PParis, 23 September 2024 — After several postponements, the hearing of the appeal by civil parties – including the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (LDH) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) against the decision to dismiss the Turquoise case took place before of the Investigating Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal on the 19th September 2024.
The French complicity in the Genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda is targeted. In this case, for failing to intervene between the 27 th and the 30 th of July 1994 to prevent the massacre on the hills of Bisesero, where thousands of Tutsi survivors had taken refuge, the French army is called to account question, since 2005, for torture, inhuman and degrading treatments, complicity of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The lawyers of the civil parties, including Patrick Baudouin, who represented the LDH and the FIDH, plead for the indictment of four French army officers before the Paris Cour d’Assises, and for the investigating magistrates to continue the investigation into the responsibility of the French military and political authorities
at the highest level.
For the lawyer Patrick Baudouin: "It would be incomprehensible, in view of all the charges brought in the process, that the judicial files could be definitively closed without a trial to shed light on the responsibilities incurred. And this would risk perpetuating a feeling of persistent impunity when French army is involved".
The decision of the Investigating Chamber will be handed down on 11 December 2024.