By Norm Dixon
The genocidal former rulers of Rwanda and their vicious Interahamwe death squads murdered more than 500,000 people in the space of three months in 1994. The west stood by as this massacre unfolded. Only as the regime was being overthrown by the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, bringing the genocide to an end, did the "international community" impose an arms embargo. Evidence has now emerged that western governments allowed that embargo to be breached regularly and that huge quantities of arms were delivered to the Interahamwe for use in the genocide and, later, in a planned invasion of Rwanda.
The massacres in Rwanda began in April 1994 and continued through June. The UN embargo was imposed on May 17, 1994, and then tightened on June 26 to make it illegal for arms dealers to export weapons to Rwanda from a third country. Documents discovered by a reporter for the London Times after the eastern Zaire rebels drove the Interahamwe from the Mugunga refugee camp show that a British company had supplied weapons until July 1994.
The documents and a report by a UN team investigating breaches of the embargo, leaked to the Times in early November, show the arming of the Interahamwe involved British arms dealers, intermediaries in Israel, eastern Europe and Russia, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Malta, former officers of apartheid South Africa's armed forces and their allies in the US-backed counter-revolutionary UNITA guerilla army fighting the Angolan government.
All worked hand in glove with Zaire's corrupt dictatorship of President Mobutu Sese Seko and the Zairean armed forces. Some human rights groups have accused France of also supplying the Interahamwe with arms.
The UN report described Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, as the hub of the arms smuggling. "Zaire or elements within Zaire" played a "central" role in arming the Interahamwe. Much of the smuggling directly involved former Rwandan military officers and politicians responsible for the massacres, operating with Zairean passports out of Kinshasa and Kenya. General Augustin Bizimungu, the former Rwandan army chief, was prominent in the dealings.
The report described money for arms being raised through printing of counterfeit US dollars in Kenya as well as levying "war taxes" on refugees in camps in eastern Zaire controlled by the Interahamwe.
Large quantities of weapons have been siphoned directly from Zaire to the Interahamwe from supplies originally destined for UNITA guerillas in Angola. Throughout the 1980s, the CIA and South Africa funnelled massive amounts of arms through Zaire. South African newspapers have also recently uncovered how UNITA members joined forces with former apartheid military agents to send South African-made weapons to the Interahamwe.
In January and June 1995, Russian cargo aircraft crashed at Kinshasa airport. Both contained military equipment from Russia en route to UNITA in Angola and the Interahamwe in eastern Zaire. Since the collapse of Soviet Union, Russia has become an "ask no questions, hear no lies" wholesaler of arms to anybody who can pay.
The UN team on three occasions — November and December 1995 and August 1996 — asked Britain's Customs and Excise to investigate a British company shipping arms to the Interahamwe. The British government did not respond.
Soon after the Interahamwe fled the Mugunga refugee camp on November 16, London Times reporter Sam Kiley discovered documents which showed that the British-based company Mil-Tec had supplied US$5.5 million worth of machine-guns, mortars, grenades, ammunition and military between April and July 1994. The arms were flown out of London's Heathrow airport, Israel and Albania via commercial airlines including Germany's Lufthansa, Belgium's Sabena and Russia's Aeroflot. Payments were made through Belgium, France and Egypt.
The weapons were delivered directly to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, at the height of the massacres, then, to get around the arms embargo, to Goma in eastern Zaire and Kinshasa after the Rwandan army and Interahamwe had been driven out of Rwanda. The documented deliveries continued until July 13.
British customs on November 19 said in a statement that there was no evidence that "arms were exported from the UK" but conceded that British companies could have acted as intermediaries, in direct breach of the arms embargo. The statement did not hint that the UN investigators had drawn Britain's attention to the scam more than a year ago and no action had been taken.
The UN report also shed light on the Interahamwe's South African connections. Willem "Ters" Ehlers — former South African president P.W. Botha's last private secretary — was involved in a June 1994 arms shipment from the Seychelles to Goma. At least 80 tonnes of rifles, grenades and ammunition were delivered.
Ehlers told the UN investigators that he believed the buyer was the Zaire government. He admitted that among those who inspected the weapons in the Seychelles was Rwandan Colonel Theoneste Bagasore, who has since been arrested for his role in the genocide.