AP News, February 15th, 2007
France rejected an asylum appeal from the widow of late Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on Thursday, saying she was at the heart of the regime responsible for her country's 1994 genocide.
The French refugee agency originally rejected Agathe Habyarimana's request on Jan 4. The case went before the Appeals Commission for Refugees, which denied her appeal Thursday.
The decision came nearly three months after Rwanda cut off diplomatic relations with Paris over a French probe into Juvenal Habyarimana's mysterious assassination. The downing of his plane in 1994 sparked the slaughter of more than half a million people in less than 100 days.
In her appeal, Agathe Habyarimana argued that she had no power and merely took care of her house, her children and her garden. Judges said her claim was not credible.
The commission ruled that though Mrs. Habyarimana had no official government post, she had de facto authority in state affairs. It also said she was "at the heart of the regime," and "therefore was among the officials who planned the Rwandan genocide." The judges based their decision on documents and testimonies.
Rwanda's genocide was orchestrated by a small group of Hutu extremists against the Tutsi minority, and ended when Tutsi-led rebels under current President Paul Kagame defeated the Hutu extremists in July 1994.
Media rights group Reporters Without Borders and others have accused Agathe Habyarimana of inciting the massacres of Tutsis with inflammatory radio messages. She has said she and her relatives were made scapegoats for the bloodbath.
She fled Rwanda after her husband was assassinated and has been living in France since 1994. Agathe Habyarimana's lawyers immediately said they would appeal to the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body. If the decision is confirmed, she will be expelled from France, where she has lived without an official statute or residence permit.
France will not send Agathe Habyarimana back to Rwanda because she faces the death penalty there, and doing so would break French policy. If she is expelled, officials must find an outside country to accept her.
French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has been investigating the downing of Habyarimana's plane because the crew was French. In November, he accused Kagame of ordering the assassination and accused nine other ranking Rwandans of plotting the attack.
Soon afterward, Rwanda severed diplomatic ties with France. Kagame rejected Bruguiere's charge, and accused France of doing too little to stop the genocide.
