NGO files complaint over two French officers slain in Rwandan genocide

A French NGO has filed a complaint seeking a probe into the deaths of two French officers killed in the early days of the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

French soldiers of the marine tank infantry regiment (RICM), participating in the French-led military Operation Turquoise, patrol and pass Hutu troops from the Rwandan government forces training with sticks, on 27 June, 1994, near Gisenyie, Rwanda. © AFP - Pascal Guyot (Files)

The Survie NGO that advocates for better relations between France and Africa, and two relatives, on Monday sought answers over the deaths of two military police members Rene Maier and Alain Didot, as well as his wife Gilda Didot, in the Rwandan capital Kigali.

Exactly three decades on, "this complaint aims to establish responsibilities in the death of two French gendarmes and the wife of one of them in Kigali [...] in circumstances that remain mysterious," Survie said in a statement.

It claimed a French intelligence note that year suggested "the three French nationals could have been eliminated after they were witnesses" of the 6 April, 1994 assassination of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana.

The downing of his plane over Kigali triggered the genocide that killed more than 800,000 people between April and July 1994, mostly from the Tutsi minority but also moderate Hutus.

The massacres of Tutsis started the day after Habyarimana's assassination.

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A day after that, the Didot couple were reported dead on 8 April, 1994.

Didot, a radio technician, had arrived in 1992 to advise the Rwandan army and secure the French embassy's communications, according to the complaint.

Maier, an assistant technician, arrived in 1993.

'No autopsy or investigation'

UN peacekeepers from Belgium retrieved their bodies on 12 April. They found the remains of Maier the next day.

The plaintiffs say the bodies were then repatriated via the Central African Republic, where death certificates were issued. But they say a total of eight inconsistent certificates exist for the three people.

No autopsy or investigation was ever conducted, they say.

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame – whose militia helped to stop the massacres – on Sunday said the international community had "failed" his country during the 1994 genocide as he paid tribute to victims 30 years after Hutu extremists tore apart the nation.

(with AFP)