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Africa Live: France lacked the will to stop Rwanda genocide - Macron - BBC News Africa Live: France lacked the will to stop Rwanda genocide - Macron - BBC News
(about 1 hour later)
President Emmanuel Macron has said that France and other countries could have stopped the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where ethnic Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Angola’s Constitutional Court has overturned a five-year sentence that had been handed to the son of former President José Eduardo dos Santos for fraud.
“France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, lacked the will to do so," Mr Macron said in a video message. José Filomeno dos Santos was sentenced in 2020 for his role in the illegal transfer of $500m (£378m) from Angola’s Sovereign Fund to a private account in the UK.
The video is set to be aired during the 30th commemoration of the Rwandan genocide on Sunday, President Macron's office said. He appealed against the verdict in 2022.
The event is set to be attended by several international guests including French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné and ex-US President Bill Clinton. In a ruling published on Thursday, the Constitutional Court declared his conviction as "unconstitutional", because it breached "the principles of legality, adversarial proceedings, a fair and consistent judgement and the rights of the defence".
Relations between France and Rwanda have recently been on the mend, following years of tensions over France's alleged involvement in the genocide. The former leader's son, also known as Zenu, was the head of Angola's Sovereign Wealth Fund from 2013 to 2018.
France has been accused of failing to do enough to stop the Rwanda genocide. French leaders have denied its complicity in the genocide. He was sentenced alongside the ex-governor of Angola's national bank and three others.
However, in a 2021 visit to Rwanda, Mr Macron said that France had a duty to "recognise the suffering she has inflicted on the Rwandan people by too long valuing silence over the examination of the truth". The transfer of the money was agreed in 2017, in the last few weeks before his father stood down as president - after 38 years.
José Eduardo dos Santos was president from 1979 until he resigned in 2017, to be replaced by the man he had handpicked for the job, his former defence minister Joao Lourenço.
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