At the end of May 1997, one week after President Mobutu was toppled in a military coup, Judi Rever, a Canadian reporter for RFI, arrives in the Democratic Republic of Congo—then Zaire—to cover the unfolding humanitarian crisis. She travels south of Kisangani to refugee camps where Hutu refugees have sought safety after a series of attacks. Here, in the eery quiet of a clearing in the forest, she comes across “dozens and dozens” of survivors. Some have lost their families and others look as though they are “on the verge of death.” They all say they are escaping attacks by the RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, part of the rebel alliance that has overthrown Mobutu (today, the ruling party in Rwanda). Across the border in Rwanda, in a transit camp where Hutus returning from Congo are being registered by the UN, refugees say the same thing: that they fled Rwanda to Congo because the RPF was killing Hutus.

Back in Paris where she lives, Rever tries to piece together what she has seen. In the media and in political and humanitarian circles, there is one narrative: that “an African renaissance” is beginning in the Congo, heralding a “new age of peace and security.” Rever herself believes, like most people, that during the Rwandan genocide the RPF “swooped in and routed Hutu extremists responsible for killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus.” Yet this narrative is “diametrically opposed” to what she has seen in both Congo and Rwanda. Her interviews lead her to question everything she has read about the genocide. What unfolds in the remainder of her book, In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, is a detailed account of the RPF and their crimes before, during and after the Rwandan genocide.

Drawing from reports by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which was set up in the aftermath of the genocide to try Rwandans accused of human rights violations, as well as from select interviews with former intelligence officers and RPF defectors who used to work for Kagame, Rwandans in exile, survivors of massacres, former investigators, academics, and others, Rever’s account reveals the RPF’s methods of operation. It says how they carried out massacres against Hutu civilians “with great precision,” “leaving barely a trace,” what motivated them, and how they managed to evade justice for so many years. Although these crimes have been documented for many years and as early as 1994 by groups including The Human Rights Commission on Rwanda, Amnesty International, the UN, MSF, and a number of notable scholars, In Praise of Blood is notable for providing more information, both “qualitative and quantitative,” about the RPF’s crimes.

A key element to understanding the RPF’s operations during and after the genocide, is its intelligence wing, the DMI (Directorate of Military Intelligence), which Rever describes as the “main instrument through which crimes were inflicted on Rwandans during the genocide” and the “continuing source of control and violence against Rwandans and Congolese.” Investigators for the ICTR found that while the RPF had killed civilians, it was DMI representatives under orders from Kagame who initiated massacres. A controversial revelation in the book, based on the ICTR report and on interviews with former RPF officials, is that a covert group of “technicians” trained by DMI before 1994 were trained to, among other things, infiltrate Interahamwe Hutu militias and incite them to commit massacres against Tutsi civilians. In some cases, she writes, the RPF even actively killed Tutsi villagers in staged attacks that were blamed on Hutu mobs.