Rwanda’s shameful arms trade

Between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed over the course of 100 days in Rwanda in 1994 during the civil war.

Documents detailing Israel’s defence exports to Rwanda during the country’s civil war and genocide in the 1990s are to remain sealed, the country’s Supreme Court has ruled. Two years ago Professor Yair Auron and attorney Eitay Mack submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Israel’s defence ministry to discover the nature of any arms exports made to Rwanda between 1990 and 1995. The request was denied by the Ministry of Defence and later by the Tel Aviv District Court, upholding the argument that the release of information would undermine state security and international relations.

Mr Mack responded to the decision by calling it “mistaken and immoral,” but said that “at no point during the proceedings was there a denial that there were defence exports during the genocide,” and vowed to “continue to fight to expose the truth”.

Israel was not the only country to have supplied arms into this conflict. Egypt supplied $6million of weapons. It included 60-mm and 82-mm mortars, 16,000 mortar shells, 122-mm D-30 howitzers, 3,000 artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenades, plastic explosives, anti-personnel land-mines, and more than three million rounds of small arms ammunition. South Africa supplied automatic rifles, machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers and ammunition. In May 1993, a French arms dealer agreed to sell $12 million worth of weapons to Rwanda. On Jan. 21, 1994, in violation of the terms of the recent peace accords, a French DC-8 cargo plane landed covertly in Kigali loaded with weapons, including 90 boxes of 60mm mortars.

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