FBIS4-24290
"drafr125_a_94003"
FBIS-AFR-94-125
Daily Report
28 Jun 1994
CENTRAL AFRICA
Rwanda
Private Investigator Claims To Have Black Box
Private Investigator Claims To Have Black Box
BR2906100294 Paris LE MONDE in French 28 Jun 94 pp 1, 6
BR2906100294
Paris LE MONDE
French
BFN
[Report by Herve Gattegno and Corinne Lesnes: "Rwanda: The
Black Box Mystery"]
[Text] It is a little metal box, hardly bigger than a
pocketbook, riveted to an ocher, dented piece of sheet steel
obviously torn from its original cabin. The sheet is covered
with a number of partially erased stamps and inscriptions, and
series of figures, sometimes preceded with "F50," as in "Falcon
50." The box is 15 cm square and 4 cm thick. On one of its
sides, a silver and blue plate -- marked "Litton" -- stands out
against the black background. In the center is an electrical
socket, sealed with red wax, connected up to a dozen or so
colored wires to a pin plug that hangs free.
The aircraft of the late Rwandan President Juvenal
Habyarimana, which crashed on 6 April in Kigali leading to his
death and that of the president of Burundi and the 10 other
passengers and crew members, did indeed have a "black box,"
irrespective of what has been claimed since, and this black box
is now in Paris. Former Captain Paul Barril, the former
commander of the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Unit),
a one-time member of the famous "cell" of gendarmes at the
Elysee [French presidential palace] and now the unofficial
adviser to several black African and Middle Eastern heads of
state, claims to have obtained the box in Kigali and says he
will make it "available to the international authorities."
The existence of this flight recorder -- to use the
technical
term -- is stubbornly denied in official circles, but former
Captain Barril showed it to a LE MONDE journalist on Thursday,
23 June, in the offices of his company, named Secrets, in Avenue
de la Grande Armee in the 17th district of Paris.
The former Army officer claims he has been to Rwanda twice
since the presidential aircraft crashed, during April and at the
beginning of May, to investigate, at the family's request, the
circumstances surrounding the death of the Rwandan head of
state, which no one still believes was an accident. Shortly
after 2030 on Wednesday, 6 April, as it was preparing to land at
Kigali airport's only runway, the Falcon 50 was hit in the rear
by two rockets and crashed on the grounds of the presidential
residence, which is near the airport. Paul Barril shows
photographs taken by President Habyarimana's youngest son
depicting the debris piled up on the lawn and the bloody bodies
of the victims. They were published in the 28 April edition of
the JEUNE AFRIQUE weekly. He also readily shows the photos he
took on his two trips to Kigali, some of which show him next to
a piece of artillery and standing in front of the French Embassy
in Kigali, which has been deserted since the last French
nationals left on the morning of 12 April.
Agathe Habyarimana, the president's widow who is exiled in
France with her children, gave Barril "a mandate for
investigation and research" on 6 May that lays down the
conditions of his mission: "To make all investigations he
considers useful to uncover the truth surrounding the attack,"
discover "the guilty parties and, in particular, those in
command," and take "all necessary action with the insurers." A
French lawyer, Helene Clamagirand, was moreover charged with
drawing up a legal report and lodging "in the coming weeks" a
murder charge with the International Court of Justice in the
Hague.
`Everything Is OK'
In addition to the famous black box -- and no one knows what
its decryption, requiring special equipment, will reveal --
former Captain Barril has returned from his Rwandan visits with
the Kigali airport control tower tapes: three large,
Assmann-brand aluminum reels, each containing eight hours of
tape. These should contain the last conversations between the
presidential plane and the tower controllers on 6 April. He
also has in his possession all the telexes received by the
airport in the days leading up to the attack, the airport's
"duty book," which contains the names of the three men who were
on duty in the airport on 6 April, and the book of "transmission
and radio navigation services," whose last entry, dated 5 April
at 0742 (universal time), noted that "the recorder has again
been unblocked" after a power cut and concluded: "Everything is
OK."
