Our man in Frankfurt reviews this week's top news stories out of Europe:  Accusations from Rwanda about French duplicity in genocide and Libya's blast against African nations trying to divorce themselves from Africa.

RWANDA: FRANCE BACKED GENOCIDAL PERPETRATORS

The Rwandan committee of inquiry on the “role played by France during the 1994 genocide” handed over its findings last week. This report points out that France played an active role during the genocide that claimed approximately 800,000 fatalities from April through July 1994.

The text contains five-hundred pages, and it argues that thirteen French high-ranking officials and twenty soldiers aided and abetted the Hutu genocidal perpetrators. What’s more, the report argues that some French soldiers killed Tutsis and Hutus who were trying to hide and protect Tutsis, and raped Rwandan women.

The report was released by Mr. Tharcisse Karugarama, Rwandan minister of Justice – Attorney General. The Rwandan government had set up the Mucyo commission in 2006 and assigned to it the task of eliciting the facts of and the truth about the role of France in the genocide.

These are the French hotshots mentioned in the report: the late French president François Mitterand -- of the French Socialist Party; his prime minister Edouard Balladur -- of the defunct French “Rally for the Republic”, “RPR”; the French minister of Foreign Affairs Alain Juppé – of the “RPR”; Dominique de Villepin – “RPR”; then Office Manager of Mr. Alain Juppé and Hubert Védrine, at that time Chief of Staff at the Elysee Palace, the presidential palace in Paris, France.

It should be noted that the French “Rally for the Republic” was dismantled, following skulduggeries, and superseded by the current “UMP” – “Union for a Popular Movement” –  hogged by President Sarkozy.

Before the genocide teed off, Rwanda was governed by the Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana.. The country was in turmoil as it was buffeted by a civil war. The “Rwandan Patriotic Front” lead by current president Paul Kagame, who is Tutsi, was gaining ground. The plane carrying Mr. Habyarimana was shot down in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, on April 6, 1994.

The Hutu militias took that opportunity by the forelock, blamed the assassination on the Tutsis and decided to get their own back on their victims, for they assumed that they were losing political power.
Hutu “butchers” went on a killing spree.

The Rwandan topsiders are game to initiate legal proceedings against those French officials and soldiers who were allegedly involved in the Rwandan1994 blood bath because they think that France officials and soldiers at least failed to assist Tutsis in danger. Now then, even in France “ failure to assist a person in danger” is an actionable offense.

This move might be “a tit for tat” strategy since a French judiciary inquiry adjudged on March 2004 that Rwandan President Paul Kagame masterminded the killing of the former President Juvenal Habyarimana.

Anyway, the Rwandan minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama has let on that he´ll apply to the French ministry of Justice lead by Rachida Dati for the cooperation of France in this case.

As for France, her Defense ministry has rejected that report, contending that the Rwandan tribunal of inquiry is “illegitimate and biased.” Was the French judiciary inquiry “legitimate and fair” in March 2004?