Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

UN and Canada Complicit in Rwanda Cover-Up: Americans and Rwanda Patrotic Front (RPF) Planned and Launched Aircraft Attack

By Wayne Masden
Freelance journalist
September 2000

Source:
Centre for Research on Globalizatiuon

Senior officials of the United Nations and Canadian government were involved in covering up important details and evidence concerning the April 6, 1994 attack on the aircraft carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, according to former UN investigators who looked into the affair. The dual assassination resulted in a genocide and counter-genocide that resulted in the deaths of possibly one and a half million Tutsis, Hutus, and others.

The most dramatic revelation concerns the whereabouts of the downed Mystere Falcon 50's cockpit voice recorder or "black box." According to officials involved with UN air movements in the region, the black box was secretly transported to UN Headquarters in New York where it remains to this day. Officially, the Rwandan government claims the black box went missing. According to the UN sources, data from the black box is being withheld by the UN under pressure from the government of the United States.

There may be good reason for this. According to former UN investigators who were on the ground in Rwanda, it was their belief that the missiles that downed the presidential aircraft came from the United States and were delivered to the RPF. This bolsters similar claims made by by senior French government officials to the French National Assembly's Commission that investigated the Rwanda genocide and claims by former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) intelligence agents.

According to the well-placed UN sources, Canadian Justice Louise Arbour, who served as special prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal looking into the Rwandan genocide, ordered that events leading up to the April 6 aircraft downing not be investigated. UN investigators were constrained by Arbour to only deal with events that followed the downing of the aircraft.

In addition, Arbour -- who is now a Justice on the Supreme Court of Canada -- ordered her subordinates , who included former Royal Canadian Mounted Police deputy commissioner Al Breau, to cut short their investigation when it became clear that it was leading to the conclusion that the RPF and their American patrons were involved in planning the aircraft attack. This included evidence that RPF forces controlled three major approaches to Kayibanda International Airport on the evening of the attack and that European mercenaries , in the pay of the RPF and US Intelligence, used nearby warehouses leased by a Swiss company to actually plan and launch the missile attack on the Mystere-Falcon.

In addition, UN and Canadian investigators uncovered evidence that during 1996 and 1997, the Canadian International Development Authority (CIDA) provided humanitarian and development assistance to the RPF government that was instead used to buy arms. When this became known to CIDA internal auditors, the investigation was abruptly halted by the Canadian government.

According to UN and US government sources, the UN's covert activities in Rwanda on behalf of the United States and Canada were supported by then -UN Peacekeeping Operations under secretary Kofi Annan, who acted on the instructions of then- US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright and Susan Rice, who was, at that time, posted to the National Security Council. Rice is now the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and reports to Albright in that role. Then- UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali was specifically kept out of the picture by the United States, which succeeded in dumping him from his post in 1996, replacing him with Annan.

Congressional sources report that some members of the House of Representatives want to proceed with an full commission inquiry into the US role in the Rwandan genocide along the lines of those previously conducted by the UN, OAU, France, and Belgium.

Related Materials:
Explaining the Ultimate Escalation in Rwanda:How and Why Tutsi Rebels Provoked a Retaliatory Genocide

Rwandan Military Leaders Found Not-Guilty of Conspiracy and Genocide Planning

Rwanda: No Conspiracy, No Genocide Planning ... No Genocide?

The Rwanda Catastrophe: Its root-cause and remedies to pre-empt a similar situation in Rwanda

Provoking genocide: a revised history of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Rwanda: Declaration on the shooting down of Habyarimana's aircraft on April 6, 1994

Major General Paul Kagame behind the shooting down of late Habyarimana's plane: An eye witness testimony

Testimony of Abdul Ruzibiza about how mistakes by both the Rwandan Government and the RPF led to the Rwandan genocide of 1994

Paul Kagame, the Mastermind of the Genocide of Interior Tutsis

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 10:43 PM