[JURIST] The widow of assassinated Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, Agathe Habyarimana, was arrested Tuesday in France on suspicions of complicity in genocide and was later released on bail. French police complied with an international arrest warrant issued by the Rwandan government that accused Habyarimana of helping to plan the 1994 genocide between Hutus and Tutsis in which more than 800,000 people, primarily Tutsis, were killed in the span of 100 days. After her husband’s assassination, which led to an escalation of violence that sparked the genocide, Agathe Habyarimana was transported from Rwanda by the French military and has since been living outside Paris, although the French government has twice refused to grant her asylum as a refugee. Her arrest comes only a few days after French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Rwanda and said that he would cooperate in finding those accused of genocide.
In January, the Rwandan government released a report concluding that the assassination of then-president Juvenal Habyarimana was the work of Hutu extremists. An independent committee of experts, established in April 2007 by Rwanda’s Tutsi President Paul Kagame, found that Hutu extremists, including members of the president’s own family, were opposed to the 1993 Arusha Accords, a power-sharing agreement supported by Habyarimana, designed to end his 20-year monopoly on power. The report asserts that Hutus used the assassination as a pretext for the 1994 genocide. As of May 2009, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), established for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law during the Rwandan genocide, has rendered judgments or has trials underway for 68 suspects, with six suspects awaiting trials, one retrial, and 13 fugitives.