In pursit of war time abusers

In May Octogenarian Rawandan businessman  Felicien Kabuga was arrested in Paris after 25-year of manhunt, he is finally in custody accused of bankrolling the worsyty atrocities since the Khmer Rouge: the Rwandan genocide.

Melvern as a journalist encountered several leading genocides in Rwanda in the terrible summer of 1994 when  800, 000 people were slaughtered in merely hundred days. In the early weeks after the overthrow of  their regime, they fled into neighbouring Zaire and would  cruise around in swanky cars even as their foot soldiers festered in refugee camps.

Melvern . Melvern forensically rebuts attempts by apologists for the genocidaires, including western academics to suggest a mporal equivalence  between the parties in Rwanda.  Her account is an implicit  description of events  for those tempted to look back to the unipolar 1990s as a golden era for global governance, post cold war and pre-Iraq war.

She reveals  new dispiriting details of behind the scene diplomacy  a the UN Security Council as none of the so-called Western powers came out well.  Preoccupie by Bosnia all tried to avert their gaze.

The US was desperately trying to avoid  another African entanglement following the fiasco of its intervention in Somalia. France, with its closest link to the Rwandan Regime,  sent an intervention force which ended up in easing flight into exile of several genociders.

 Melvern has made her life mission to take on the Rwandan Genocide deniers and expose tbeir poisonous fact muddying claims.

Intent to Deceive : Denying  the Genocide of the Tutsi by Linda Melvern, Verso £16.99, 272 pages.