LEAD: Probe: 1994 Rwandan president killed by fire from own side

Jan 10, 2012, 20:08 GMT

Paris - The missile which in 1994 brought down the plane of then Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was fired by his own military and not by Tutsi rebels, a French investigation released late Tuesday said.

The killing of Habyarimana, a Hutu, sparked the massacre of at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in just 100 days.

The report clears current President Paul Kagame, who, as leader of the Tutsi rebels, has for years been believed to have orchestrated Habyarimana's assassination.

The killing was only stopped when his Rwandan Patriot Front movement captured the capital Kigali.

The missile which brought down the plane was fired from Kanombe, close to Kigali, where the plane had been about to land, Tuesday's report concluded.

The question of who had fired the missile had poisoned relations between Rwanda and France. A 2006 French report had led to arrest warrants for some of Kagame's allies and a temporary break-off of diplomatic relations.

Kagame's lawyer Bernard Maingain welcomed the report, telling French news agency AFP that: 'The report confirms the hypothesis that the missile was fired from Kanombe.'

The latest investigation was begun in 2008 and headed by French judge Marc Trevidic.

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