The lost ambassador (continued)

Several months ago, I reported in the Washington Post on the story of Jean-Damascene Bizimana, Rwanda’s UN ambassador during the 1994 genocide. Romeo Dallaire, the former UN commander in Rwanda, has charged that Bizimana knew about the planned genocide and funneled important information from New York to Kigali in the weeks before the killing began. ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Several months ago, I reported in the Washington Post on the story of Jean-Damascene Bizimana, Rwanda's UN ambassador during the 1994 genocide. Romeo Dallaire, the former UN commander in Rwanda, has charged that Bizimana knew about the planned genocide and funneled important information from New York to Kigali in the weeks before the killing began.

Several months ago, I reported in the Washington Post on the story of Jean-Damascene Bizimana, Rwanda’s UN ambassador during the 1994 genocide. Romeo Dallaire, the former UN commander in Rwanda, has charged that Bizimana knew about the planned genocide and funneled important information from New York to Kigali in the weeks before the killing began.

When the government fell to rebel forces in the summer of 1994, Bizimana vanished. After some digging, I found him living a quiet, new life in Alabama. He refused to speak to me, but after the Post article appeared, his hometown newspaper ran an editorial calling for him to address questions, and the Rwandan government said it was investigating his case. A few days later, he gave a short interview to the Associated Press, in which he denied all knowledge of the extremist plans and insisted that he wasn’t in touch with anyone in Rwanda during the genocide.

I’m back in Alabama today to give a talk about the story at Auburn University. As far as I know, the former ambassador is still in the area.  

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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