John Pilger
With testimony from witnesses and access to documents previously unseen, she tells an epic and shaming story.


Book Description
On the tenth anniversary of the horrific genocide in Rwanda, an expert witness tells the first full story of the massacre's planning, with damning details of Western inaction. April 2004 sees the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, an event generally acknowledged to be one of the most appalling of the twentieth century and potentially avoidable. Linda Melvern's new book, the result of a decade of investigative work, is a damning indictment of almost all the key figures and the institutions involved. It reveals how the French military trained the killers, how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence that the genocide was about to begin, how the John Major government ignored vital warnings that the genocide was planned, how much Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the French government knew prior to the genocide and how the Security Council's shameful decision to evacuate the peacekeepers came about. In addition to these official sources, the author draws on dozens of witness statements yet to be heard at the International Criminal Tribunal, at which she will be an expert witness, and a sixty-hour confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide never before made publicly available and currently locked in the safe of the chief prosecutors at the ICT court.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"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 defenseless 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 ad 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 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 deadly 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 to 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 the then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali." The author has had exclusive access to a wealth of fresh sources, including an extraordinary collection of documents abandoned by the conspirators when they fled Rwanda and a full confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide. Written especially for the tenth anniversary year, Conspiracy to M

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