Countdown to disaster
06 April 8.25 pm – Habyarimana plane shot down
07 April - Assassination of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana
09 April - Interim government established
13 April - Belgian troops return to Belgium
21 April - UN reduces peacekeepers from 5,500 to 270
27 April - Pope Jean-Paul II, first to use "genocide"
12 May - UN High Commissioner officially uses "genocide"
23 June - French peacekeeping Turquoise mission starts
04 July - Tutsi-led rebel movement RPF captures Kigali
UN estimates 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed
Two million Hutus flee to Zaire, now DR Congo
After 18 years the deadly plane attack that sparked the Rwandan genocide remains a mystery. One overriding question persists - where exactly were the rockets which brought down the plane fired from? French anti-terrorist judges should give an answer today while presenting the conclusions of the ballistics expertise they commissioned to investigate the 6 April 1994 coup.
By Franck Petit
Opened in March 1998 after the family of the French pilot of the Rwandan presidential plane filed a complaint, this is the only judicial investigation ever conducted on the issue. Until now this has remained a historical enigma but today may reach a new turning point.
At 8.25 PM, Wednesday 6 April 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana was coming back from a summit held in Dar-es-Salaam when two surface to air missiles shot down his plane while approaching the Kanombe international airport in Kigali. The following morning saw the first killings in the Rwandan capital. Three days later a new interim government was set up and proceeded to lead the country through three months of genocide.
Twelve people died in the plane attack: two presidents, the Rwandan and the Burundian, who asked for a lift; the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan armed forces and two other senior officers of Rwanda; a Rwandan foreign affairs adviser; Juvénal Habyarimana’s personal doctor; two Burundian ministers; and the three French crew members.
From that time, two contradictory theories have persisted. The first, supported by the international media, suggested that Hutu extremists assassinated their president, who they found too eager to compromise with opponents. The second theory contends that the current Rwandan president Paul Kagamé commissioned the attack to open the way for the military invasion that brought to power his party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
French charge
Despite several requests from individual states and the UN security council, no international organ has ever investigated the plane attack. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda itself declined, its prosecutors arguing that a terrorist act could not fall within their mandate. While accused by the Kagame regime to have been a political accomplice of the genocide, France remains the only place where a judicial inquiry has been conducted.
Its initial results did not amuse Paul Kagamé. In November 2006, investigative judge Jean-Louis Bruguière issued nine arrest warrants against high level officials close to President Kagamé, accusing them of masterminding the 6 April coup. His case was based primarily on the testimony of one witness - Abdul Ruzibiza, who said he was part of the "network commando" that perpetrated the attack. The witness died of liver cancer in September 2010.
Diplomatic crash
The arrest warrants caused a major rift between Paris and Kigali, which immediately broke off diplomatic relations. They would only restart three years later, in November 2009.
In November 2008, Rose Kabuye, President Kagamé’s Chief of State Protocol, was arrested in Germany under a warrant launched by Bruguière. Freed soon after, she was indicted by judges Marc Trevidic and Nathalie Poux, who replaced Bruguière on the Rwandan terrorist investigation. Her indictment came with a waiver of her arrest warrant.
According to judge Trévidic, this was the turning point that relaxed relations with the Rwandan parties to the case. They were consequently given official access to the prosecution files. From this time on, the Rwandan suspects were able to construct a proper defence. They were allowed to file exculpatory material. Proceedings began to be contradictory.
A shot in the dark
The French judges took the opportunity to ask for the right to practise ballistics expertise in situ, in September 2010 – Bruguière, up to this moment, had not conducted any of his investigation in Rwanda. Three months later, French judges negotiated an extraordinary hearing of six of the other Rwandan suspects, in neighboring Burundi.
The six officials - among them the actual ministry of Defence James Kaberebe – were, like Rose Kabuye, released from their arrest warrants, indicted and were able to freely come back to Rwanda. All parties seemed to be satisfied by the judicial operation. The accused were allowed to defend themselves. Their opponents - among them the widow of the former president, Agathe Habyarimana - were satisfied with the fact that the Rwandan suspects were indicted for "complicity to murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise".
