Launch site Two prominent investigations, which have been internationally recognized, have identified the Kanombe barracks as the likely source of the missile. In 2010, the "Mutsinzi Report" carried out by Rwandan officials in collaboration with British ballistics experts from the
Royal Military Academy, identified a small area, which included a portion of the airport, the Kanombe camp, and a small area near the presidential residence, as the launch site. In January 2012, a French report was made public with similar findings. Despite these reports, some have continued to cast doubt on this conclusion. These uncertainties stem from immediate assessments of the situation. French Judge
Jean-Louis Bruguière had led an inquiry in 2004 which accused the RPF of shooting down the plane from Masaka Hill, but it was found to be based on the testimonies of witnesses who were not regarded as credible. A Belgian inquiry in 1994 concluded that the missile had been fired from Masaka Hill, but that "it would have been virtually impossible for a rebel soldier to have reached Masaka carrying missiles." The base was controlled by FAR forces, including the Presidential Guard This report was widely reported to exonerate the RPF, although it did not actually do that, according to
Filip Reyntjens.
Responsibility While initial suspicion fell upon the Hutu extremists who carried out the subsequent genocide, there have been several reports since 2000 stating that the attack was carried out by the RPF on the orders of
Paul Kagame, who went on to become president of Rwanda. All such evidence is heavily disputed and many academics, as well as the
United Nations, have refrained from issuing a definitive finding.
Mark Doyle, a
BBC News correspondent who reported from Kigali through the 1994 genocide, noted in 2006 that the identities of the assassins "could turn out to be one of the great mysteries of the late 20th century." A now-declassified
US Department of State intelligence report from 7 April 1994 reports an unidentified source telling the US ambassador in Rwanda that "rogue Hutu elements of the military—possibly the elite presidential guard—were responsible for shooting down the plane." This conclusion was supported by other U.S. agencies, including the
Defense Intelligence Agency, which reported on 9 May that "It is believed that the plane crash [...] was actually an assassination conducted by Hutu military hardliners.".
Philip Gourevitch, in his
1998 book on the genocide, framed the thinking of the time: Although Habyarimana's assassins have never been positively identified, suspicion has focused on the extremists in his entourage—notably the semiretired Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, an intimate of
Madame Habyarimana, and a charter member of the
akazu and its death squads, who said in January 1993 that he was preparing an apocalypse. The 1997 report of the
Belgian Senate stated that there was not enough information to determine specifics about the assassination. A 1998 report by the
National Assembly of France posited two probable explanations. One is that the attack was carried out by groups of Hutu extremists, distressed by the advancement of negotiations with the RPF, the political and military adversary of the current regime, while the other is that it was the responsibility of the RPF, frustrated at the lack of progress in the
Arusha Accords. Among the other
hypotheses that were examined is one that implicates the French military, although there is no clear motive for a French attack on the Rwandan government. The 1998 French report made no determination between the two dominant theories. A January 2000 article in the
National Post reported that
Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor for the ICTR, had terminated an investigation into the shootdown after three Tutsi informants came forward in 1997 with detailed accusations against Paul Kagame and the RPF, claiming that they had been members of an "elite strike team" responsible for the downing. One of the three whistleblowers was Jean-Pierre Mugabe, who issued a declaration on the shootdown in April 2000. Following the
National Posts article, a three-page memorandum written by investigator Michael Hourigan was sent to the ICTR where defense attorneys had requested it. Hourigan later stated that investigation into the shootdown had been clearly within his mandate and that he was "astounded" when Arbour made an about-face and told him it was not. An investigation by
Luc Reydams concluded that there was no evidence of such orders. Reydams argued that the decision to shut down the investigation was "based on an assessment of the concrete conditions at the time" and that "any responsible Prosecutor would have concluded that pursuing the investigation would be futile and dangerous." Arbour later stated that "It was my decision and my decision alone". According to Arbour, the OTP in Kigali was in a very difficult situation at the time: In 1998, the French anti-terrorist magistrate
Jean-Louis Bruguière opened an investigation into the shootdown on behalf of the families of the French aircraft crew. On the basis of hundreds of interviews, Bruguière concluded that the assassination had been carried out on the orders of Paul Kagame, and issued arrest warrants against nine of Kagame's aides in 2006. One of Bruguière's witnesses was
Abdul Ruzibiza, a former lieutenant in the RPF who claimed that he was part of a cell that carried out the assassination with shoulder-fired
SA-16 missiles. The former RPF officer published a book in 2005 with his account (''Rwanda. L'histoire secrete''), and testified under oath before the ICTR in 2006. The scholar
René Lemarchand wrote about the book that "The careful marshalling of the evidence, the remarkably precise information concerning who did what, where, and when, the author's familiarity with the operational code of the RPF, leave few doubts in the reader's mind about Kagame's responsibility in triggering the event that led to the bloodshed." In November 2008 Ruzibiza suddenly claimed he had invented everything, but some months before his death in 2010, Ruzibiza explained that his retraction "is linked to my personal security and that of other witnesses".
Linda Melvern wrote that Bruguière's evidence "was very sparse, and that some of it, concerning the alleged anti-aircraft missiles used to down the presidential jet, had already been rejected by a French Parliamentary enquiry." In a 2007 interview with the BBC, Kagame said he would co-operate with an impartial inquiry "carried out by a judge who had nothing to do with Rwanda or France". The BBC concluded, "Whether any judge would want to take on such a task is quite another matter."
Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan of mixed Hutu and Tutsi origin whose life-saving efforts was the basis of the 2004 film
Hotel Rwanda, has supported the allegation that Kagame and the RPF were behind the plane downing, and wrote in November 2006 that it "defies logic" that the
UN Security Council had not ordered an investigation, as
it had done following the far less consequential assassination of
Rafic Hariri in 2005. In February 2008, a 182-page indictment and international arrest warrants were issued against 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials of the
Rwandan Patriotic Army/
Rwandan Defence Forces by the
Spanish Investigative Judge
Fernando Andreu of the
Audiencia Nacional. They were charged with a number of serious crimes between 1990 and 2002, including the shootdown of Habyarimana's plane. Unlike the French judicial enquiry, Andreu's indictment was in part based on the principle of
universal jurisdiction. Kagame also ordered the formation of
a commission of Rwandans that was "charged with assembling proof of the involvement of France in the genocide". The commission issued its report to Kagame in November 2007 and its head, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, stated that the commission would now "wait for President Kagame to declare whether the inquiry was valid". == Legacy ==