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French prosecutor clears France of responsibility for enabling 1994 Rwandan genocide

FRANCE’S top prosecutor Remy Heitz said today that there are no grounds to pursue legal claims that France bears responsibility for enabling the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

In a statement he said that investigations by French authorities could not prove complicity by French troops in the killings carried out by the Hutu-led government.

Some 800,000 people, mainly from the Tutsi ethnic minority, were killed between April and July 1994. 

Last month Rwanda produced a report claiming that France knew that a genocide was being prepared in advance. It said that France was a “collaborator” with the brutal Hutu regime and remained “unwavering in its support” of its allies despite knowing that a slaughter was being prepared.

The French government has been accused of helping those responsible for the genocide escape the country, with some of them being granted asylum in France.

The country’s highest court has refused 48 extradition requests, insisting that the crime of genocide was not in the Rwandan statute book at the time of the massacres.

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