New details on Capt Paul Barril: France’s arms supplier for genocide government

This is one of the old photos of Capt Paul Barril in which he displays a rare passion for arms (net photo)

A clandestine agent of the French government was paid US$3m by the genocide government to supply arms and more than 1,000 mercenaries to keep it in power as the slaughter of Tutsis was being implemented.

Captain Paul Barril was secretly sent by François de Grossouvre, advisor to ex-French President Francois Mitterrand, to Rwanda a few days before or after the genocide of Tutsis had started. On April 27, 1994, the Defense Minister at the time, Augustin Bizimana, wrote a letter to Paul Barril asking for two specific supplies; arms and mercenaries.

The letter has been obtained by French newspaper ‘Le Parisien’. In this correspondence titled “Urgent”, Bizimana asks for different types of arms and 1,000 mercenaries to help the interim government fight off the RPF rebels as the execution of the genocide continued. The price tag: US$3,130,000 from the state treasury. The contract was signed on April 28, 1994, at the Rwandan embassy in Paris.

On April 06, 1994, President Habyarimana’s plane was fired down over Kigali, killing him, the Burundian counterpart and all onboard. A new government was sworn in a few days later, and was to oversee the implementation of the mass slaughter of Tutsis across Rwanda.

However, as the genocide spread, the government was also losing ever more ground to the RPF rebels. As part of the counter offensive, Defense Minister Bizimana sought more direct help from France, which had been the godfather of the Habyarimana government. The French daily ‘Le Parisien’ reports that Agathe Habyarimana personally also asked Paul Barril to investigate who killed her husband.

On December 20 last year, the French judge Trévidic, who has investigated the Habyarimana assassination and concluded that his plane was shot down by his own inner circle, did interview Paul Barril. During a search of his house, investigators found the above letter and invoices of arms supplies to Rwanda dating back to that time.

In the interview with the judge, the now aging Captain Barril does not regret anything, and did not provide any substantial information. He currently presents himself as advisor to the government of Qatar.

Recently, another French newspaper published details about two French agents who mysteriously died in Kigali after Habyarimana’s plane had been shot down. The men were in charge of communications between the French establishment in Kigali and the Habyarimana regime.

In the story, the paper suggests the men and wife of one of them, may have been eliminated to erase any evidence of French involvement in the events that led to the genocide of more than a million Tutsis in a matter of three months.