Pierre Péan

Case dismissed In September 2008, Pierre Péan was put on trial in Paris accused of inciting racial hatred in a book on the Rwandan genocide. Péan wrote that the Tutsis had a culture of lies and deceit, and it had somehow spread to the Hutus. He said it made investigating Rwanda "an almost impossible task".

Some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 1994. A French rights group, SOS Racisme, filed the lawsuit against Péan in October 2006 and was backed by the public prosecutor. The case related to four pages in Péan's book "Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs" ("Black Furies, White Liars"), published in 2005.

The trial took place from 23 to 25 September 2008. Among the witnesses testifying on Péan's behalf were two former French government ministers: the socialist Hubert Védrine and the rightist Bernard Debré. Giving evidence, Pierre Péan complained that for three years he had been under a cloud: "At best, I was treated as a racist; at worst, a genocide denier." On the second day of the trial, Péan burst into tears when a former leader of the French Union of Jewish Students compared his book to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. A survivor of the Rwandan genocide, psychotherapist Esther Mujawo-Keiner, accused him of "playing with words that can kill", to which Péan, without apologising for the words that he used, replied: "I bow down in front of the suffering of the victims."

In November 2008, when the case against Péan was dismissed, his lawyer said the verdict was "a victory for freedom of expression, and for a real exchange of ideas on what is a very difficult subject." SOS Racisme said they would appeal against the court's decision.