Report: Rwanda to give details of France's role in 1994 genocide

Aug 5, 2008, 10:23 GMT

Nairobi/Kigali - The government of Rwanda is to release a report containing details of France's alleged role in the genocide against the ethnic Tutsi minority in 1994, British broadcaster BBC said Tuesday.

The 500-page report was compiled by a commission of inquiry into the genocide and submitted to the government last November but has not yet been made public.

The commission spent two years probing France's alleged role through interviews with survivors and witnesses of the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed, the BBC said.

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame last week said there was 'strong evidence' of links between France and the ethnic Hutu regime in place at the time of the genocide.

The report is expected to name those implicated in the genocide and the allegations against them, according to the BBC.

Over a period of 100 days after the assassination of Rwanda's then Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana in early April 1994, Hutu extremists targeted and brutally killed around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Some Hutu militia later fled to the eastern Congo.

France has in the past acknowledged 'political errors' with regard to the Hutu regime, but denied allegations of involvement in the genocide. Relations between the two countries have been strained since French investigators in 2006 accused Kagame, a former Tutsi rebel leader, of Habyarimana's murder.