New twist in one of the most sensitive legal cases linked to the genocide in Rwanda: the Paris Court of Appeal canceled on Wednesday June 21 the order of dismissal issued in the investigation into the alleged inaction of the French army during the Bisesero massacres at the end of June 1994 .
Will the French army be judged for not having helped Tutsis during the massacres of Bisesero, in Rwanda, in June 1994? The dismissal rendered in September 2022 in this sensitive file was canceled this Wednesday, June 21, 2023 by the Paris Court of Appeal, but only for a question of procedure.
It was a question of form that led the Paris Court of Appeal to annul the dismissal order of September 1, 2022. A few months earlier, a summary of the Duclert report which underlined the “profound failure” of the France in Bisesero was added to the investigation file at the request of one of the magistrates in charge of the case.
The investigations – completed since the summer of 2018 – have thus been relaunched. The investigating judges should have closed them again before ordering this dismissal.
The file will now return to their desktop. It is up to them to decide whether the 5 general officers involved should be tried. The Survie and Ibuka associations, the International Federation for Human Rights and six survivors accuse the soldiers of Operation Turquoise of having knowingly abandoned the Tutsi refugees in the hills of Bisesero. FIDH is therefore pleased to see the case sent back to the judges.
These possible new requests for acts exasperate to the highest degree Pierre-Olivier Lambert, the lawyer for 3 of the 5 soldiers implicated. “Some associations want this file to continue almost indefinitely, when all of this has already been judged, re-judged, arch-judged. So it’s a shame, from a legal and historical point of view.  »
Last September, after 17 years of investigation, the magistrates wrote in their dismissal order that “the direct participation of (…) French soldiers in abuses” could not be established. No more than “complicity by aid or assistance to the genocidal forces” or “by abstention”. Not sure they change their mind today.
By RFI
