Kagame cleared of triggering Rwanda genocide

A FRENCH probe into what sparked the 1994 Rwandan genocide appears to exonerate current president Paul Kagame and his Tutsi allies after Paris had previously accused him of triggering the killing of 800,000 people in 100 days.

Diplomatic relations between Rwanda and France were broken off in 2006 when a French judge said Kagame, rebel leader at the time, had orchestrated the assassination of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana to trigger the bloodshed.

After Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, Hutu extremists slaughtered Tutsis and moderate Hutus in some of the fastest mass killings ever perpetrated. Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front seized power in the aftermath of the genocide.