Rwanda’s government on Monday said 22 French senior military officers helped to plan and execute the 1994 genocide, in which more than 800,000 people were killed, reports The Japan News.
The French officers were involved both as perpetrators and accomplices, Rwanda’s National Commission for the Fight against Genocide said in a statement Monday.
“The refusal to end the judicial investigation and pronounce a dismissal against Rwandan leaders who ended the genocide is an attempt to conceal their responsibilities,” the statement said, referring to France.
The publication of the list, including four French generals, comes after French investigators this month reopened an inquiry into the plane crash that killed a Rwandan president and sparked the genocide.
The cause of the crash has been a contentious issue. The plane had a French crew.
Militants from Rwanda’s Hutu majority blamed minority Tutsis for the death of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, sparking the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The Rwandan government insists the plane was shot down by extremists who opposed the government’s efforts to forge a peace deal with Tutsi-led rebels who had invaded Rwanda from Uganda, where they had lived as refugees.
A French investigation completed in 2012 found that the missile fire came from a military camp.
Read more of this Associated Press report published by The Japan News.