By Jean-Pierre A.
Paul Barril, former French police officer and security adviser to African states who was accused of supplying arms to Rwandan government in 1994, during the Genocide died on Tuesday without being formally charged, despite complaints from rights organisations.
Barril, co-founder of the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN)—established in 1974—passed away on Tuesday evening at the age of 80.
Barril was a GIGN officer who became involved in two scandals during the Mitterrand era (the “Irishmen of Vincennes” affair and the illegal wiretapping scandal at the Elysée Palace) before later being implicated in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
In the 1980s, he transitioned into the fields of private security and the protection of high-profile individuals, and served as an advisor to various heads of state—notably in Africa, and more specifically in Rwanda.
The French security expert was accused of complicity in the Rwandan genocide.
In 2013, Barril was accused of signing an arms contract with former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda on May 28, 1994, during the devastating genocide.
The International Federation for Human Rights, the French Human Rights League and NGO Survie, who filed the complaint, said that Barril worked extensively as a security advisor, in a private capacity, to African states in the 1990s.
The organisations alleged that he was particularly active in Rwanda and that he had a close and long-term relationship with the authorities there.
Barril was questioned on several occasions by Judge Marc Trévidic as part of the French investigation into the April 1994 attack on the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana—an event that triggered the Genocide against Tutsis (in which about 1000,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred).
On Wednesday, Rwandan Diaspora in France, issued a statement on X saying Paul Barril has never faced justice yet he was accused of complicity in the genocide against Tutsis.
“Paul Barril is dead. He will never face a court of law to answer for the grave accusations of complicity in the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” the statement read” 32 years after the genocide. 13 years after a formal complaint was filed. No indictment. No trial.”
“How much longer must we wait for the full truth to emerge?” Rwandan diaspora posed in a statement.
NGOs accused ex police officer of complicity and of having supplied weapons to the perpetrators of the genocide a few weeks after the massacres began—an allegation he has always denied, according to media reports.