No grounds to pursue claims of French role in Rwanda genocide, prosecutor says

[May 03, 2021]    PARIS (Reuters) -The French prosecutor's department said on Monday that there were no grounds to pursue legal claims that France bore responsibility for enabling the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Rwanda last month published a report in which it said that France was aware that genocide was being prepared in Rwanda ahead of the killings.

France's top prosecutor, Remy Heitz, said in a statement that investigations carried out by French authorities could not prove any complicity by French troops in the killings which were orchestrated by the Hutu-led government.

Between April and July 1994, some 800,000 people were killed, most from the ethnic Tutsi minority but also some moderate Hutus.

Ever since the genocide, critics of France's role have said that then French President Francois Mitterrand failed to prevent the massacres or even supported the Hutu-led government.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta;Editing by Alison Williams and Nick Macfie)

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