France Charges Rwanda President Aide For Alleged Assassination
French officials took custody of Kabuye, 47, a former Tutsi guerrilla leader who now is chief of protocol to Kagame, earlier in the day after she was extradited from Germany.
She is suspected of involvement in the downing of an executive jet carrying Habyarimana, a Hutu, and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira prior to the mass slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the central African nation.
In French law, being placed under judicial investigation is tantamount to being charged. In Kabuye's case, she is suspected of "complicity in murder in relation to terrorism."
Another judge might be asked to decide whether she should be detained.
Kabuye's case is being closely watched in Kigali, the scene of anti-European demonstrations Wednesday, 10 days after she was stopped by police in Germany acting on a French arrest warrant.
Habyarimana's ethnic Hutu supporters went on the rampage following the 1994 attack, slaughtering 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu men, women and children in an horrific 100-day bloodletting.
French investigators accuse Kagame's Tutsi rebels of attacking the jet, although others have speculated that Hutu hardliners killed their own president to serve as a pretext for the subsequent killings.
Kabuye was a senior military leader during Kagame's successful war to drive out the genocidal Hutu militias. The arrest of his trusted lieutenant has cast a fresh chill on already frosty ties with France.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 19, 2008 17:20 ET (22:20 GMT)
Publié le 19 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones
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