By Saint-Exupery (De) PatrickApril 8, 2009
Also available in French.
It is the story of a black box, an orange metal box in the size of a large shoe box. The commercial airliners are equipped with such boxes, which are identified by numbers riveted to the metal. Designed to record flight data and cockpit conversations, black boxes are useful in case of accident.
It is indeed the story of a black box, but a story like no other ones. The one in question was in fact supposed to shelter in her womb the key to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 against the Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
It first appeared on the scene when the French troops involved in Turquoise military operation take their positions in Rwanda, while the genocide continues.
Suddenly, the box is brandished by Paul Barril, the former police officer in the Elysée. On June 28, 1994, Paul Barril reassures the public that he surely possesses the black box of the Falcon 50 of President Juvenal Habyarimana that was shot down three months ago. This is the attack that triggered the Rwandan genocide.
Paul Barril declared to the international institutions that he now holds the enigmatic black box capable of uncovering the mystery surrounding the genocide. From now on, all regards were turned away from Rwanda, away from the facts and the reality on the ground, to focus on this box comparable to the Holy Grail, which subsequently became the black box of genocide. Alas, a few days later, the blow falls. From July 8, 1994, the French newspaper “Le Monde” alleges that the black box presented by Paul Barril was "not the black box."
This concludes the first chapter about the mysterious black box, but the story is far from over. The black box will be resurrected and have a second life. This occured in 2004. As the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide approaches, many damning evidences on the foreign policy of Paris in Rwanda have been made public. The date marks a turning point.
On March 10, 2004, the French newspaper, Le Monde, announced that “the black box of the Falcon 50 has been transferred, ten years ago, to the UN Headquarters in New York”. The newspaper specifically stated that "according to Judge Bruguiere, the United Nations are currently obstructing the investigation into the attack of April 6, 1994. The accusations were clear: for unknown reasons the United Nations retained an important piece of conviction. The public would immediately be flooded of flash news, articles and statements supporting this sudden turn of effects. Once again, the mechanisms of genocide are obscured in favor of a polar well tied.
According to the article, the black box had been conveyed ten years earlier in New York at the UN headquarters but the UN became disinterested of the box. Conclusion: “If the black box is still there, the UN has for sure a substantial asset for the day when it would like to know what really happened on April 6, 1994, in the night sky of Kigali-City”.
Once again, the revelation was invalidated ten days later. "Last week, a first examination of the black box done at UN headquarters in New York, revealed nothing that would establish that it comes from the Falcon 50 shot down on April 6, 1994”, reported Le Monde.
The tape was played over. It contains extracts from the conversation between the control tower and an aircraft on the tarmac of Kigali, but has provided no evidence what so ever. The public will thereafter learn that this was just a montage.
This concludes the second life of the mysterious black box. Nevertheless, there still is a third chapter, which although written and recorded, has not yet been made available to the public. Here it is. It starts exactly from the quote 6 798 of Judge Bruguiere’s instructions.
On March 31, 2004, an official representative of Dassault-Aviation Company acknowledged that the Rwandan president's plane was not equipped with a black box. On July 1, 2004, the final UN investigation on the black box discovery in New York was reexamined. It is clearly mentioned that immediately after the attack on the president’s aircraft, at 2:45 am, on April 7, 1994 the French military mission in Rwanda has received authorization from Paris to conduct an investigation into this crash.
It also well established that that access to the plane crash area was denied to the United Nations until May 21, 1994. It is also stated that the black box currently in New York was found by the UN on May 27, 1994, abandoned near the crash area. In conclusion, the United Nations confirmed that the black box currently in New York is not from the Falcon 50 that was shot down.
Judge Bruguiere was nonetheless obliged to go ahead and complete the investigation. On November 29, 2004, he interviewed an Air France official. Under penalty of perjury, he said that the black box discovered a decade later in UN shelves is from a Concorde aircraft! Specifically, it is from the Air France Concorde 209 Air France, F-BVFC. Records in the maintenance files of Air France Concorde undoubtedly attest its origin. One month later, a second Air France confirmed these findings.
Upon such new developments, Judge Bruguiere interrupted his investigation without trying to understand the sequence of these amazing facts. Do you imagine how a black box from an Air France Concorde, inadvertently found on the grass near Kigali-City in late May 1994, then ten years later on UN shelves in New York, can be brandished as the missing puzzle piece that is crucially needed to solve the riddle posed by the Rwandan genocide? The question irresistibly evokes the bordereau of the Dreyfus affair.
It is not given to everybody to have a Concorde black box. It is not easy to mount a somewhat credible soundtrack of this box or to drop it on the grass near Kigali-City after the attack of April 6, 1994, when the war was raging throughout the city. It is even more difficult to follow in detail the itinerary of this box all the way to the UN Headquarters in New York.
It is finally very rude to leak out the information at the right time that corresponds to the timing of a useful scandal that will capture the media’s attention but also lead to a timely confusion.
Of course, the story of the black box of genocide doesn’t tell anything about the genocide. However, it tells everything that people would like it to tell. Who are those people? Why are they doing this? The answer to these questions can only be found in one place: Paris.
Notes:
This article was published in Le Monde, on April 9, 2009. Patrick de Saint-Exupery is editor of "XXI", and author of "accomplices of the unspeakable, France in Rwanda" (Arena, 288 p., € 19.80, New Edition).
This article was published in Le Monde, on April 9, 2009. Patrick de Saint-Exupery is editor of "XXI", and author of "accomplices of the unspeakable, France in Rwanda" (Arena, 288 p., € 19.80, New Edition).
Related Materials:
Assassination of President Habyarimana: the UN accused of complicity
Assassination of President Habyarimana: the UN accused of complicity
You know this might be a good thing. the more pressure they put on France, the quicker the truth will come out since they might do a clean investigation on France's role.
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