Report: French aided Rwanda genocide

KIGALI, Rwanda, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Rwandan government investigators say French leaders and soldiers aided the killers in the country's 1994 genocide in which hundreds of thousands died.

A three-volume report released Tuesday by the country's Mucyo Commission names former French President Francois Mitterand, his son Jean Christophe Mitterand and several members of his Cabinet as enablers of Rwanda's ruling Hutu-led government and its notorious Interahamwe militia, the New Times, a Rwandan newspaper, reported.

The report accuses French soldiers in Rwanda of joining in with "genocidal forces" in the systematic killing and rape of minority Tutsi refugees.

"French soldiers were involved in assassination of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis," the New Times quotes the report as saying. "French soldiers committed many rapes against Tutsi women survivors. These sexual abuses particularly targeting Tutsi women survivors were systematic."

France supported the Hutu government of Rwanda in a civil war with Ugandan-backed Tutsi exiles earlier in the 1990s. Historians say the 1994 genocide was partly a result of failed reconciliation efforts undertaken after that conflict.