Talk:Assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira

Missile or location?

Does anyone know of any sources which named the specific type of missile used? When it happened I assumed it was a shoulder launched variety like the SA-16, Mistral or Stinger. The article says the missile came from 19 km away, it couldn't have been a shoulder launched SAM (unless the plane flew toward the Nyarugunga Valley). Their ranges are typically 5-7 km maximum.

If a larger missile like a SA-8 or HAWK was used, it could show military participation. Shoulder launched missiles can be found on the black market (though not very easily). Missiles that are towed or launched from an armored vehicle are even harder to come by and require a lot more training to use. Anynobody 02:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the article states one eyewitness report. The first map in Linda Melvern's Conspiracy to Murder is a map showing all the locations from which witnesses claim they saw the missiles take off. They include Gasogi Hill, Nyandungu Valley, Rusororo Hill and Masaka Hill, which cover about a 90 degrees arc behind the aircraft, while Gasogi and Masaka Hills are about 6 km from each other. Looking at this map, the farthest of these is 6 km away from the point at which the aircraft was hit. There is thus a possible discrepancy between Melvern's map and the eyewitness she quotes, or she may have included it just to show how varied the eyewitness accounts are. I'm considering removing the eyewitness account as it may weight one location too heavily in the narrative. A copy of the map would of course be best, but I'm horrible at graphics. Every account I've read that has bothered to specify the SAM states that they were shoulder-fired, but I'm not sure if that is unproven common wisdom or if there is a French language report somewhere that details some forensic evidence, which I haven't stumbled across yet. - BanyanTree 03:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

del Ponte

User:Olegwiki added the following paragraph as part of his recent addition, with the ref put in parens:

Furthermore, the French accusations were not the only ones, and parties not involved in the 1994 events have supported the French accusations. In summer 2003, Carla del Ponte, then the Chief Prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), publicly announced that she would soon begin prosecuting members of Kagame’s Government for the same kinds of crimes charged by Judge Bruguière. However, under U.S. and U.K. pressure, she was replaced soon thereafter as ICTR prosecutor by Abubacar Jallow who pledged not to prosecute Kagame or anyone on his side, no matter what the processes initiated by del Ponte and Bruguière yielded.(Peter Erlinder, The Great Rwanda "Genocide Coverup", Centre for Research on Globalization at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8137)

The Centre for Research on Globalization source states,

In the summer of 2003, Chief Prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR), Carla del Ponte, publicly announced that she would soon begin prosecuting members of Kagame’s Government for the same kinds of crimes charged in the French and Spanish warrants. But, nearly 5 years later not one case has been filed against one member of Kagame’s government, nor against Kagame himself.
The del Ponte announced prosecutions did not go forward because she was replaced, within 90-days of her announcement, by Abubacar Jallow, a US/UK-approved Prosecutor who pledged not to prosecute on Kagame’s side….no matter what the del Ponte and the European judges’ findings!"

I tend to be wary of any source that uses exclamation marks, and its crediblity is not helped by the fact that the article on the Centre was deleted for being a blog with no actual "Centre". (See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Centre for Research on Globalization) So I looked around for another source and found the Case Western Reserve University School of Law war crimes portal ([1]), which states, "Yet, although it may well have been true that Del Ponte was stretched too thin, what appears to have finally brought matters to a head was that Del Ponte had been attempting to indict Tutsis for the massacre of as many as 50,000 Hutus inside Rwanda committed by RPF forces during and immediately after the genocide." This is a reference to the events described in the Gersony Report, which does not include the assassination of the two presidents. In other words, the del Ponte issue has absolutely nothing to do with this article and is from a source with zero credibility anyway. I have removed it and expect a case to be made before it is reinserted. - BanyanTree 14:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the removal, I have just copied this paragraph from the article Paul Kagame where it was relevant. Olegwiki (talk) 16:29, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Utilization of Filip Reyntjens

Greetings everyone! I'm a historian who specializes in this region, and I'm very concerned about the utilization of Filip Reyntjens within the text. He is a noted political opponent of Kagame and the RPF, which seems to stem from his ties to Belgium (he's a Belgian political commentator.) If he is going to be utilized as a source, such utilization needs to include a disclaimer regarding his history of opposition to Kagame and the RPF. This subject is extremely important to me and I just want to ensure everyone is getting the best information possible. Thank you!

Historian of African Great Lakes (talk) 23:27, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Reyntjens had his start as a scholar of Belgian constitutional law, and his study of constitutionalism brought him to Burundi during its failed democratic transition of the 1990s. This led to his study of more regional issues, and I do think he is presently quite respected for his knowledge of the region. There are indeed "camps" of European scholars on Rwanda/Burundi issues, with Rene Lemarchand and Reyntjens on one side and Jean-Pierre Chretien leading the other. Both sides' views on the issues and eachother can be represented, but I don't think either has really won out in the field of historiography for us to present one as having the "consensus" view. To put a "disclaimer" about Reyntjen's opinion on the shootdown due to his skepticism of Kagame (who's faced much more academic and political scrutiny in recent years) as if that colors his professional credibility would be entirely WP:UNDUE unless another scholar or otherwise highly reputable work (journal article, etc.) called his conclusions into question. This is especially so if you're trying to make that argument based off his nationality. -Indy beetle (talk) 03:48, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Reytjens is quite neutral, and it is only after decades of research that he concluded that the RPF was responsible. He already suspected the RPF in 1995, and by 2020 he was convinced. Few people know more about this issue than Reyntjens.

• Reyntjens, Filip (1995). Rwanda, trois jours qui ont fait basculer l'histoire. Éditions L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-7384-3704-4.
• Reyntjens, Filip (2010). A fake inquiry on a major event: analysis of the Mutsinzi report on the 6th April 1994 attack on the Rwandan President’s aeroplane. IOB Working Papers. Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
• Reyntjens, Filip (2020). The RPF did it: a fresh look at the 1994 plane attack that ignited genocide in Rwanda. IOB Working Papers. Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).

Uglemat (talk) 14:26, 6 July 2021 (UTC)