgium and the London Observer.
This fax is the single document upon which the claims of a planned genocide
rest. It was supposedly sent by General Dallaire to General Baril, another
Canadian general at the Dept of Peace Keeping Operations in New York. It sets
out the claims of a UN informant named Jean Pierre Turatsinze that the ruling
government party planned to exterminate Tutsis, was training civilians for that
purpose and that there was a plan to kill Belgian soldiers to provoke the
withdrawal of UN forces. This fax has been trumpeted by the ICTR prosecution as
the key to the plan to commit genocide. However, all the evidence presented at
the Tribunal and elsewhere establishes that, in fact, the fax is a fabrication.
On November 5th, 1995 the RPF organized a conference in Kigali to amplify
support for their claims of genocide and for the trial and punishment of those
responsible. This conference failed to provide any documentary evidence of such
a claim. At the same time a UNAMIR commission was created by its new head, Mr. S
Khan and which included several UN officers who went through all the UNAMIR
cables, faxes and reports to determine whether there had been any prior
indication of such a plan. Not one document was found, especially the “genocide”
fax. That report is dated November 20th , 1995.
Fax on the fast track
Then, mysteriously, a few days after the release of the UN report, on
November 28th, 1995 a fax machine at the UN offices in New York received a fax
of a copy of a code cable dated January 11th 1994 sent by Dallaire to General
Baril. The problem is that the person who sent the fax to New York that day was
a Colonel R. M. Connaughton of the British Army, based at Camberly, Surrey,
England, the home of the British Military Academy, Sandhurst as well as several
other British Army establishments. His name and fax number appear at the top of
the document. There was no cover letter explaining who sent it, why it was sent,
nor is there anything indicating why this document was accepted by the UN in New
York and placed in the DPKO files.
This document has typed on its face, “This cable was not found in DPKO files.
The present copy was placed in the files on November 28th, 1995.” It is signed
by Lamin J. Sise, a UN official. The document contains other handwritten notes
made on it after its receipt that day.
However, the copy of this document presented by the Prosecutor at the ICTR for
the last ten years has had the name and fax number of the sender, Sise’s note
and other notes removed. It is this doctored version of the cable that the
Prosecutor tried to present as an exhibit in the Military II in October, 2005,
through a prosecution witness, Lt. Col. Claeys, an officer of the Belgian Army
and one of the men who claims to have drafted and sent the original cable. But
the prosecution suffered a major setback and embarrassment when defence counsel
objected to the attempt to make this doctored version an exhibit and entered
into the record the copy of the fax contained in the DPKO files bearing the name
of the British Army source.
Conflicting testimony
Both General Dallaire and Lt. Col. Claeys have testified that the
contents of the fax as set out in the fax presented by the prosecution are
identical to the contents of the fax or cable sent the night of January
10th-11th, though interestingly Dallaire states that Claeys was not involved in
drafting the fax, whereas Claeys insists he was. It is clear that Dallaire
testified to the contrary when he was faced on cross-examination in the Military
I trial with statements made by Claeys in 1995 to Belgian investigators and in
1997 to the Belgian Senate, that the fax sent that night dealt only with weapons
caches and seeking protection for the informant and contained nothing about
killing Tutsis or killing Belgian soldiers. In order to eliminate this
embarrassing fact, Dallaire simply erased Claeys from the picture.
It is clear from the the fax itself and the surrounding circumstances, that
there was a fax sent that night but it was not the one now presented to the ICTR
and the world as the one sent by Dallaire.
The informant was presented to Dallaire by Faustin Twagiramungu , a Rwandan
opposition candidate for Prime Minister and an opponent of the Rwandan
government and a sympathizer of the RPF. He has since stated that he told
Dallaire and his staff that the informant claimed to have information only about
weapons caches and he was surprised to hear years later that the informant had
information about the killing of Tutsis and Belgians.
General Dallaire does not mention such a fax before November 1995. There is no
mention of plans to kill Tutsis or Belgians contained in notes of meetings
between the informant and Claeys which followed the first meeting with the
informant described in the fax. Again, the principal subject mentioned in those
meetings is weapons caches. Neither Dallaire nor any of the Belgian commanders
acted as if they had received any such information. There was no action taken by
them to put their men on alert or to take precautions. There was no response
from New York to such a fax. There exist only responses to a fax concerning
weapons caches, but this original fax is nowhere to be found.
