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Rwanda: France "Must Face Trial"
The 1994 Rwanda massacres - one of history's bloodiest events - continue to haunt France. Last month, the tiny African nation broke off relations with Paris after a French judge accused ethnic Tutsi leader Paul Kagame of being being behind the killing of Hutu President Habyarimana; an act widely believed to have sparked the slaughter of up to a million people.
Kagame is now President Kagame, and he has always accused France of playing an important role in the massacres that followed. Some experts agree with him. Linda Melvern, who has published a study of the Rwandan massacres, told the BBC that the genocide was well-planned. 47 senior French officers had been "embedded" in the Rwandan army at the time - on the direct orders of the French government. It is difficult to believe that the subsequent massacres, which had been prepared for by the purchase of thousands of machetes, went on under France's nose without its officers knowing.
In the Times today, Andrew Wallis, another author of a book on France's role in the genocide, takes a much harsher line.
France, he says, is "steeped in genocidal blood." Its elite training corps "trained its Rwandan allies in how to dismember bodies, fire its new heavy artillery and use attack Gazelle helicopters." As the hundred-day massacre continued, France continued to send arms and welcomed government leaders in Paris.
Since the full scale of the killings has become clear, France has tried to cover its tracks. Even the current government continues to claim that both Hutus and Tutsis took part in a "double genocide", a charge Wallis denies. However, Kagame, who he evidently admires, now wants answers from Paris.
Rwanda's government is soon to release its own report into France's involvement in the genocide. President Francois Mitterand's "crimes", Wallis writes, will be uncovered in even more explicit detail.
Perhaps Kagame's imminent disclosures provoked the attack by the French judge. According to Ms Melvern, there is little evidence that Kagame was involved in the 1994 assassination: Indeed, another French court has dismissed what sparse evidence existed.
Some observers, the BBC's man reports, haven't ever forgiven Kagame for snipping the cord of French influence in the region. Educated in English-speaking schools across the border in Uganda, one of his first acts as president was to change Rwanda's official second language from French to English.
For France's Françafrique elite, that hurts. Perhaps, it appears, more than genocide.
