Date: 27th-April 2007

 

GENOCIDE - Belgium has denied the Rwandan commission charged with adducing evidence on the role of France in the Rwandan Genocide permission to interview serving military and political officials, The New Times has learnt.

According to the Commission’s president, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the Belgian government turned down the commission’s requests when the government applied to interview some of the officials who were in Rwanda during the Genocide.

“We channelled our written requests through the Belgian embassy in Kigali and after our first letter (dated February 5) went unanswered, we followed it up with another one on March 12 only to get a reply that we cannot interview officials who are still serving either in military or political circles,” Mucyo said in an interview.

The announcement stopping the government from attempting to interview some high ranking military and political officials still serving in the Brussels government was contained in a March 28 letter, The New Times has learnt Mucyo, who is the former Prosecutor General, said that the Belgians first asked them to submit the names of the people they wanted to interview but later pointed out that they were ‘not in position to let serving officers to testify’.

He however said that this will not frustrate the functioning of the commission because the commission has got a lot of information and many people to testify adding that some were from the same European state.

“It is only that we needed many people to testify in order to cross-check with the information we already have but since they are not willing to let them testify, we will use what we have,” Mucyo said.

The Belgian Ambassador to Rwanda Francois Roux confirmed the development but said it was not a deliberate move to block the commission.

“It is true that our government stopped the Mucyo commission from collecting some testimonies from serving military and political leaders because there are some laws that do not allow them to do so,” he told The New Times in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

Roux explained that the Brussels establishment had recently amended some of the laws that now restrict such a category of people from giving testimonies in a foreign country when they still serve different leadership portfolios in Belgium.

“According to the new law, serving political leaders and senior military officers can only give the commission their testimonies under a specific legal arrangement that includes taking an oath and the testimonies have to be recorded among others,” the Belgian Ambassador said, adding that he was yet to meet President Paul Kagame over the issue.

“I wrote to the commission over the matter and I am now meeting the President (Kagame) very soon to try and see how we can go around this problem,” Roux said.

The denial by Belgian government follows that of France which, through Michele Alioti-Marie, the French Defence Minister gave a directive early this year blocking all officials attached to her ministry to talk to the commission.

The French government, despite the numerous testimonies heard attesting to the French role in the 1994 genocide, has remained defiant of accepting their role.

BY FELLY KIMENYI AND ROBERT MUKOMBOZI
The New Times