A Paris appeals court on Wednesday ruled investigators were right to drop a case over the French army's alleged failure to intervene in a massacre during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, participants' lawyers told AFP.
Associations and survivors of the killings of hundreds of Tutsis in the Bisesero hills in western Rwanda between June 27 and 30, 1994 have long accused French forces over their role.
They accused troops of "complicity in genocide" for failing to protect victims for three days.
Hutu extremists murdered an estimated 50,000 people in the Bisesero area alone out of around 800,000 killed in the 1994 genocide.
A 2021 historians' report commissioned by the French government found that French troops had been aware that Tutsis hiding in the hills had been attacked but failed to respond to their pleas to be saved for days, by which time hundreds of people had been murdered.
"Of course we're very disappointed by the rejection... but this isn't a surprise," said Patrick Baudoin, a lawyer representing the FIDH and LDH rights groups.
There was "resistance to bringing soldiers' responsibility into play, and even more that of the French public authorities," he added.
Appeals court judges found there needed to be evidence of "genocidal intent" (for someone) to be considered complicit," complained Francois Graner, a spokesman for campaign group Survie (Survival).
Graner added that the French court had distanced itself from precedents set by France's top court, the Court of Cassation, in such cases, calling the ruling a "denial of justice".
Baudoin and Survie's lawyer Olivier Foks said they could appeal.
The appeals court had also found that military leaders on the ground took their decisions independently of their Paris headquarters, Graner said.
In fact "the file shows the reverse throughout, that the headquarters was in control of its troops at the time," he added.
- 'Restored honour' -
General Jean-Claude Lafourcade, who headed the Turquoise mission, said in a statement that he was "glad about this decision, which restores the honour of the soldiers I commanded (who were) unjustly accused".
His lawyer Pierre-Olivier Lambert, also defending several other senior officers, said it should be "accepted that the judicial truth is the historical truth".
Investigating magistrates had dropped the 17-year case in 2022, saying there was no evidence that the French army was involved in atrocities committed in refugee camps, or that it helped the perpetrators or deliberately held off from preventing the killings.
But the appeals court last year ordered investigators at Paris's crimes against humanity division to reopen a probe after finding procedural errors.
Fierce controversy remains around France's UN-mandated Turquoise mission to Rwanda, which was supposed to halt the genocide.
Campaigners have for years called for a trial against military personnel and officials close to then-president Francois Mitterrand.
Paris's administrative court in November rejected a bid to have the French state found guilty of complicity in genocide, which plaintiffs plan to appeal.
More than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda between April and July 1994 according to UN figures, most of them from the Tutsi minority.