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.