Instead, he turned his attention to eliminating the commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), Major Paul Kagame. To carry out this plan, Habyarimana turned to Captain Paul Barril, a former French gendarme and an official envoy of French President François Mitterrand.

Barril, already close to the Rwandan regime, was tasked with a covert operation called “Insecticide,” a code name that revealed its brutal intentions; to weaken the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and assassinate its top leadership, particularly Kagame.

Barril had begun working with the Rwandan government in 1990, shortly after the RPF launched its liberation war. He helped facilitate weapons deals and provided military training, support that would later prove critical in preparing state forces and militias for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

In a 2004 interview with filmmaker Raphaël Glucksmann, Barril admitted that one of his earliest assignments was to “infiltrate and spy on the RPF down to its roots.”

According to a 2013 report by the French NGO Survie, Barril was hired in early 1993 to carry out the "Insecticide" operation, receiving $130,000 for his efforts. His priority target being Kagame.

Although the exact details of the assassination plot remain unclear, Survie notes that Kagame was to be killed at his base in Mulindi. It was not the regime’s first attempt. Back in 1991, a woman had been sent to poison Kagame but was caught before executing the plan. Barril’s attempt also failed.

With the assassination plan unsuccessful, Barril refocused his efforts on reinforcing the regime’s military capabilities. He helped train elite units at the Bigogwe military camp in today’s Nyabihu District.

These soldiers were tasked with undermining RPF operations and accelerating the extermination of Tutsi civilians.

His efforts complemented those of CRAP (Commando de Reconnaissance et d’Action en Profondeur), a French-trained unit established in 1992 to obstruct RPF advances. Despite this foreign-backed support, the Rwandan army continued to lose ground.

The French Soldiers led by Captain Barril provide military training to Interahamwe milliatias.

As the genocide escalated in mid-1994, Barril was again called upon. The then Minister of Defense Augustin Bizimana wrote to him, requesting for 1,000 French mercenaries to assist the struggling Rwandan military.

Barril received $1.2 million for the mission. The mercenaries were sent, but they failed to prevent the fall of Kigali or stop the RPF.

In September 1994, an increasingly desperate Bizimana wrote again, this time demanding a refund for services Barril had failed to deliver, a moment that captured the crumbling authority of the genocidal regime.

In the years following the genocide, Barril sought to distance himself from his role. He spread the false claim that the genocide would not have occurred had President Habyarimana not been assassinated, ignoring his own direct involvement in preparing the structures that carried it out.

Barril’s testimony has been consistently inconsistent, often marked by contradictions and falsehoods. He also falsely claimed to be in possession of the black box from Habyarimana’s downed plane, a statement later debunked.

Though he failed to carry out his most notorious mission, his contributions to the arming and training of genocidal forces remain part of the historical record. His legacy is not one of success, but of complicity.

Captain Paul Barril is a former French gendarme and an official envoy of French President François Mitterrand.

Barril intended to weaken the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and assassinate its top leadership, particularly Kagame.