The Paris Court of Appeal has set a date to rule on whether to dismiss long-standing accusations that French troops knowingly failed to prevent a massacre in the Bisesero hills of western Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
The court this week began examining an appeal from civil parties against a 2018 decision to dismiss the case.
Initially scheduled for the end of May, the hearing was postponed to 19 September. The following day, the court announced that a final ruling would be delivered on 11 December.
At Thursday's hearing, the public prosecutor's office had requested that the case be dismissed outright.
In 2005, six survivors of the Bisesero massacre joined with NGOs to file a complaint against French soldiers for allegedly abandoning hundreds of Tutsis who had fled to the Bisesero hills in late June 1994 – only returning three days later, by which time most had been slaughtered by Hutu militia.
French forces were deployed in Rwanda at the time as part of Operation Turquoise, a UN-mandated military intervention launched in the final weeks of the genocide to establish "safe zones" for Rwandans fleeing the killing.
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Decades of accusations
Lawyer Pierre-Olivier Lambert, representing retired general Jean-Claude Lafourcade – who headed the operation – said soldiers were keen to put an end to 20 years of legal proceedings.
"The page of history has been turned," he told news agency AFP, referring to the landmark 2021 inquiry commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron that concluded the records did not show France willingly joined a genocide.
"It is time the judicial page was turned too," Lambert said.
The 2021 report, led by historians and involving two years of research, nonetheless pointed to a "profound failure" on France's part during the slaughter in Bisesero.
Eric Plouvier, the lawyer representing Survie, one of the NGOs that brought the complaint, argued that even without genocidal intent, the soldiers' failure to intervene gives them a share of the blame for the killings.
The civil parties believe they have evidence that demonstrates French troops were aware of the crimes taking place, he told AFP.
A controversial mission
The Bisesero case remains emblematic of the long controversy over the objectives of Operation Turquoise.
While the UN estimates that the mission helped save hundreds of lives, it came too late for the majority of victims, who had already perished in the early weeks of the genocide.
By the time French troops arrived, the Tutsi fighters of the Rwandan Patriotic Front – led by the current president, Paul Kagame – were beginning to overcome the Hutu government forces.
The deployment of soldiers from France, a long-standing ally of the Hutu regime, was seen as an attempt to help the Hutus out.
Kagame's government has long maintained that France not only failed to stop the slaughter but facilitated the safe passage of tens of thousands of Hutus into neighbouring Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of Congo – leading to many perpetrators of genocide escaping justice.
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