Paris (AFP) – A French researcher won an extended legal battle Friday for access to ex-president Francois Mitterrand’s archives on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which Kigali accuses France of having played a role.
France’s top administrative court, the State Council, ruled the documents would allow researcher and author Francois Graner “to shed light on a debate that is a matter of public interest”.
The documents include notes written by the president’s advisers and minutes of government meetings.
The ruling is the latest chapter in a long dispute between France and Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide in which some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were slaughtered in 100 days of ethnic violence committed mainly by Hutu extremists.
Ahead of the genocide’s 20th anniversary in 2014, Rwandan President Paul Kagame accused Paris of having played a “direct role” in the assassination of then-president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, which sparked the bloodbath.
The Tutsi leader said France took part in Habyarimana’s “execution”, some say in a move to stoke anti-Tutsi sentiment.
In November 2016, Kigali launched an inquiry into the alleged role of 20 French officials in the genocide.
‘Victory’ for history
France has always denied the allegations and last year, President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a panel of historians and researchers to look into the claims.
Graner, who has published widely on the genocide, first requested access to Mitterrand’s documents in 2015, the year the government under then-president Francois Hollande declassified archives on Rwanda for the period 1990-95.
But the researcher’s request was refused, prompting him to file legal challenges that have failed until to now with courts upholding a law protecting presidential archives for 25 years after a leader’s death.
In the case of Mitterrand, who died in 1996, they would become available in 2021.
“Protection of state secrets must be balanced against the interests of informing the public about historic events,” the State Council ruled.
“This is a victory for the law, but also for history,” Graner’s lawyer Patrice Spinosi told AFP.
“Researchers like Mr Graner will be able to access president Mitterrand’s archives in order to fully understand France’s role in Rwanda in 1994 and 1995,” he said.
‘Serious errors of judgement’
Graner belongs to rights group Survie (“Survival”), which has vowed to “shed light on France’s involvement in Rwanda before and during the genocide.”
Franco-Rwandan relations hit a low point in 2006 after a French judge recommended Kagame be prosecuted by a UN-backed tribunal over the 1994 killing of Habyarimana.
The Rwandan President, who had led the Tutsi rebel force that eventually overthrew the genocidal Hutu regime, broke off ties with France for three years.
The turning point came in 2010 when former president Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged on a visit to Kigali that France had made “serious errors of judgement” in Rwanda.
While falling short of an apology it was seen as a breakthrough in Rwanda.
But France’s perceived foot-dragging on bringing genocide suspects living in the country to justice, has aggravated tensions.
On May 16, the genocide’s alleged financier, Felicien Kabuga, was arrested at his home outside Paris after a quarter-of-a-century on the run.
On June 3, a Paris court approved his transfer to a UN body for trial in Arusha, Tanzania.
French-Rwandan former hotel driver Claude Muhayimana is set to go on trial in Paris in February next year, accused of having transported Hutu militiamen to sites where massacres were carried out.
In the two other Rwandan genocide trials concluded in France, a former officer in the presidential guard, Pascal Simbikangwa, was given a 25-year sentence in 2014, while Octavien Ngenzi and Tito Barahira, two former mayors, received life sentences in 2016.