In truth, the African findings of the former gendarme have
been an open secret in the French Government for a number of
weeks. The personal cabinet of Cooperation Minister Michel
Roussin confirmed that "contacts" had been made with Paul
Barril, but both parties claim with equal vigor to have started
the initiative. For his part, the former captain told us that:
"All the elements in my possession will be made available to
the international authorities as soon as an inquiry is launched."
The initial effect of the intervention of the burdensome
captain, whose adventurous profile is well-known but his motives
less so, has been to show up the absence of any official
procedure to identify the perpetrators of the attack on the
Falcon, despite the declarations made the day after 6 April.
Almost three months later, neither the United Nations, which
was then responsible for security in Rwanda, nor Burundi, whose
president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, also died in the plane crash, nor
France itself, despite the loss of three French crew members,
have yet launched any kind of inquiry.
Only an initiative by the families of the crew members could
lead to the case being submitted to an examining magistrate by
way of the same procedure that was used in 1989 after the attack
on the UTA DC-10 over the Chad desert, whose case was submitted
to Parisian Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. At the end of last
week, a close collaborator of Mr. Roussin told us: "The
families are free to bring a case to justice." Charged with
defending the interests of the family of the Rwandan president,
Mrs. Clamagirand makes no bones about the fact that she would
like a number of other cases to be brought in association with
hers to "break the rule of silence" surrounding a terrorist act
without which Rwanda would probably not be the war-torn country
it is today.
There are still the investigations being made by the Belgian
military auditors attached to the Belgian Justice Ministry,
which has been charged with establishing the causes not of the
attack, but of the subsequent death of 12 Belgian Blue Helmets.
Nobody knows what progress they have made with their
investigation, but it would appear that the Brussels civil
servants have modest resources and to date they have only
focused on obtaining information on the circle of Hutu students
in Belgium. They want to know who killed the soldiers and how.
On 8 April, the Belgian Defense Ministry indicated that the
soldiers had been "apprehended, led away, and executed" while
they were trying to protect the fleeing Rwandan prime minister,
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who was murdered in Kigali during the
massacres that began shortly after the aircraft exploded. On
the same day, the United Nations stated that they had been
killed after being disarmed by members of the Presidential Guard
while they were on their way to the airport to investigate the
circumstances surrounding the death of the president and his
Burundian counterpart. On 15 April, a memo from the Rwandan
foreign minister to all diplomatic missions in the world
reported the arrest of "three suspects" from the "Belgian
contingent" when they tried to "retrieve by force the black box
from the wreck of the aircraft."
Mercenaries from Europe
This succession of contradictory reports illustrates, as if
it was necessary, the confusion that reigns in Rwanda and that
prevents any hope of a rapid clarification of the circumstances
surrounding the attack. All sides -- the Hutus in the
presidential circle of supporters and guard, those in the
regular army, and the Tutsis in the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic
Front] -- have their own version of events, their own
suspicions, and their own insinuations. Any verification on the
ground is now impossible: The RPF has taken control of the
airport zone, and many of the witnesses to the attack and the
ensuing conflict have perished. Thus, the information published
in the Belgian daily LE SOIR, whereby the Rwandan presidential
plane was brought down by "two French soldiers" and which
claimed to coincide "on a number of points, with the inquiry
being carried out in Belgium by the military auditors," was met
with denials, not just from the French Government, but also from
the Belgian Government. In any event, the report substantiated
a hypothesis floated by the intelligence services of both
countries whereby the guilty parties are indeed "two white men,"
who could be mercenaries from Europe or South Africa. So who
were they working for?
During May, the French secret services indicated that, at
the
end of last year, "an American company represented in Central
Africa" had tried to recruit, through Belgian intermediaries,
mercenaries skilled in handling antitank and antiaircraft
missiles. Part of the recruiting is said to have been done in a
hotel in the 17th district of Paris. According to the DGSE
(General Directorate for External Security), the operation was
to have taken some 15 or so men from Brussels to Nairobi and
then to Uganda, from where they would infiltrate Rwanda "to sow
the seeds of discontent in the regular Rwandan army." However,
the attempt came to nothing.
An investigation into the supposed motives of each party
does
not add to any convictions. Did the RPF have any interest in
killing a president who, although abhorred, was to bring it into
government on 4 August in accordance with the Arusha agreements?
