Conspiracy To Murder

In April 1994, up to a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda during a murderous campaign of horrifying efficiency. The ferocity of the killing and the cruelty inflicted on defenseless people has no comparison in modern times. Conspiracy To Murder is the story of how that genocide was planned. It reveals how, from as early as 1990, the political, military, and administrative leadership of Rwanda became involved in planning the complete extermination of the Tutsi population. A vicious hate campaign filled the media, urging Hutus to kill; a network of roadblocks was devised to prevent any escape; civil-defense groups were established through the country, with eventually every third Hutu being armed; half a million machetes and other agricultural tools were imported, and 85 tons of munitions distributed countrywide, in the year leading up to the genocide. Melvern reveals the full story behind the conspiracy, detailing the involvement of world governments: how the French military trained the killers and how their “humanitarian” intervention in June 1994 enabled many of those killers to escape justice; how the British government misled Parliament about what was really happening; how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence showing that the genocide had begun; and how significant was the knowledge of the then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Gali. Fully updated, this new paperback edition includes an in-depth account of the genocide trials at the International Criminal Tribunal.