It is clear that Dallaire sent a fax that night and that it concerned only
weapons caches and seeking advice from New York regarding the protection of the
informant. In fact, the subject heading of the “genocide” fax is not “genocide”
or “killing” but an innocuous “Request For Protection of Informant”. The present
fax was fabricated using the original fax which dealt with weapons caches only
by cutting out some of the paragraphs of that fax and pasting in new paragraphs
about killing Tutsis and Belgians. This is supported by the fact that the
paragraphs are numbered 1 through 13 but there is no paragraph 12. Further the
only reply to a fax sent that night from Kigali refers to a paragraph 7 as the
action paragraph. But in the fax as presented by the prosecution the action
paragraph is paragraph 9, the paragraph seeking advice on protection of the
informant. Also Paragraph 11 states that Dallaire will meet with Faustin
Twagiramungu to brief him on events but as we know that man states that he was
never told of such information coming from the informant. Lastly, paragraph 2
states that the killing of Belgians would “guarantee Belgian withdrawal from
Rwanda” something that could only be known after the fact.
Nobody told Booh-Booh
One last curious fact is that Dallaire states he bypassed protocol by sending
the fax without the signature of his boss, Booh-Booh or his seeing it. He states
that this is the only occasion when this happened. This only makes sense if, in
fact, he did not violate protocol as he never sent this fax in the first place.
His version is a way of getting around the fact that Booh-Booh never saw what is
now called the “genocide” fax. Booh-Booh testified at the Rwanda War Crimes
Tribunal the week of November 21, 2005 that he never saw the fax Dallaire says
he sent and that further that General Dallaire never mentioned to him in their
meeting of January 12, 1994 that the informant mentioned the killing of Belgians
or Tutsis. Booh-Booh also testified that when he and Dallaire met with several
western ambassadors, including the Belgian ambassador, Dallaire never mentioned
the killing of Belgians or Tutsis to them either nor in their meeting with
President Habyarimana. In those meetings Dallaire spoke only about allegations
of weapons caches.
New colonialism masquerading as “international justice”
All these circumstances can lead to one conclusion only; that the fax
is a fabrication after the fact and that a fraud is being committed on the
people of Rwanda and the world and the judges of the Rwanda war crimes tribunal.
This fabricated fax is being used to try to condemn the accused on trial before
the ICTR and to support the now discredited idea that a genocide was planned by
the former Rwandan government against the Tutsi population of that tragic
country. However it is becoming increasingly clear that General Dallaire worked
with the RPF throughout the period of his mandate in Rwanda in violation of the
UN mandate. Booh-Booh states that he provided military intelligence to the RPF
as well as covering up their preparation for their final offensive and through
his false testimony at the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal and his book continues to
act on behalf of powerful interests in his own government and that of the United
States and Britain.
The fabrication of the “genocide” fax is one more nail in the coffin of the
Rwanda war crimes tribunal, ready to be buried under the weight of accusations
of selective prosecution, political bias, unfair procedures, trial by hearsay,
perjured testimony and the cover-up of the murder of two African heads of state
and all in the name of a new colonialism masquerading as “international
justice”.
Appendix
1) In his book, Abdul Ruzibiza states that he was one of the men
involved in the shootdown as part of the shootdown team. He was an officer in
the RPF. He is dues to testify at the ICTR in the coming weeks if his security
can be assured. He is presently in hiding in Norway.
2) Hourigan Report.
This report (a copy of which is in the author's possession) was written by an
Australian lawyer acting as the head of the investigative team at the ICTR
assigned by then prosecutor Louise Arbour to determine who shot down the plane.
