French judges dismiss genocide case against Rwanda’s former first lady

Investigating judges in Paris ordered the dismissal of a case alleging the widow of Rwanda’s former president played a role in the country’s 1994 genocide, according to court documents seen by AFP on Thursday.

Agathe Habyarimana, 82, who has been living in France since 1998 and whose extradition has been repeatedly requested by Kigali, now appears highly unlikely to face trial by a French court following the ruling.

“There are insufficient charges against Agathe Kanziga (Habyarimana) to show she could have been an accomplice to genocide”, or could have participated in “conspiracy to commit genocide”, the judges wrote in the order seen by AFP.

“To date, Agathe Kanziga appears not as the perpetrator of genocide, but as a victim of the terrorist attack” in which her husband, brother, and relatives were killed, the judges said.

The former first lady fled Rwanda with French help just days after her husband’s plane was shot down in April 1994, triggering the genocide, which saw around 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, slaughtered in one of the 20th century’s worst atrocities.

The investigation has been underway since 2008, when a French-based victims’ association filed a legal complaint against Habyarimana, who was questioned over suspicions that she was part of the Hutu inner circle of power that planned and orchestrated the killings.

In the investigation, she had the status of an assisted witness, which in France’s legal system is between being a witness and being charged.

The investigation was closed in 2022, but French anti-terror prosecutors, who sought to charge Habyarimana, requested a new probe be opened.

In May, judicial authorities closed the investigation without pressing charges, a decision now under appeal by the National Anti-Terror Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT).

Sources: French 24