Hutu extremists shot down the plane carrying former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994, says the Rwandan government. An official report issued on Monday found that members of Habyarimana’s inner-circle planned his murder in order to scuttle a power-sharing deal with former rebel leader Paul Kagame. The assassination was then used as a pretext for the genocide.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

The report accuses Theoneste Bagosora, leader of the Hutu Power movement, of planning the coup. He was given a sentence of life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2008.

Writing for The New Yorker, Rwanda expert Phillip Gourevitch says the depth and seriousness of the investigation is more surprising than the findings themselves: “Obviously,” he says “the report serves President Kagame and his government’s interests. So why has it taken them so long to produce it? For more than a decade, critics held up the post-genocide government’s seeming reluctance to examine Habyarimana’s death as evidence that Kagame had something to hide.”

An earlier probe by French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière led to the indictment of nine of Kagame’s closest associates on charges of terrorism.

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