Rose Kabuye, a close associate of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was placed under judicial investigation Wednesday in France over the April 1994 assassination of then-president Juvenal Habyarimana that preceded the Rwandan genocide, a judicial source said.

French officials took custody of Kabuye, 47, a former Tutsi guerrilla leader who now is chief of protocol to Kagame, earlier in the day after she was extradited from Germany.

She is suspected of involvement in the downing of an executive jet carrying Habyarimana, a Hutu, and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira that preceded the mass slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the central African nation.