Paul Barril

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Paul Barril (13 April 1946) is a former officer of the French Gendarmerie Nationale. He authored several books about his military career, touching sensitive political subjects of the Mitterrand era.

Barril was a gendarme until 1995. He was the second officer of the GIGN Special Forces unit for 10 years, before being involved in the creation of the Counterterrorist Cell of the Élysée during François Mitterrand's first mandate from 1981 to 1988. Since then, he has led several private security companies. He has been in the centre of controversies for his role in Africa, particularly in Rwanda during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 during which extremist Hutus mass exterminated hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Contents 1 Military career 2 Private security business 3 Rwanda 4 Notes 5 Bibliography

[edit] Military career

Barril was second officer of the GIGN from 1974 to 1982, as aid to commandant Christian Prouteau. In late 1979, he was dispatched to Saudi Arabia to help the Saudi government quell the Grand Mosque Seizure, an uprising at Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca that was led by fundamentalist preached Juhayman al-Otaibi. Barril was commander of the GIGN by interim in 1982-1983, while commandant Prouteau was organising the GSPR, a presidential security unit. Barril claims to having "arrested 115 people, being involved in the surrender of 61 madmen, neutralised 17 armed people without using weapons, and freed over 450 hostages."< After the rue Marbeuf attack of 22 April 1982, he was involved in the creation of the Counterterrorist Cell of the Elysée, along with Prouteau. Barril was involved in several famous affairs, such as the so-called "Irishmen from Vincennes" and the Elysée wiretap scandal.

[edit] Private security business

After the "Irishmen from Vincennes" affair, in 1984, Barril created the company Epsylon in Paris.

He also leads a company called SECRETS (for "Société d'Etudes de Conception et de Réalisation d'Equipements Techniques de Sécurité", "Society for Study, Design and Implementation of Technical Security Equipments") [3] which offers security interventions in foreign countries.

In 1988, Barril organised an "action group" around President Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d'Ivoire.

[edit] Rwanda

Further information: Foreign policy of François Mitterrand  and Rwandan Genocide

Barril was involved in Rwanda during the first half of the 90s. He went to Kigali right after the plane ferrying president Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down, as the genocide started. Barril stated that he acted as a councilor to President Habyarimana. He was contacted in 1989 for a reorganisation of the Rwandan intelligence services ^[1]. Other sources refer to an audit of the Rwandan army in 1990 ^[2].

Barril has also been accused of playing a role in the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana which sparked the Rwandan genocide. According to the British MI6 Barril and other French agents supplied and trained radical Hutus who carried out the assassination.

Barril was also present in Kigali on the 7 and 27 April 1994 ^[3]. Rumour has it that after Juvénal Habyarimana was assassinated, his widow, Agathe Habyarimana, hired Barril,via SECRETS company ,to investigate the case. Barril declared to journalists of Le Monde and France 2 that he was in possession of the black boxes of the plane, and promoted the thesis that the FPR (Rwandan Patriotic Front), led by the Tutsi Paul Kagame, was involved in the attack ^[4].

At the same time, on the 20 May 1994, Barril was hired by the Hutu temporary government to recover a 1 650 000 US$ payment made for canceled weapon imports. ^[5].

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Annex 10 of the report of the Information mission of the Assemblée nationale regarding military operations in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 [1].
2. ^ Libération, 29 July 1994 ; quoted by the Voltaire Network [2].
3. ^ Paul Barril, Guerres secrètes à l'Élysée, Albin Michel, Paris, 2000
4. ^ France 2, 28 June 1994 ; broadcast cited in the parliamentary report on Rwanda, p. 238.
5. ^ Parlementary Report, pp. 257-258 and annex 10, pp. 575-581.

[edit] Bibliography

• Paul Barril, Missions très spéciales, Presses de la Cité, Paris, 1984.
• Paul Barril, Guerres secrètes à l'Élysée, Albin Michel, Paris, 1996.
• Paul Barril, L'enquête explosive, Flammarion, Paris, 2000.
• Paul Barril, Les archives secrètes de Mitterrand, Albin Michel, Paris, 2001.
• Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999, 789 pages. ISBN 1-56432-171-1
• Alison Des Forges Aucun témoin ne doit survivre, Karthala, Paris (version française de l'ouvrage précédent) ISBN 2-86537-937-X
• Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, L'inavouable, la France au Rwanda, Les Arènes, Paris. ISBN 2-912485-70-3
• Laure Coret et François-Xavier Verschave (Sous la direction de), L'horreur qui nous prend au visage - Rapport de la Commission d'enquête citoyenne, édition Karthala, ISBN 2-84586-620-8
• Benjamin Sehene Le Piège Ethnique, Éditions Dagorno, Paris, 1999 ISBN 2910019543
• Yaroslav Trofimov "The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda," (Doubleday, New York, 2007) ISBN 978-0385519250