French Judge To Question Rwandan Presidential Aide Wed

Tuesday January 27th, 2009 / 17h48

PARIS (AFP)--A French judge will Wednesday begin questioning Rwandan presidential aide Rose Kabuye over her alleged involvement in the 1994 murder of Rwandan ex-president Juvenal Habyarimana, her lawyer said.
Kabuye, 47, was charged before a French court in November of "complicity in murder in relation to terrorism" in the downing of Habyarimana's plane, an event widely seen as sparking the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
"Mrs Kabuye is ready to provide explanations, to be fully transparent, and show that she is not involved directly or indirectly in this attack on the plane of president Habyarimana," said her lawyer Leon-Lef Forster.
Kabuye, a former guerrilla fighter who is now President Paul Kagame's chief of protocol, was arrested in Germany on Nov. 9 and transferred to Paris.
Her arrest drew a furious reaction from Kagame's Tutsi-dominated government, which accuses Paris and its allies of deploying more efforts to persecuting the genocide's survivors than to hunting its Hutu perpetrators.
"The allegations against Mrs Kabuye stem from a manipulation of history aimed at using French justice to provide cover for the authors of the 1994 genocide," said Forster.
Kigali has repeatedly accused France of having actively supported the Hutu militias during the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed.
Kabuye was allowed to go back to Rwanda for the holiday season and she returned to France on Jan. 9.
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