Spanish High Court investigates
genocide committed by US-backed dictatorship
By Gearóid Ó Colmáin
December 15, 2011
November 29th investigative journalist and genocide expert Keith Harmon Snow testified before Spain’s Highest Court (Audencia Nacional) to support the indictments against 40 Rwandan officials for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity during the western-backed invasions of Rwanda and Congo/Zaire by Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF).
In 2005, the relatives of 9 Spanish nationals killed in Rwanda and the Congo
in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 2000, filed a lawsuit against the government of Rwanda
resulting in the issuing of Interpol
international arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan officials of
Kagame’s régime.
On 6 February 2008, the Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles
issued an indictment charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan
military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against
humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from
1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of
the Hutu ethnic group.
While the investigations were initially based on complaints from families
of nine Spaniards who were killed, harmed or disappeared during the period at
issue, the indictment was subsequently expanded to include crimes committed
against Rwandan and Congolese victims, based on the universal jurisdiction
doctrine.
The indictment rules out the prosecution of Paul Kagame, arguing that he
may not be prosecuted as long as he holds the position of President of Rwanda.
According to Spanish lawyer Jordi Palou Loverdos:
“Spain’s Audencia Nacional was only met by silence when it duly and formally asked the U.N. to hand over the evidence of these crimes perpetrated against people in 1996 and 1997 or the evidence of the pillaging of valuable mineral resources conducted in these same years or earlier. The international media which had access to the UN report have made public the fact that the UN High Commissioner responsible for the report keeps ~ separately from the latter ~ a confidential data bank containing evidence that implicates individual Rwandan and Ugandan military officials.” [1]
In spite of threats and intimidation from agents linked to
Western governments and from the United Nations, the Spanish High Court
authorities are continuing to hear evidence against the Ugandan and
Rwandan proxy forces of the United States in Africa. Keith Harmon Snow has been researching the real facts of the tragedy known to the world as the ”Rwandan genocide” (put in quotes?) since 1994, and has, along with many other experts, evidence to prove that the United States, Britain and Israel were responsible for the training, financing and covert military and logistic support of Kagame and Museveni’s forces.
On 6 April 1994, the UPDF/RPA proxy forces assassinated the Rwandan
and Burundian presidents (Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira), their military
chiefs of staff, and the French pilots of the plane they were flying on, thus
provoking and participating in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of
Hutus and Tutsis in one of the most violent civil wars in modern history.
Snow also presented detailed evidence of the war crimes, genocide and
crimes against humanity committed by Kagame and Museveni’s proxy
forces, after they invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, again
backed by the Pentagon, Israel and NATO allies. The Congo/Zaire invasion was
commanded by generals Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe, and they involved an
officer attached to Kabarebe named Hyppolite Kanambe ~ alias Joseph Kabila, the
strongman in Congo today.
The ongoing Rwandan occupation and plunder of eastern Congo has
resulted in the deaths of some ten millionpeople, making this the
worst war since the Second World War. The Central African holocaust has
been largely ignored by the global mass media corporations who are calling for
“humanitarian intervention” in Syria, much as they did to justify invading
Libya, by the same countries responsible for supporting mass carnage in
Africa.
In spite of orders from Laurent Désire Kabila (Congo’s interim president
of 1998-2001), to disengage from the Congo, the RPA and UPDF re-invaded
the Congo in 1998, resulting in the Second Congolese War. Although the war is
said to have ended in 2001, mass killing of the populations in the mineral rich
Kivu provinces of Eastern Congo under the leadership of these US-backed
dictators has continued to this day.
Contrary to its stated ”peacekeeping” mission, the United Nations
Observers Mission for the Congo (MONUC) and its follow on dependent, Monusco,
has been deployed in the Congo since 2000 and has been involved in sexual
violence and contraband activities. MONUC has provided cover for the Rwandan,
Ugandan and Burundi forces, USAID, the Pentagon’s new Africa Command
(AFRICOM), and scores of Western mining corporations who are
plundering the Eastern Congo.
Snow gave detailed testimony to the Audencia Nacional of
the American, British, Belgian, German, Israeli and Australian mining
corporations who have profited from the Pentagon’s holocaust in the Congo.
Many of these companies such as Banro Corporation, Barrick Gold and
companies run by the Blattner dynasty.
Snow alleges that these corporations have direct links to the criminal
networks run by Paul Kagame, who are plundering the Kivu provinces of the
Eastern Congo and massacring the Hutu Rwandan refugees there.
Though the majority of victims have been from the populations of Rwandan Hutus, Rwandan Tutsis and Twa have also been targeted; both in Congo and Rwanda, and many Congolese ethnic groups have been targeted in the Congo. The Kagame regime is determined to eliminate all possible opposition to its rule and to occupy and annex eastern Congo to create a “Republic of the Volcanoes” controlled by Rwanda and populated with satellite US military bases.
Snow told the Spanish court that details collected by the UN Panel of
Experts report of 2001 to 2010, detailing the illegal occupation, plunder and
war crimes in the Congo, have been watered down by special interest groups
linked to Western governments, thus shielding Western corporations and
governments from scrutiny by the International Criminal Court and the Criminal
Tribunal on Rwanda.
Trained in the notorious Fort
Levenworth, Kansas (USA) and advised by former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, Paul Kagame is without question one of the most evil
dictators in modern history. The scale and intensity of his atrocities dwarf
those of Pinochet, Suharto and Somoza combined.
Rwanda and the Congo belong to the ninth circle of global capitalism’s Dantesque inferno. It is the circle of betrayal; betrayal of the high ideals of the United Nations to uphold the rule of law and work towards the goal of international peace and stability; betrayal of the trust that ordinary citizens of the world have in media corporations to tell them what is really happening in the world, so that leaders and potentates can be held to account.
In spite of expertise gained on the ground throughout Central Africa
spanning 20 years, expert testimony to the US House of
Representatives in 2001, extensive work as genocide consultant to the
United Nations and numerous meticulously documented reports, Keith Harmon
Snow’s work continues to be ignored by the corporate media and many outlets who
claim to be ‘progressive’ and ‘independent’ .
According to Snow,
“U.S.-based groups fronted by the intelligence and defense establishment and pretending to be ‘grass roots non-government organizations’ ~ such as the ENOUGH project, Raise Hope for Congo, Resolve, STAND and Save Darfur ~ have co-opted the grass roots movement and are whitewashing the issues and controlling the media, academic and public spaces to prevent the true grass roots voices for Central Africa from being heard and to prevent the deeper issues from being understood.” [2]
In preparation for a documentary film to be released next year on the African
holocaust, Keith Harmon Snow has just completed a series of interviews with
distinguished scholars, investigative journalists and lawyers from France,
Spain, Germany, Camaroun and Rwanda. The film, as yet untitled, is expected to
be aired in film festivals throughout the world and will also be available
online for mass viewing.
Uncovering the truth about the role of Western imperialism in the
violence that has beset Central Africa since the fall of the USSR to the
present day, is of vital importance, as the obscene and racist myth of an
African genocide America “failed to prevent” constitutes the mendacious and insane
basis for the Orwellian “responsibility to protect” doctrine. Western governments and their pro-Kagame lobbies in the mainstream media are prompt to smear as "genocide deniers" those who challenge the lies and distortions of the official genocide narrative of the current Rwandan regime by exposing the inconvenient and politically incorrect facts. In the case of Rwanda and the Congo, it should now be abundantly clear who the genocide deniers are.
NOTES
[1] http://www.bpi-icb.com/
NOTES
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