The genocide was provoked when Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was pronounced dead after his plane had been shot down on April 6, 1994, over Kigali Airport. A French judge blamed the head of the Tutsi rebel group, Paul Kagame, and a few of his most loyal followers for the assassination of the president. Kagame denied this accusation and claimed that Hutu extremists were at fault. He argued that the group targeted the president as a way to begin executing their plans to annihilate the Tutsi population. The perpetrators of the attack were never exonerated before violence and death spread throughout the country and did not subside until three months later. Although the death of the president played a role in the start of the genocide,