As for the "hard core" supporters of the regime, who took their
members from the presidential entourage itself, they could have
been trying to prevent any reconciliation with the Tutsi
minority, but the presence on board the Falcon of Colonel Elie
Sagatwa, one of their leaders, considerably weakens this
argument. As for France, it is hard to see what advantage it
could have had from eliminating a regime it stands accused of
having supported in favor of rebels who treat it openly as an
enemy.
In any event, the fact that many witnesses confirm that
fighting broke out almost the very moment the plane exploded
leads us to think that this was an organized operation.
However, here again, it appears impossible to know who really
started hostilities. Jeanne, the eldest daughter of President
Habyarimana, said: "The instant the plane crashed, we were
opened fire upon. The shots were coming from the hills occupied
by the RPF. During the night, we learned that the fighting was
intensifying. First of all in Kigali, and then throughout the
country." It has also been established that after the attack,
the soldiers of the presidential guard carried out savage
reprisals in the Rwandan capital against not only the Tutsi
population, but also against the Hutu opposition, as if to
better prove that the civil war ravaging the country could not
be summed up as an ethnic conflict. While shots were ringing
through the town, the official Rwandan army had a statement read
on the national radio station calling for the people to support
it in its struggle against the "criminals" and denouncing the
exactions of angry soldiers following the assassination of the
president.
Six Frenchmen Killed in Kigali
It was at this time, too, that two French gendarmes --
Deputy
Chiefs Rene Maier and Alain Didot -- and the latter's wife were
killed. Members of the military aid mission to Rwanda since
1993, the two noncommissioned officers and Mrs. Didot, shot and
hacked to death by machetes, were summarily buried in the garden
of their villa. That is where the Blue Helmets discovered them
on 13 April. Their bodies were met in Le Bourget on 15 April by
Defense Minister Francois Leotard and Cooperation Minister
Michel Roussin. The latter's staff said that "their death was
not linked to their job (one of them was a communications
specialist -- LE MONDE editor's note), but to their residence
and to the fact that they were said to be hiding Tutsis in their
house." It must therefore be understood that the three French
nationals were supposedly victims of Hutu militiamen or the
presidential guard. Their house, however, was located in the
Kanombe area, which was already under RPF control. The news of
their death -- which was known to the French Embassy in Kigali
by 8 April, as attested to by a memo sent to Paris by telex at
1900 -- was only made public three days later. Curiously, the
death certificate, dated 6 April, says that it was an
"accidental death."
No less curious is the fact that the JOURNAL OFFICIEL of 14
June, which published the appointment to the rank of "Knight of
the Legion of Honor" for the three crew members of the Rwandan
airplane -- the pilot, Jacquy Heraud, his copilot, Jean-Pierre
Minaberry, and the mechanic, Jean-Michel Perrine -- put their
date of death at 7 April, whereas the airplane crashed the night
before, and without anyone knowing whether this was simply a
transcription error. Recruited within the framework of the
cooperation effort to fly the airplane offered by France to
Rwanda in 1989, the three crew members, at least one of whom
used to be with the GLAM [Ministerial Air Liaison Group], were
rapidly hired by a rather shadowy Paris-based company, SATIF
(Service and Assistance in French Industrial Technologies),
which, according to its general manager, is a "company which
provides services in the aeronautics and electronics sectors."
It has contracts with, among others, the Cooperation Ministry
"with the skill and discretion that this requires." Maintaining
the Falcon 50 crews cost around 3 million French francs per
year. Surely it would have been better to go through a
"friendly" company, so that the cost would not be borne by
French financiers. This hypothesis has been put forward by
several sources, who suggest that in the past the company has
already provided other discreet services on behalf of
cooperation.
"We are not a company working unofficially for the
Cooperation Ministry," the SATIF official told us, although he
had not been asked if that was the case. Michel Roussin's staff
admits that it has been in "financial contact" with the company,
which seems to have been replaced by a limited liability company
called ASI (Aeroservices International), which, although
dissolved on 30 June 1992, still appears to be active, even
though it has never met its legal obligation to submit its
accounts to the Commercial Court. "We have nothing to hide," the
same interlocutor explained. "Our customers are aware of
everything we do, but we do not like people sticking their noses
into our affairs. This is not the United States!" During the
same interview, he assured us last week that the airplane did
not have a black box.
