Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide

In April 1994 up to a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda during a murderous campaign of horrifying efficiency.The ferocity of the killing and the cruelty inflicted on defenceless people has no comparison in modern times.

Conspiracy to Murder is the story of how that genocide was planned. It reveals how, from as early as 1990, the political, military and administrative leadership of Rwanda became involved in planning the complete extermination of the Tutsi population. A vicious hate campaign filled the media, urging Hutus to kill; a network of roadblocks was devised to prevent any escape; civil-defence groups were established throughout the country, with eventually every third Hutu being armed; half a million machetes and other agricultural tools were imported, and 85 tons of munitions were distributed country-wide, in the year leading up to the genocide.

In an outstanding example of investigative journalism, Linda Melvern reveals the full story behind the conspiracy, detailing the involvement of world governments whose responses ranged from complicity to apathy. She shows how the killers outmanoeuvred the Security Council and led UN peacekeepers into a steady trap; how the French military trained the killers and how their ‘humanitarian intervention’ in June 1994 enabled many of those killers to escape justice; how the JOhn Major government ignored warnings and then proceeded to mislead the British Parliament about what was really happening; how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence showing that the genocide had begun; and how significant was the knowledge of then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Linda Melvern is a widely published investigative journalist. She is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and was a consultant to the Military One prosecution team at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. Her previous books include The Ultimate Crime and A People Betrayed.