Fearful Rwandans Try To Hijack Plane

More than 100 Rwandans being deported from Gabon to their homeland tried Saturday to hijack their plane to a third country, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

The pilot managed to escape through a window. Troops then apparently surrounded the plane and there were reports of refugees being beaten on the tarmac, said Pam O’Toole, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.

Refugee agency personnel were expelled from the airport in Franceville and could get no information about the Rwandans’ fate, she said. It was not clear where the Rwandans demanded to go.

The 115 Rwandans were among a group of some 250 Hutus who made the long trek to Gabon from Congo earlier this year out of fear that Congo’s new government led by Laurent Kabila would send them home.

Many are former soldiers from the Hutu armed forces who may have taken part in the massacre of some 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.

The Rwandans said they would rather stand trial at the U.N. tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, than risk reprisals from the Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government.