Pilot's Last Words
The Falcon 50 -- a symbol of France's preferred relations,
which are now widely disputed -- was purchased second-hand and
then given to President Habyarimana to replace an aging
Caravelle under conditions which would have nothing to gain by
being held up to the light. The negotiations were led by an
eminent member of Francois Mitterrand's staff, assisted by a man
from the "Elysee cell." The middleman chosen by the Rwandan
head of state was Dr. Bele Calo, an African born in Belgium, who
has had several brushes with the police for confidence trickery
and fraud in the early eighties. Said to be close to the former
Rwandan ambassador to France, Denis Magirimana, who was supposed
to have been dismissed for embezzlement of public funds, this
dubious figure is said to have left France for Uganda, and
nothing further has been heard of him.
On 6 April, at around 2030, it was this airplane, carrying
the Rwandan and Burundian heads of state, which crashed after
being hit by two projectiles, most likely two Soviet-built SAM-7
missiles. According to our information, the two missile
launchers were found on the Masaka hill, from which the firing
came, in the heart of the RPF zone, and are now said to be in
the hands of the Rwandan defense minister. The airplane was
carrying the two presidents from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), where
a summit on the situation in Burundi had just been held.
Several heads of state from this part of Africa who had said
that they would be participating in the meeting, ended up
canceling. These included Marshall Mobutu, president of Zaire,
with whom Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira had dined
the night before in Kinshasa, but who decided at the last minute
not to go to Tanzania.
Since the Burundian president's airplane had broken down,
Mr.
Habyarimana suggested taking him home, in accordance with the
African custom of "airplane taxis." Having left Dar es Salaam
at 1850, the Falcon was supposed to touch down in Kigali in the
early evening, and then go on to the Burundian capital of
Bujumbura to drop off its passenger, and finally return to
Kigali, where the airport was still being guarded by Belgian
troops working under UNAMIR (UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda).
As it was approaching the runway, military sources say that
the copilot's wife heard the final dialogue between the airplane
and the control tower: Her husband had told her the frequency
on which she could receive the airplane communications during
the approach phase on an ordinary radio.
So, before losing contact and several minutes before the
explosion, she is said to have heard the control tower ask the
pilot several times about the presence on board the plane of the
Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira. Are we to deduce from
this that the latter was the target, that they wanted to kill
two birds with one stone, or, on the contrary, that the
conspirators were trying to spare him? An examination of the
black box might be able to say.
There is another unanswered question: Is the death of the
two French gendarmes at their villa in Kanombe, located exactly
along the same axis as the Kigali runway, related to the attack?
Did they witness it, and were they therefore silenced because
of it? Even an official inquiry has little chance of
determining that.
Many witnesses, both civilian and military, who have
frequented the Rwandan capital since the beginning of the year,
have said: "We had the feeling that something was brewing."
One of President Habyarimana's nephews said that during a phone
conversation one week before his death, he told his uncle that
there were rumors of a coup. The reply was: "We know about
it." The wife and children of the Rwandan leader recall a
conversation on Easter Sunday -- three days before the tragedy
-- with an African diplomat bearing a message from Paul Kagame,
the military leader of the RPF: "You must know that he will do
everything in his power to kill you, even if it means gambling
his own life."
A few hours after his death, the presidential clan clearly
pointed the finger at the RPF and its alleged accomplices. "The
Rwandan Government will shortly launch an inquiry in order to
shed some light on the responsibilities of the Belgian Blue
Helmets suspected by Rwandan public opinion of being involved in
the plot to assassinate the head of state," wrote the Rwandan
Foreign Ministry in the above mentioned memo dated 15 April
which it sent to its diplomatic missions abroad. Before
indicating, more cautiously, in the same document that, while
awaiting the expert report on the celebrated black box (which is
today in the hands of former gendarme Paul Barril), "it would be
risky to draw a definitive conclusion as to the perpetrators of
the attack which took the life of President Habyarimana."
Almost three months after the event, this is still --
unfortunately -- the accepted conclusion in the midst of the
Rwandan chaos.