FRENCH POLICE yesterday arrested Agathe Habyarimana, the widow of Rwanda’s assassinated ex-president, who is wanted for trial in her homeland for her alleged role in planning the 1994 genocide.
Her detention came less than a week after Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president to visit Rwanda since the genocide. Mr Sarkozy acknowledged during the visit that France had made serious mistakes in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, and said all those responsible for the killings should be punished.
Ms Habyarimana (67) has been living in a Paris suburb for the past 12 years. She had been airlifted out of her country by the French military after her husband Juvénal Habyarimana’s aircraft was shot down in April 1994, an event that triggered the genocide. She has been repeatedly refused asylum in France.
French police were acting on an international arrest warrant issued by Rwandan authorities late last year when they turned up at Ms Habyarimana’s home in Courcouronnes, south of Paris, yesterday morning.
Rwandan authorities, who have accused Paris of not doing enough to pursue alleged genocidaires living in France, welcomed the arrest. Justice minister Tharcisse Karugarama remarked that “at long last the long arm of the law is finally taking its course”, but declined to link the news to Mr Sarkozy’s visit. “It could be a coincidence, but whatever it is, it’s a good sign, it’s good news,” he told a news agency.
The Rwandan government has accused Ms Habyarimana of being a member of the inner circle that planned the mass killings, a charge she strongly denies.
She left Rwanda three days after her husband was killed in a missile attack on his aircraft near Kigali in April 1994, an event that set off a killing campaign that resulted in the deaths of 800,000 Rwandans – mostly Tutsis – in less than three months.
Relations between France and Rwanda have been strained since the genocide, with Kigali accusing Paris of having trained and armed the Hutu militias that were behind the killings. Rwanda severed diplomatic ties with France in 2006 after a Paris judge accused Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and nine aides of shooting down Habyarimana’s aircraft.
However, diplomatic ties were restored last November, and Mr Sarkozy’s visit was an important symbolic milestone in the fragile rapprochement between the two states.
Despite yesterday’s arrest, it is unclear whether France will be willing to extradite Ms Habyarimana to Rwanda for trial. France has transferred three Rwandan suspects to Tanzania to face prosecution before an international tribunal, but judges have so far refused to extradite genocide suspects to Kigali.