"Where is the truth in this case? It is still uncertain, but the problem is that it has been politicized to excess,” said Judge Trévidic in Spring 2011. “This is not a battle between states, but a judicial inquiry. We returned to pure legal proceedings, and that's what calmed the conflict."
With the ballistic expertise, the French judges had the ambition to free themselves from the numerous contradictory testimonies accumulated in the next fourteen years of investigation. They tried to rely on more tangible proof. The conclusions they will give today to the three parties - Rwandan government lawyers, Habyarimana's widow and children, French crew families - may however only indicate a direction for further investigation, not a solution to this historical enigma.
Email this Article
Printer-friendly version
ZwuhdX bkw qewp vhEatve
Conserved signaling pathways that activate the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are involved in relaying extracellular stimulations to intracellular responses. The MAPKs coordinately regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, motility, and survival, which are functions also known to be mediated by members of a growing family of MAPK-activated protein kinases (MKs; formerly known as MAPKAP kinases). The MKs are related serine/threonine kinases that respond to mitogenic and stress stimuli through proline-directed phosphorylation and activation of the kinase domain by extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 and p38 MAPKs. There are currently 11 vertebrate MKs in five subfamilies based on primary sequence homology: the ribosomal S6 kinases, the mitogen- and stress-activated kinases, the MAPK-interacting kinases, MAPK-activated protein kinases 2 and 3, and MK5. In the last 5 years, several MK substrates have been identified, which has helped tremendously to identify the biological role of the members of this family. Together with data from the study of MK-knockout mice, the identities of the MK substrates indicate that they play important roles in diverse biological processes, including mRNA translation, cell proliferation and survival, and the nuclear genomic response to mitogens and cellular stresses. In this article, we review the existing data on the MKs and discuss their physiological functions based on recent discoveries.
Cells recognize and respond to extracellular stimuli by engaging specific intracellular programs, such as the signaling cascade that leads to activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs). All eukaryotic cells possess multiple MAPK pathways, which coordinately regulate diverse cellular activities running the gamut from gene expression, mitosis, and metabolism to motility, survival and apoptosis, and differentiation. To date, five distinct groups of MAPKs have been characterized in mammals: extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs) 1 and 2 (ERK1/2), c-Jun amino-terminal kinases (JNKs) 1, 2, and 3, p38 isoforms α, β, γ, andδ , ERKs 3 and 4, and ERK5 (reviewed in references 25 and 103). Since Saccharomyces cerevisiae possesses six different MAPKs, the relative complexity of the human genome suggests that there are probably several additional vertebrate MAPK subfamilies (118). The most extensively studied groups of vertebrate MAPKs to date are the ERK1/2, JNKs, and p38 kinases.
MAPKs can be activated by a wide variety of different stimuli, but in general, ERK1 and ERK2 are preferentially activated in response to growth factors and phorbol esters, while the JNK and p38 kinases are more responsive to stress stimuli ranging from osmotic shock and ionizing radiation to cytokine stimulation (reviewed in reference 147) (Fig. 1). Although each MAPK has unique characteristics, a number of features are shared by the MAPK pathways studied to date. Each family of MAPKs is composed of a set of three evolutionarily conserved, sequentially acting kinases: a MAPK, a MAPK kinase (MAPKK), and a MAPKK kinase (MAPKKK). The MAPKKKs, which are serine/threonine kinases, are often activated through phosphorylation and/or as a result of their interaction with a small GTP-binding protein of the Ras/Rho family in response to extracellular stimuli (36, 98). MAPKKK activation leads to the phosphorylation and activation of a MAPKK, which then stimulates MAPK activity through dual phosphorylation on threonine and tyrosine residues located in the activation loop of kinase subdomain VIII. Once activated, MAPKs phosphorylate target substrates on serine or threonine residues followed by a proline; however, substrate selectivity is often conferred by specific interaction motifs located on physiological substrates. Furthermore, MAPK cascade specificity is also mediated through interaction with scaffolding proteins which organize pathways in specific modules through simultaneous binding of several components.
Post new comment
Please be reminded all comments must be in English, short and to the point - guideline 250 words. Abusive and inappropriate comments will be removed.