She was acting under the theory that "extremist" Hutus in the Rwandan government
shot down the plane. Hourigan and his team were successful in finding three
members of the shootdown team who stated they were RPF and that they were
assisted by a foreign power (unnamed) and that they had the documents to prove
it. They asked for protection. When Arbour was presented with these facts she
ordered the investigation closed. The author was informed by a former FBI agent
who worked at the ICTR that she did so on the instructions of the US ambassador
in Rwanda. (Which would make her guilty of being an accessory to a war crime as
the murder of a head of state in a war is a war crime and it is evident that the
murder of the president and army chief of staff was the first action of the RPF
offensive.) This report was first published in the National Post in Canada by a
reporter named Stephen Edwards in 2001.
The UN at first denied this report existed. But several defence counsel demanded
its production so it was then "found" and sent under seal to the judges at the
ICTR. They then released it to several defence teams.
Hourigan wrote this report to the oversight office for some reason and is a
summary of the complete file. Several requests have been made to have the
complete investigative file released, without success. Hourigan is now said to
be working as a lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia.
3. Jean Piere Mugabe the former head of RPF intelligence who also fled the
regime also stated in 2001 that Kagame and the RPF shot down the plane.
4. French investigative judge Brugiere investigating the shootdown on behalf of
the families of the French crew leaked (or someone in his office did) a copy of
the report to a French journalist with the English name Steven Smith last year
who published its findings in Le Monde that it was the RPF who shot it down with
the assistance of others.
5. Former Secratery General Boutros-Boutros Ghali stated this year that he had
met Brugiere at a conference and was told by the French judge that the CIA was
"heavily implicated" in the shootdown.
6. The RPF was the only force in Rwanda which had anti-aircraft missiles to the
knowledge of the Force Commander Dallaire. Dallaire arranged for the closure of
the western approach to the runway at the request of the RPF. This made it
easier for the RPF and others to track the plane as it came in from the east.
The Belgian contingent of the UN force was in control of the airport area and
the area from which the missiles were fired. A Belgian unit (later killed at
Camp Kigali) were the only people caught by the army coming out of the firing
area after the shootdown when the army threw up a cordon to try to catch the
culprits.
7. Wayne Madsen a former US intel officer who wrote, CIA Covert Operations in
the Great Lakes Area, 1990-93, states that (and testified to this before the US
Congress in 2001 when hearings were held by Cynthia McKinney into the Rwanda and
Congo wars) that the CIA, using a Swiss front company used that company to rent
a hangar at the Kigali airport in which they assembled the missiles. He also
states that the US hoped to kill at the same time Mobutu of Zaire and Daniel
Arap Moi of Kenya all in in one fell swoop (they were supposed to attend the
same meeting and be on the same flight) in order to seize control of all central
and east Africa. At that time the US 6th fleet was cruising off Mombasa and
there were 600 US Rangers on stand-by to assist the RPF in Burundi.
8. Charles Onana a well-know journalist writing on this subject wrote about his
investigations and that it was the RPF, as did Canadian author Robin Philpot in
his book It Didn't Happen That Way In Kigali (loose translation of the French
title).
7. Honore Ngambo, Mobutu's former chief of security published a book earlier
this year in France in which he recounts the last meeting between Mobut and the
Hutu president two days before he was killed in which the President stated that
he was told by Herman Cohen he was basically a dead man and that he heard from
his agents in the RPF camp that they were going to shootdown the plane. He
confronted Dallaire with this and that he knew Dallaire was involved and
Dallaire just replied "No one will believe you".
8. The author possesses a radio intercept of a message sent by Kagame to his
forces in the field the night of the shootdown stating that the "Target is hit"
and encouraging his forces to take to the field and that they would be in Kigali
and were receiving support from their friends in the south, that is from
Burundi—US and Burundian forces the latter of which actually invaded Rwanda in
May to link up with the RPF coming form the north. Other radio messages were
intercepted referring to the fact the RPF had the assistance of the Belgians in
the UN forces who were fighting alongside them. The Belgians deny this of
course.
Footnotes:
[1] For an earlier essay entitled “ Persecution not
Prosecution” (October 2004) see
http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=747
[2] Herman Cohen is a former US Secretary of State for African
affairs who served under the elder George Bush. He is a consultant to American
business firms operating and trading in Africa.
He also provides strategic advice to African governments.
© 2003-5. Sanders Research Associates. All rights reserved.
Source:
Scoop Independent News
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